Feminist Ecologies

In times of devastating ecological crisis, where can we find a route map to collectively halt current trends of destruction? In this review, we examine feminist studies’ recent contributions to activism and theorizing regarding extraction, emerging ecologies, and multispecies justice. By bringing in salient research from the fields of feminist political ecology, ecofeminism, and decolonial/anticolonial feminisms, we point to the ways in which feminist thought and action has opened up spaces for recognizing, envisioning, and making life-affirming ecologies rather than extractive systems of destruction. We refer to the former as emergent and emancipatory ecologies, that is, ecologies always in the process of becoming and capable of defying and subverting oppression based on gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, caste, ability, species and other forms of discrimination—and, thus, capable of protecting and defending life and living worlds.