Intersectional Identity and Ecological Vulnerability

Sor Juana examined how multiple systems constrained her: as a woman, a mixed-race colonial subject, and an intellectual. Climate justice similarly requires understanding that ecological damage concentrates on those facing multiple oppressions. Indigenous women in the Global South experience climate impacts, land dispossession, and patriarchal violence simultaneously. Poor communities live near refineries and polluted waterways. Colonial extraction patterns continue—wealthy nations consuming resources while colonized territories absorb environmental destruction. Sor Juana's framework illuminates how justice cannot address climate alone; it must simultaneously challenge patriarchy, racism, and economic extraction. Global responsibility means recognizing that a woman subsistence farmer in Bangladesh experiencing flooding faces different climate reality than a wealthy man in London. Solutions must be intersectional: centering those most harmed, redistributing power and resources, decolonizing environmental decision-making. Climate justice is liberation justice.