‘Mother Earth is a part of women's struggle!’ was among the messages at the Women’s Rights March in Sofia, Bulgaria on March 8, 2020, emphasizing the link between women’s rights and environmental problems. Photo: Darina Kokonova/personal archive, used with permission via BlueLink. This article by Velina Barova originally appeared on BlueLink Stories, an e-magazine covering Central and Eastern Europe. A lightly edited version is republished here via a content-sharing partnership with Global Voices. The fight to reduce climate-damaging emissions is a fight for women’s rights. This conclusion is being reached by more and more advocates of both causes all over the world, including in Bulgaria. On the eve of the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow, they called for negotiations and policies that give women a voice and seek solutions to the specific negative effects that climate change has on them. At the Women’s Rights March in Sofia on May 8, 2020, among all the bright messages related to the cause, one poster stood apart. It crossed the usual boundaries of talking about women’s rights and invited a broader discussion — “Mother Earth is a part of women’s struggle.” “Perhaps both sides are treated with equal contempt,” the author of the poster said a year and a half later. The young activist Darina Kokonova explains that through the play on words, she had presented the Earth as a mother who gave birth to people and takes care of them — like all women and mothers. Kokonova had prepared the poster for the protests of the youth movement “Fridays for the Future of Bulgaria,” part of the international climate movement started by Greta Thunberg in 2018. As a participant in various activist groups, Kokonova is involved in many causes. Often, while demonstrating in the street for a cause, she encounters questions about why she is not protesting for another or a third. “I’m protesting!” is her usual and honest response. “It is very uncomfortable that people do not make the connection between different causes; for me, they are parts of a bigger one,” she explains. And she feels that this perspective is missing in the women’s movements in Bulgaria. Climate change and women’s rights are topics under one discussion, activist Darina Kokonova (on the right) believes. Photo: Darina Kokonova/personal archive, used with permission via BlueLink. We all come from nature, and we all detach ourselves from it to some extent, Kokonova reminds us, but she believes that women’s connection to nature is stronger because of their ancient role in caring for children and the home. In 2020, she painted four portraits of women from civic movements around the world, in honour of their struggles and the domestic work that accompanies them. The portraits are painted with charcoal on sheets, with spots of colour from all-natural materials that are associated with housework — beets, paprika, turmeric, baking soda, spinach. She noted: “Women are often the first to see the negative effects of climate change because they work with the soil and are dependent on it, especially outside cities.” Women’s rights are strongly linked to climate justice, believes Rada Elenkova of the Bulgarian Women’s Fund. Photo: Bulgarian Women’s Fund, used with permission. Women’s rights are strongly linked to climate justice, Rada Elenkova of the Bulgarian Women’s Fund said. “Climate change affects women to a great extent, depriving them of their rights and access to resources.” And these are just some of the specific consequences of climate change: “Poverty, both in Bulgaria and worldwide, is feminised — a much larger part of the poor population are women. This deprives them of access to information and adequate solutions for their health and protection of their rights.” Women and families headed by women are more likely to live in unsuitable low-value housing, making them vulnerable to floods, storms, earthquakes and landslides, according to “General Recommendation No. 37 on Gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction in the context of climate change,” published by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 2018. According to the UN, “80% of people displaced by climate change are women.” At the same time, the destruction of basic infrastructure could reduce the quality and accessibility of sexual and reproductive health services, leading to unplanned pregnancies and deaths at birth, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Women and girls are also at increased risk of gender-based violence, including sexual violence and exploitation, domestic violence, and early or forced marriage, during and after natural disasters, CEDAW said.