Vulnerability Revisited: Advancing Feminist Political Ecology Approaches in Climate and Health Studies

Abstract

The risks of climate change on human health are increasingly studied through various conceptualizations of (social, environmental, and health) vulnerability, from different ontological and epistemological standpoints. Within this diverse body of work, questions around how different structures and forms of power shape why, how, where, and by whom such vulnerability is experienced and contested remain marginal, fragmented, or concentrated in certain disciplines. Synthesizing transdisciplinary literature and insights from a Feminist Political Ecology perspective, this paper advances four future directions in research and proposes new questions related to climate-related health vulnerability regarding: its intersectional, systemic, and structural drivers; its relational nature; the agency and strategies of resistance that emerge from and against it; and the embodied forms of knowing around it.