Camp Mystic suits, a call from Belize, $250M in awards announced, ecofeminist art

There's a whole lot going on around the world: This weekly brief from Climate, Gendered is your chance to spend a few short moments on just five items with the potential to disproportionately impact over half the global population — and the ideas that might make a difference.

Lawsuits filed in the wake of historic floods claiming the lives of 27 girls and women at Camp Mystic (New York Times)

The families of five campers and two counselors who died as a result of devastating flooding in Texas last July are demanding that the owners and leadership of the all-girls summer camp be held accountable. The suit alleges that the owners ignored a crucial warning from the U.S. National Weather Service that flash flooding was imminent.

Experts have indicated that the significant flooding of the Guadalupe River was likely driven by changing weather conditions associated with rising global temperatures. The event killed more than 130 people in the region, including 25 girls and two young women at Camp Mystic.

Improving resilience and safeguarding biodiversity requires women 'be made equal partners in decision-making' (Nature)

In Belize, reefs are dying as a result of warming seas while intensifying hurricanes and wildfires threaten infrastructure and land-based resources. In the journal Nature this week, Elma Kay wrote that achieving gender equity in government can help.

"For countries to build resilience and protect their biodiversity in the time needed, more women must be made equal partners in decision-making," said Kay, managing director of the Belize Maya Forest Trust in Belmopan. Kay names two potential solutions: investment in equitable mentorship and "using quotas for gender balance in political leadership."

Pivotal Ventures and Lever for Change announce awardees of millions advancing women's health (Lever for Change)

In their November 12 announcement identifying the organizations set to receive $250 million in funding through the joint open call Action for Women's Health to improve outcomes worldwide, Pivotal Ventures and Lever for Change shared that awards of between $1 million and $5 million would go to over 80 organizations.

Among them are groups working at the intersection of women's health and climate change, including We Care Solar, which will scale its "Light Every Birth initiative to equip remote health clinics in Africa with life-saving solar power to ensure every woman has access to well-lit health facilities for safe childbirth."

Other organizations are working to address malaria and cancer, which can be exacerbated by environmental factors. Projects powering mobile health clinics will help to improve equitable access, often interrupted by extreme weather events.

Catholic sisters return land to Ojibwe Nation: 'More than the restoration of land — it is the restoration of balance' (Tribal Business News)

The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration have returned nearly two acres on Trout Lake in Wisconsin to the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. The transfer appears to mark the first of lands from Catholic sisters to a Tribal Nation. 

“This return represents more than the restoration of land — it is the restoration of balance, dignity, and sacred connection to the places our ancestors once walked,” LDF President John Johnson said in a statement, per Tribal Business News. 

Sarah Jane Bradley of Land Justice Futures told 19th News about her organization's intent to unite the Land Back Movement and Catholic environmentalism, “[There was] a gap and a need to organize landowners around climate justice and around redistribution of land toward the people who are restoring balance and thriving life to our ecosystems.” Bradley said the effort has been largely women-led.

Ecofeminist art exhibit on view in the UK until December 14 (The Conversation)

Curated by Natasha Ginwala at The Drawing Room Gallery in London, England, Land Sings Back features work by 13 artists with ancestry in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Of the exhibit's themes, Loughborough University professor Pragya Agarwal wrote, "The subjugation of women and marginalised people, which has severed their connection to the lands and the oppression of their myths and stories, has created an imbalance between nature and humans."

One goal at Climate, Gendered is to bring an undeniable spotlight to the reality that proliferating pollution, increasing temperatures, sea level rise, extreme weather, habitat loss, and more can uniquely and disproportionately impact girls, women, trans communities, and nonbinary people. We welcome with gratitude your timely observations on this topic: Please share one way you noticed this week in which climate and gender connect — and share CG with a friend.