—conference examining gender, health and environmental change opens at UG
Environmental engineer Professor Maya Trotz yesterday called for caregivers and communities affected by environmental change to be recognised as sources of knowledge and partners in designing public policy, warning that risk and environmental harm are not carried equally.
Trotz delivered the feature address at the opening of the two-day Gender on the Frontlines: Roles, Risks and Urgency in a Changing Environment conference at the University of Guyana’s George Walcott Lecture Theatre, Turkeyen.
The conference is being hosted by Tamùkke Feminists in partnership with UG’s Institute of Gender Studies.
In an address titled Listening to the Early Warners: Gender, Water and Care in a Changing Environment, Trotz said the persons often described merely as vulnerable are frequently the first to detect changes that later become recognised as environmental or public-health problems.
“The people most often described as vulnerable are not only vulnerable. They are early warners, constant monitors and innovators,” she said.
According to Trotz, caregivers, grandmothers, market vendors, cleaners, nurses, teachers, fishers, farmers, tour guides, Indigenous communities, housewives and women managing households often detect environmental changes before institutions do.
“They know when water smells different, when boiling or filters are needed because what comes through the tap is not potable, when black tanks and buckets are needed because water comes at a trickle or does not come at all, when children’s skin changes, when fish move, when a reef looks sick [and] when flooding follows a new pattern,” she said.
“They may not call it data, science or infrastructure, but their care is an early warning infrastructure.”
Trotz began by acknowledging the MV Barima tragedy and called for continuing emotional and material support for the bereaved families and affected communities. She also urged support for those seeking justice and accountability.
She said environmental health should not be considered separately from the circumstances in which people live and work, since it enters “bodies, households, boats, roads, hospitals, borders and memories”.
Drawing on her childhood near the Atlantic Ocean, where Kitty meets Subryanville, Trotz recalled the seawall and the mangroves that once lined parts of the coast.
As a child, she said, she did not understand that mangrove roots slowed waves, held sediment, sheltered fish and birds, stored carbon and protected coastal communities.
“Now I understand that those tangled mangroves were caring for us,” she said. “They were doing protection work, climate work [and] nursery work. They were doing quiet, unrecognised labour for the coast.”
Like unpaid care work, Trotz said, the importance of mangroves was often dismissed until they disappeared or their protective functions were lost.
She also recalled hearing cries linked to domestic abuse near the seawall and seeing garbage and dead animals dumped there. Those experiences, she said, taught her that environmental safety and personal safety could not be separated.
“Protection, then, is not only seawalls, pumps, drains and mangrove roots, but whether women, children, people and more-than-human life are safe, whether communities intervene and whether care is treated as a public responsibility,” Trotz said.
She cited the work of women monitoring coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds, fisheries and tourism-dependent communities in Belize. Their observations, she said, connect issues that official policies often treat separately, including ecosystem health, household income and community identity.
Trotz also referred to the concerns raised by residents of Coverden about oil-related infrastructure being developed close to homes, schools and water sources. She said their questions exposed “geographies of unequal vulnerability”, in which some communities were required to live near hazards from which others were protected.
She further pointed to warnings about the possible effects of uranium mining on rivers flowing into the Essequibo.
“This is why I urge us to treat care not as sentiment, but as method,” Trotz said.
“Care is the work of observing, maintaining, preventing and repairing: checking on an elder in heat, knowing which drain floods first, noticing when a reef or season changes and remembering which plants bring medicine.”
She argued that the labour of those caring for children, the elderly and sick relatives should be treated as part of the infrastructure that sustains society.
“We count hospital beds, roads, pumps, seawalls and revenue. But we do not properly count the people who hold life together in the spaces between systems,” she said.
Trotz spoke about the care provided to her parents and recalled her mother’s death during the COVID-19 pandemic. That experience, she said, changed her understanding of the term “frontline”.
“The frontline is not only where storms hit or where chemicals spill. The frontline is also a hospital room. A kitchen. A boat. A village meeting. A shoreline. A garden. A picket line. A silent demonstration. A vigil. A wake. A tour guide’s route. A caregiver’s hands. A university auditorium,” she said.
As Guyana undergoes rapid changes associated with oil production, infrastructure development, migration, mining, coastal risks and land pressures, Trotz said the country should ask not only what it was building or earning, but who was being exposed, displaced or required to bear the costs.
She called for community stories to be treated as evidence and for residents to be included as co-designers, researchers and leaders when policies and infrastructure are being developed.
Quoting the late women’s rights activist Andaiye, Trotz concluded with the call: “Invest in caring, not in killing.”
She said this required investment in people and ecosystems, including forests, wetlands, mangroves, seagrass beds and coral reefs.
Climate risks
Tamùkke Feminists Managing Director Akola Thompson said the conference would examine how extractive industries, land and gender justice intersect in Guyana.
She said the discussions would bring together academic research, community experiences and conversations about the consequences of environmental and economic change.
Thompson also referenced the MV Barima disaster, which claimed 73 lives and left others unaccounted for, describing it as part of a pattern in which the lives of Indigenous and Black women and children were too easily dismissed.
While Guyana had moved away from its previous classification as one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, she said institutional weaknesses and environmental vulnerabilities continued to affect marginalised groups.
“While it is those on the frontlines that will be hit first and the hardest, no one will ever truly be spared from the climate crisis,” Thompson said.
She warned that climate change would initially widen existing inequalities.
“In some ways, it will be an equalising force for us, but first it will amplify the existing class, race and gender disparities in ways we frankly haven’t seen before,” she said.
Thompson said consultations with communities showed that lives were already changing because of climate change and the expansion of extractive industries.
She pointed to the rising price of vegetables, fruits and dried goods and said some women had reported rationing meals.
In Indigenous communities, she said, changing weather patterns and extractive activities were affecting diets and food security. During a visit to Parabara, Thompson said women reported having to choose between eating fish they believed was contaminated by mercury or discontinuing use of the river.
She said residents of Georgetown were also experiencing the effects of large construction projects, including noise, dust, respiratory problems and rising rental costs.
“These are the realities we face now. What might we envision the next decade looks like as gold extraction expands and oil solidifies its place in our ecosystem?” she asked.
Thompson encouraged participants to “sit in discomfort”, disagree constructively and listen to different perspectives during the conference.
“True change happens in fits and starts and often in conversations like these, where we dare to dream of a better waking reality, a healthier and safer one,” she said.
Research
Meantime, Professor Stafford Griffith, Chairman of UG’s Transitional Management Committee, welcomed participants and said the conference was being held at an important and challenging time.
He called for research findings to be widely disseminated among administrators, policymakers and the public rather than remaining confined to academic settings.
The conference programme includes a panel on land rights, feminism and Indigenous knowledge in ecological stewardship, featuring Jean La Rose, Janette Bulkan, Michael Williams and Goretti Lewis.
The first day also includes papers addressing violence, rights and institutional strengthening for gender equality, as well as presentations on reimagining development towards a decolonial future.
A panel on gendered bodies, health and invisible harm features Penelope Howell, Heetasmin Singh, Wintress White and Angelique Nixon.
Today’s programme includes a discussion on building and sustaining communities through feminist futures and care as practice. Thompson, Omattie Madray, Romario Hastings and Arif Bulkan are listed as panellists.
Further papers will examine justice, rights and collective action for equitable societies. Breakout sessions will allow participants to discuss questions arising from the conference’s thematic areas.
The event is expected to conclude with a screening of the documentary Paimiye and a networking activity.
Discussion