Challenging queer erasure in climate action and urban development full transcript
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Host [00:01] You are listening to Make Change Happen, the podcast from IIED. Recently, IIED has started to explore how urban development and climate action can be more inclusive of LGBTQI+ communities and learn from queer thinking and practice.
In this episode, senior researcher Tucker Landesman talks to two professionals who are working with queer communities and activists to bridge gaps between urban justice and climate justice and LGBTQI+ civil society.
Tucker Landesman [00:37] Hello and welcome to episode number 22 of IIED’s podcast Make Change Happen. My name is Tucker Landesman, I'm a senior researcher at IIED focused on urban inequalities and climate action, and I lead a project called ‘What does queer have to do with it? Making space for LGBTQI+ contributions to sustainable urban development and climate action’. This represents a new area of work for IIED, and it arose when a core group of staff working on gender justice started having conversations about missing voices across our priorities and programmes.
The work can sometimes feel uncomfortable and there are many steep learning curves, but one year on, we feel stronger than ever that we have an ethical obligation to include people with diverse genders and sexualities in our work. We recognise that we have a lot to learn from queer thinking and practice, and from working with LGBTQI+ civil society. And queer approaches can improve our work in areas such as informality, housing justice, gender justice, and transformative climate action.
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Tucker Landesman [01:42] For this episode of Make Change Happen I spoke with two activist researchers that are building bridges between urban justice and climate justice, and with LGBT civil society.
The first guest is Rodrigo Iacovini from the Instituto Polis, or Polis Institute, in Sao Paulo and focused on issues of urban justice and the right to the city.
Later we will hear from Sarah Louise Montgomery from the NGO and International Network, GenderCC – Women for Climate Justice.
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Tucker Landesman [02:17] Welcome, Rodrigo.
Rodrigo Iacovini [02:18] Hi Tucker, nice to be here.
Tucker Landesman [02:21] Rodrigo, can you give us a brief introduction to Instituto Polis and your role?
Rodrigo Iacovini [02:27] Well, Polis Institute, it's a Brazilian NGO devoted to the fight for the right to the city. It was founded 36 years ago, and we fight for the right to the city through different strategies and understanding the right to the city in different dimensions as well.
We believe that if people build the cities daily in their lives, they should also decide it, too. We also believe that the right to the city means some very different concrete dimensions, such as housing, urban mobility, a healthy urban environment, but also some very important political and symbolical dimension such as history, heritage and artistic dimensions of the city.
In order to achieve the right to the city, we adopt different strategies such as advocacy initiatives, capacity-building initiatives, and research and communication actions as well.
Tucker Landesman [03:27] And I'm going to be really interested to hear later about how you've been able to incorporate queer inclusion into the work, especially when it comes to right to the city.
So in mainstream development, queer thinking and practice are still largely invisible. And IIED is looking to kind of challenge what we call heteronormativity in the development sector. And heteronormativity often refers to assumptions made that heterosexuality identity and lifestyle is universal across the world. And very often I think, I'm not sure about you, I looked around and I was asking myself, ‘Where are the queer people?’. It really felt like I was the only one in the room sometimes.
So I wonder for you how, maybe from a personal or from an institutional perspective, how did you start to incorporate a queer lens or start to work with LGBT civil society at Instituto Polis?
Rodrigo Iacovini [04:22] That's a great question, Tucker, because actually I think we have to start from a personal perspective. Because I'm a small-town boy, I was raised in a very small town in the countryside of Brazil, which had at the time 40,000 people. And this is small town, it was a very conservative one. And I had no LGBTQI reference in this town.
When I look back to that time of my life, I wasn't able to remember any LGBTQI person that I could have as a role model, as an example. I had no meaning then what was to be a gay person, a gay man.
So that changed a lot when I moved to Fortaleza, which is a wider city with over two million people and it had a Pride parade. And when I saw the Pride parade in Fortaleza, it showed me that there was a lot of different ways to be an LGBTQI person as well. So the city showed me how different we can be and showed me that I wasn't alone.
After that, when I was travelling around the world and in other Brazilian cities, I started to look how LGBTQI persons, they would behave on [the] street where they were at, if there was LGBTQI venues there. And I remember of course being amazed by cities such [as] Amsterdam, but I was also looking for those small towns to see the signs. Because they are there. We have to train our eyes. Because there is LGBTQ people in all cities of the world, but since we live in a heteronormative society, we have to search for them.
And that's why I began to connect the struggle for LGBTQI life for the struggle to right to the city. And this become [sic] something that I was able to push for within Polis Institute. So we started conversations with LGBTQI activists and we convened workshops and seminars, and then we started partnerships and then that lead us to projects, and projects such [as] the one we are working today, mapping LGBTQI venues in Sao Paulo.
Tucker Landesman [06:56] So maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that process. It sounds as if Instituto Polis turns 30, in internal conversations you're looking around and you're seeing, ‘Okay, who's been at the table these past 30 years?’, and you noticed some missing voices including Black and brown voices, as well as kind of LGBT voices. What did you do from there?
Rodrigo Iacovini [07:25] From there, we first decided that we have to change our agenda, but to shift this agenda we have to change ourselves. So Polis had to change, the institution has to change, the organisation had to change. And we started thinking how we could do that change.
First we had to look to, who are the people who are building Polis Institute in their daily lives? There was some LGBTQI persons for instance, but there was just a few Black and brown people in our technical team. So we have to change our human resources policies and we have to actively search for Black and brown people to be part of our teams.
So this is very important because if we have to shift the way we did the work, we cannot do the work with the same people that we did before. We have to shift our own technical bodies, we have to shift our main directors, we have to shift our partners as well.
Tucker Landesman [08:39] And you mentioned earlier that Instituto Polis is now kind of mapping LGBT spaces within Sao Paulo. Can you tell us a little bit more about that work?
Rodrigo Iacovini [08:50] Yeah, that's an amazing work and I'm very fond of this work that we are doing. Right now we are mapping LGBTQI places and cultural references in Sao Paulo. And why we are doing that, to understand, to mobilise and to change. We are doing that to understand current territories and territorialities in which LGBTQI people, they organise themselves within the city of Sao Paulo. We are trying to map and to understand patterns of urban dynamics, mobility, leisure, housing, political activism of LGBTQI people. And in order to do that, we are starting from the point of mapping cultural references of that group of people.
We are using collaborative and participatory method, which is called participatory inventory, of cultural reference. And we are also doing some community… Oh, I forgot the word in English…
Tucker Landesman [09:56] What is it in Portuguese?
Rodrigo Iacovini [09:58] Leituras comunitárias (in Portuguese)
Tucker Landesman [10:01] Oh… Yeah… Like, community understandings, maybe?
Rodrigo Iacovini [10:05] Yeah, yeah…
Tucker Landesman [10:07] It would be, like, public readings, right? It's a very Portuguese concept, yeah? I think you can roll with it.
But Rodrigo, let me ask you a question, because some of our listeners who aren't geographers or urban planners, they might be thrown for a loop when you say something like territory and territoriality. Can you tell us what is LGBT territory or what is, you know, queer territoriality?
Rodrigo Iacovini [10:30] Well, LGBTQI territory, it's a compound of places and dynamics that together they say where LGBTQI people they live, they work, but they also are political activists. It's a combination of space and social relationships.
So when we are looking for LGBTQI territories, we're not only looking, for instance, ‘Oh, here beside my house there is an LGBTQI bar’, and, ‘There, there is an LGBTQI museum’, for instance. But we are looking where they are in the city and how LGBTQI people, they appropriate those places in the cities within their daily lives.
Tucker Landesman [11:23] So it's almost like how people on the day-to-day basis live in the city and build communities.
Rodrigo Iacovini [11:29] Yeah, how they build friendships, how they build political trust, how they connect with each other, how they convene other people from their same groups.
Because we, as gay and LGBTQ people, we choose our families as well.
Tucker Landesman [11:49] So it sounds as if a lot of these kind of LGBT territories or places where queer people are living and building communities and relationships, they've gone unnoticed or unmapped.
Can you tell us, why is it important for organisations like Instituto Polis to map these spaces? Like, what's the goal here? What can you accomplish?
Rodrigo Iacovini [12:12] It's very important not only to understand the patterns and the dynamics of the city, but also to connect with different LGBTQI groups and people and activists. When we are doing the map, we are doing actually a mobilisation process as well. We are engaging with each other and trying to see what we are all doing, how can we connect our initiatives? How can we divide to be in different spaces and cover more ground as well? So it's a very rich process of mobilisation.
And it's also a possibility to change, because when you know in depth a reality, when you start to look with a zoom in of this LGBTQI presence in the city, you can see where it can be better, where we can push for change.
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Tucker Landesman [13:11] This reminds me a lot of the rich history of community mapping projects in informal housing settlements. And this has been something that IIED has been involved in, you know, for decades, especially with partners like SDI – Slum and shack Dwellers International.
And I hear you talk about, you know, producing knowledge in order to drive change, and one of the kind of key added value of community mapping in informal housing settlements is that communities then have knowledge and data that they can use in negotiations with local governments to—for, you know, basic services and improved infrastructure.
So it sounds like there are kind of mutual learnings that can happen here. Have you learned anything new or do you have any emerging findings from this participatory mapping project? I know you're not finished yet, but anything hot off the press that you'd like to share?
Rodrigo Iacovini [14:10] Yeah, sure. We found that we – I mean LGBTQI people, we – are still invisible. We are still invisible. There is few produced data on LGBTQI people here in Brazil, especially data that relates to cities and urban policies and urban development. For instance, we found here in Sao Paulo that there is a lot of different concentrations of activities in the city of LGBTQI people. They are mostly concentrated in the city centre of Sao Paulo, but there are other territorial focus as well.
When we are talking about hate crimes against LGBTQI people here, I'm talking about hate crimes from 2016 until 2021, which we have the numbers from the government to do that. And when we mapped these hate crimes against LGBTQ people, we tried to see if they were connected with LGBTQI venues. We found there is a lot of coincidence among those two territories, but there are differences as well. There are some places that concentrate LGBTQI venues – such as bars, theatres, services – that they are concentrate in a part of the city which doesn't have a lot of hate crimes against LGBTQ people. And why is that? So we are now bringing up some hypothesis on that.
And one of the things that we are looking, it's because maybe this place… Because we know this place, we are urban planners here in Sao Paulo, we know that this place concentrates a little bit more white people with higher income. So one of our hypotheses is that the difference among those two concentrations – one that concentrate both LGBTQI venues and hate crimes, and the other that only concentrate LGBTQ venues – is that the latter concentrates also housing of white and rich people in the city.
But can we affirm that there is a correlation between hate crimes against LGBTQI people and rich and white neighbourhoods? The answer is no. And why we can't correlate that? Because we don't have data on housing of LGBTQI people in Sao Paulo. We don't have data on the urban mobility of LGBTQI people in Sao Paulo.
So since we are invisible for those public policies and for those data, we cannot understand what threatens us as LGBTQI people in this city.
Tucker Landesman [17:09] Rodrigo, I think you are pointing to a key challenge to making urbanisation and sustainable development truly inclusive, and that is the lack of data. When we don't collect, when we don't include gender and sexuality in large data sets, it amounts to kind of a queer erasure.
And I think this is something that we've heard from a lot of partners working with LGBTQI people. Even the World Bank, for example, when the World Bank was trying to determine a correlation relationship between poverty and gender identity and sexual orientation, they were very hesitant to say, ‘Yes, we can show a strong relationship between poverty and LGBT status’. And it was simply because they lacked these large data sets. And, like you said, they were relying on civil society.
So I think this points to a priority moving forward where civil society can start partnering with government ministries in order to make sure that data collection is more inclusive.
I wanted to ask you about how you're working with an intersectional lens. Because you're already pointing to how sometimes race and class privilege are intersecting with vulnerabilities that LGBT persons experience. And intersectionality is really kind of a key term right now in civil society. A lot of people in organisations are struggling to use it beyond a buzzword and really turn intersectionality into practice, into action.
A lot of my colleagues and external partners say, ‘Yes, we want to do this’, you know, ‘But how?’.
So can you tell us a bit more about, you know, how Instituto Polis is committed to working on urban justice through an intersectional lens?
Rodrigo Iacovini [19:05] Instituto Polis believes that the intersectional approach is key to address inequalities in the city, in the regions and in the countries. So in order to change inequalities, in order to shift inequalities, we have to adopt an approach that puts people at the centre – people's race at the centre of the discussion, people’s sexual orientation in the centre of the discussion, people's gender in the centre of the discussion.
So that's the main goal today for Polis Institute, is how do we reframe urban planning and how do we reframe urban policies to start from people and from people's body, from people's experience, in order to plan the city, in order to produce cities that are good for everyone to live in? Because when I have a city that's good for a Black young woman that is lesbian or bisexual, we have a city that's good for everyone.
Tucker Landesman [20:17] Thanks, Rodrigo.
Last question for you, and this is a question we ask all of our guests on [the] Make Change Happen podcast. What's your biggest change priority looking into the future? Where should we be investing our energy to make change happen?
Rodrigo Iacovini [20:31] In the close future I think that we have to invest our energy to shift and to change our organisations first. We have to consolidate within our organisations the notion that to put people at the centre of urban policies, that it means to racialise urban planning, it means to adopt policies from a gender perspective, but it also entails defending LGBTQI dimension of the right to the city. It means that we have to pay attention to the LGBTQI city that we live in. Because we are everywhere and we have to be visible, and we have to be taken into account, and we have the right to decide the city that we live in.
Tucker Landesman [21:16] Rodrigo Iacovini, thank you very much.
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Tucker Landesman [21:25] Sarah Louis Montgomery, welcome to Make Change Happen. Can we start just by introducing yourself and maybe you can tell us a little bit more about GenderCC?
Sarah Louis Montgomery [21:35] Yes, thank you, Tucker. Thanks for having me today. I'm Sarah Louis Montgomery, I'm working at GenderCC – Women for Climate Justice, secretariat in Berlin. We are a global network and we have around 160 members in the global north and global south. Our members are basically organisations, researchers, feminist organisations and individuals. And we are also providing research, educational work, we're doing advocacy work on all levels. So from the UNFCCC climate process to the local level, we also work on the urban level.
Tucker Landesman [22:12] That's great, thanks a lot for that.
And I know that GenderCC has been working on climate action and climate policy through the lens of gender and gender justice since its inception. I'm a big fan of the work that GenderCC did around urban policy and how to integrate meaningfully kind of feminist perspectives into climate policy in cities.
I understand that GenderCC has kind of recently in [the] past couple years gone beyond the gender binary and started also including trans and non-binary activism as well as queer activists into your work. Can you tell me a bit about how that came about and why you think it's important?
Sarah Louis Montgomery [22:56] Yes, we are actually a bit at the beginning of this work, I must say. Yeah, as you mentioned, we have been mainly working on the crossroad of gender and climate justice, so analysing climate policies mostly in the urban areas. Our biggest—maybe I can just mention our biggest project that we have had in the recent years?
Tucker Landesman [23:16] Yeah, of course.
Sarah Louis Montgomery [23:18] There was a project with four partner organisations or four partner countries in Indonesia – India, South Africa, and Mexico. And our partners or partner organisations have analysed climate policy of big cities and made a gender analysis of these climate policies, and then developed recommendations for the urban policies, basically. So that was the main idea.
Recently we have had two projects that tried to use that tool – this is called a gender impact assessment – and made—make our work more intersectional. We recognise that gender is just one part of a lens that we can look through when we analyse climate policy.
So I think one project that you know quite well, Tucker, is the LGBTQI project that we have done in the last year funded by the Urgent Action Fund. And what we wanted to do, first of all, is create a little bit of a base of research. We produced a briefing paper with the help of [24:17-8] in New York, a student who did a capstone project and supported us with this.
Tucker Landesman [24:23] Right, so it sounds like you were really responding to a gap in the literature and a gap in knowledge between how the climate justice movement is operating and how kind of queer and LGBT people are contributing to that.
Sarah Louis Montgomery [24:37] Yes, I think that is true. And so we were responding to this gap. However, this project was really a small pilot project, so we just have this relatively small briefing paper. And, I mean, what we would like to do, of course, is to have more of a database here.
In a different project we used the gender impact assessment that has been developed in previous years and try to make it more intersectional.
Tucker Landesman [25:00] I think you're… You're… You’re onto something really key right here with this, ‘how can we make gender assessment tools or gender responsive tools more intersectional?’, and of course intersectionality is a key term that a lot of organisations, a lot of researchers, a lot of donors, are grappling with – especially how to turn this kind of concept or buzzword into action. And I'm wondering if you have any insights.
So, what did that look like to take a gender analysis tool and try to make it inclusive of gender diversity and sexual diversity?
Sarah Louis Montgomery [25:38] For the moment this is a German project, and what we have done, we wanted to make the gender impact assessment more accessible for young people or for people who work with youth groups.
So we wanted to, on one hand, make it a bit simpler, and then on the other side, a bit more complex, which was… I don't know how to say that, it was quite a challenge, obviously. And the idea was that they could take any action they're taking, or any measure, or any policy, and then run through the gender impact assessment like a check-up. And you mentioned that making it intersectional is quite a challenge, obviously, and so we wanted to shift from the theoretical approach of intersectionality to a very practical approach.
So basically what we have done is we have involved a lot of groups, like, groups of people who can also represent these different perspectives. Because we think if those groups are not at the table then it is difficult to develop the right questions for this intersectional check-up. And so we had queer groups, youth groups, union groups, even queer religious groups, we have had people with disabilities and BIPOC people.
So I think what was important for us is that people in the room could also contribute from their own perspective without necessarily having that responsibility. I mean, we try to include everybody's perspective, but also had this sounding board, a group of young activists or young people who work with youth organisations, as a sounding board.
Tucker Landesman [27:10] I want to just clarify because you used the term BIPOC. And just for listeners who aren't familiar with that term, it stands for Black, indigenous and people of colour.
And would you then go so far to say that kind of ensuring this diversity of participation, it becomes easier to kind of work in intersectional ways? So it might not necessarily be a group of researchers before they start their action sitting in a room kind of tapping their heads with their pencils, thinking about, ‘Hmm, now I'm intersectional’, or, ‘How am I intersectional?’. But it sounds as if what you're saying [is] part of the participatory process and ensuring that you have diversity of people in the room and at the table, is part of that work, is part of implementing intersectional concepts into action.
Sarah Louis Montgomery [28:02] Yes. So what we did was develop a sort of, like, a check with seven topics or seven fields where we thought… Well, it was derived from a gender impact assessment where we look at certain dimensions – so-called dimensions. Like, for example, at economy, care economy, or public spaces, or health and safety, gender roles, this kind of ‘dimensions’, we call them.
And when people run the check, like, run their measures through the check, they can look at all these different dimensions. And what we did is provide questions for them to see how people would be affected by that measure in different ways depending on power structures in society, basically.
And we also provided examples so it would be quite accessible. So, for example, a youth climate camp, and we try to develop that example according to all these dimensions.
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Tucker Landesman [28:59] I think achieving that simultaneous simplicity and accessibility with the complexity of outlook and participation is that sweet spot, right? And it seems like that's what
Sarah Louis Montgomery [29:10] Yeah
Tucker Landesman [29:10] So many of us are trying to do with our work.
If I could circle back to the work that GenderCC has done with LGBTQ climate activists. I know that the work spoke with activists and community leaders in different parts of the world, and I know that you've worked in Germany and throughout Europe but also in other geographies.
And I wanted to ask, what are some of the ways that climate policies and climate change are impacting queer communities?
Sarah Louis Montgomery [29:42] Thank you for that question. I mean, we look at the impacts and vulnerabilities, of course, but we also look – and that's mainly our work – at the way climate policy is affecting people. Because, well, mainly—I mean, we know about vulnerabilities a lot already, but we also want to… I mean, not feed into this narrative about, ‘Oh, maybe women or LGBTQI people are more vulnerable’, because, yeah, that's a bit like an old shoe or something…
Tucker Landesman [30:08] Right. It's a sad story that we hear over and over again.
Sarah Louis Montgomery [30:12] Yeah, and also feeds into a sort of sexist narrative or homophobic narrative of being victim or something.
Tucker Landesman [30:19] Oh, and that these are communities needing saving
Sarah Louis Montgomery [30:22] Help and—yeah, also neo-colonial narrative, like, ‘Oh, poor Black women in the global south need our help’.
Tucker Landesman [30:29] Yeah.
Sarah Louis Montgomery [30:29] So what we do instead is look very much at policy. I mean, what we have done in the project, in the LGBTQI project, is mostly to look at urban planning.
Because also today, I mean, 55% of the world's population already lives in urban areas and this is going to increase a lot still. And there's already a movement of cities around the world, it's called C40 Cities, because—to reduce climate emissions. Because 75% of the global CO2 emissions are already created by cities – I mean, cities are accountable for those emissions. And so, yeah, city planners or people who make policy for cities are actually quite important in terms of climate justice.
Tucker Landesman [31:10] And to what degree did you find that urban policies and city planners are responding to the maybe differentiated vulnerabilities or the potential potentialities of kind of feminist groups, women and LGBT groups?
Sarah Louis Montgomery [31:26] What would be important to see is that there's no negatives or, like, social or distributional outcomes, so that basically if you do climate policy, like, a positive climate policy, you should also make sure this doesn't have any adverse effects on specific groups.
Tucker Landesman [31:43] I wonder, can you… Maybe for our listeners who struggle a little bit to understand the direct explicit or implicit connections between climate change and LGBT communities, how would you spell that out for them?
Sarah Louis Montgomery [31:59] Sure. When we talk about climate justice, we basically mean that those who have contributed the least to climate change are those who actually struggle the most because they have hugely less resources. Of course, this goes along the lines of discrimination, so it has to do with gender, with class, disability, with race, and also with your position on political global north, or political global south.
And maybe to give you an example is that in the US, but also in Britain, up to 40% of homeless youths are describing themselves as being queer. In Britain I think it's between 20 and 30%. In the US there has been a study about this and queer youth who are homeless mainly live in the coastal areas, they're more vulnerable to storms or to floodings, for example.
You have also, I mean, especially a trans vulnerability. We talk about the gender pay gap, but there's also a pay gap between cis people and trans people. And for example trans people are two to three times more likely to face unemployment than cis people.
When you think about fleeing from natural disaster, you have bigger adversities. For example the shelters are often organised by institutions that are structurally violent against queer people – like, for example, religious institutions or governmental organisations, even. People have also more problem crossing borders in case it's necessary, like, #TravellingWhileTrans, I think is the hashtag.
Tucker Landesman [33:31] And this can often be because they lack documentation that matches their gender identity, right?
Sarah Louis Montgomery [33:38] Yeah, exactly. Because so-called ‘passing’, I don't know if [it’s] the same word in English, but basically people who cannot pass as a certain gender, but have that in their documents.
Tucker Landesman [33:48] Right. So it sounds like there's these compounding vulnerabilities that the LGBTQI+ community faces that in kind of a climate-linked disaster.
Sarah Louis Montgomery [34:00] Yes
Tucker Landesman [34:00] Can prevent them from receiving relief, can prevent them from accessing safe shelter.
Sarah Louis Montgomery [34:06] Mhmm.
Tucker Landesman [34:06] This matches what we've been finding in some of our research. We've heard of organisations, community-based organisations, being denied COVID relief, for example, from local governments
Sarah Louis Montgomery [34:17] Mhmm
Tucker Landesman [34:17] Because the local government was homophobic.
And I think this is kind of a growing acknowledgement that vulnerabilities associated with gender and sexuality impact the capacity of individuals and communities to respond in a moment of crisis and to bounce back after a crisis – you know, what's often referred to as resiliency.
Sarah Louis Montgomery [34:40] Mhmm, yeah. It also—exactly, it also has to do with the everyday discrimination that people are facing, because whenever there's a catastrophe – and you mentioned COVID now – everything becomes more difficult in everyday life. And then other forms of discrimination that are already taking place – like people being afraid to be attacked in public transport, let's say – becomes even more of a burden in that moment.
Tucker Landesman [35:06] Yeah, no, I think that's… I think a lot of people have these difficulties in making these connections. And so—and this also points to what I think what you started this conversation with, which was organisations like GenderCC, organisations like IIED, are trying to respond to this gap in documentation.
In [the] United States, for example, there's far more data about LGBTQI+ populations than around the world. But, you know, the World Bank has also documented that people with diverse genders and sexualities are disproportionately likely to live in poverty
Sarah Louis Montgomery [35:43] Mhmm
Tucker Landesman [35:43] To be kicked out of their homes when they're young, and to be kicked out of schools. And this contributes to kind of vulnerability and inequalities that they face throughout their lives.
Sarah, thanks a lot for joining us. I really enjoyed the conversation. I'll wrap up with the question that we ask all of our guests on Make Change Happen, which is, what's your biggest change priority looking into the future? Where should we be investing our energy to make change happen?
Sarah Louis Montgomery [36:12] For us, it's—as GenderCC it is very important to have databases, I think because there has not been this focus on research on LGBTQI communities in terms of climate justice yet, and I think this is still a big gap.
I think also what is important is to join forces and bring communities together, so queer communities around the world as well as climate activists or people who fight against discrimination in any other way.
Tucker Landesman [36:44] Great, so more queer solidarity, more queer… [Laughs] more queer activism, and more… More queer archivists. Some of my favourite things.
Sarah Louis Montgomery [36:55] [Laughs]
Tucker Landesman [36:56] Sarah, thanks so much for joining us today.
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Host [37:01] And you can find out more about today's podcast, our guests and their work at iied.org/podcast, where you can also listen to more episodes.
You can leave us feedback or follow the podcast at soundcloud.com/theiied, that's soundcloud.com/theiied.
You can find out more about IIED’s work creating spaces for LGBTQI+ contributions to sustainable development and climate action on our website, where you can also find information on all aspects of IIED and our work.
Please visit us at iied.org.
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