In the face of climate change, who faces the most risks? Perhaps they are women, indigenous people, migrant workers, environmental human right defenders, youth and children, climate refugees, people residing in states with social/political instability, stateless people, or groups that we have forgotten to name entirely. With the diversity of contexts and challenges faced by different groups of people, there is much to say, but from whose viewpoints?
“One way of posing the question of who “we” are in these times of war is by asking whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable. We might think of war as dividing populations into those who are grievable and those who are not. An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all. We can see the division of the globe into grievable and ungrievable lives from the perspective of those who wage war in order to defend the lives of certain communities, and to defend them against the lives of others—even if it means taking those latter lives.”—Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?