Revisiting Transnational Corporations and Extractive Industries: Climate Justice, Feminism, and State Sovereignty

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2017

Keywords

Climate Justice, Feminist Theory, Carbon Majors, State Sovereignty, Business and Human Rights

Abstract

This Article explicitly examines the relationship between climate justice, gender, and transnational fossil fuel extractive industries by drawing upon feminist theoretical insights. First, I provide an overview of the differential impacts of climate change on women and briefly review insights from select international legal scholars who have considered gender and climate change. Second, I describe the Philippines climate petition, a novel attempt to seek an investigation into the accountability of transnational fossil fuel companies for climate harms. Third, I examine three sets of issues arising in the Philippines climate petition and draw explicitly upon Karen Knop’s Re/Statements: Feminism and State Sovereignty in International Law. Here, I consider how feminist approaches to international legal theory might enrich the analysis of legal doctrines fundamental to framing the issues and outcome of the Philippines climate petition. Specifically, I consider three different sets of claims that emerge from a critique of the bounded, autonomous, and unified liberal subject that informs implicit understandings of state and sovereignty at international law. In conclusion, I argue that climate justice demands we take up a relational view of the state, dissolve boundaries between public and private sectors, and embrace visions of overlapping sovereignties.

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