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Isadora Cardoso

Doctoral Fellow

 

Campus am Neuen Palais
Am Neuen Palais 10
Building 1, Room 0.15
14469 Potsdam
Germany

 

consulting hours
by appointment only

Dissertation Project

One struggle one fight: intersectional discourses and activisms for climate justice in the Global South

My research aims to bring in evidence on the wideness and diversity of intersectional struggles for climate justice around the globe from subaltern (Spivak, 1988) and decolonial perspectives. This research centres in the often-marginalised voices and stories in climate activist and political spaces, from queer, BIPoC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour), youth collectives from the Global South, which have historically been side-lined and are frequently nowadays tokenised in politics, including the fight for climate justice.

I will review academic, activist and art resources on intersectional climate justice, decolonial and queer ecologies, which will support the later fieldwork in the Global South (TBD). Through fieldwork, I will study discourses and praxes of collective(s) on how they approach climate justice from different contexts and positionalities. Ideally I'll focus on distinct sites in the Global South to allow for a diverse, cosmopolitan, and counter-hegemonic discussion and representation of a concept and practice which has been mostly propagated based on white-dominated, Northern discourses and practices which disregard connections of the climate crisis with (neo)colonialisms.

 


Biography

I am a queer feminist climate activist and researcher, currently working as a PhD fellow with the RTG Minor Cosmopolitanisms based at Freie Universität Berlin. Prior to the RTG, I was a fellow with the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, researching just energy transitions in Brazil and Germany. I have a bachelor's in political science from the University of Brasilia and a master's in globalisation and development studies from Maastricht University. I have been working with and studying intersectional and decolonial perspectives and solutions to the climate crisis over the past six years with collectives, NGOs, international organisations and foundations focusing on gender and climate justice in Brazil, Germany, and transnationally at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).


Research Interests

  • Queer studies and practices
  • Intersectionality
  • Climate Justice
  • Feminist Political Ecology
  • Transnational Social Movements
  • Decolonial Alternatives to Development
  • Ethnographic and Participatory approaches

Publications


Cardoso, I. & Horn, C. “COP26 Was a Flop, but the Climate Justice Movement Is Still Growing”. Jacobin Magazine, 2021: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/cop26-climate-change-social-justice-movement-latin-america

Cardoso, I. & Horn, C. "COP 26: priorização das indústrias poluidoras e exclusão da sociedade civil". Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil, 2021: https://diplomatique.org.br/cop26-priorizacao-das-industrias-poluidoras-e-exclusao-da-sociedade-civil/

Cardoso, I., Göldner, L. & Henneberger, K. "Klimage­rechtig­keit und Feminismus: One struggle, one fight!" taz, 2020: https://taz.de/Klimagerechtigkeit-und-Feminismus/!5715271/

Birk, N., Bohland, P. & Cardoso, I. “No gender justice on a dead planet! A brief analysis of strengths and weaknesses of the COP25 gender decision and the Gender Action Plan”. Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2020: https://www.rosalux.de/en/publication/id/41624/no-gender-justice-on-a-dead-planet/

Cardoso, I. (2022). Just transitions: mapping plural perspectives from civil society in Brazil and Germany. RIFS Brochure. https://publications.rifs-potsdam.de/rest/items/item_6002578_1/component/file_6002579/content

Cardoso, I. (2022). Brazil’s People-Powered Just Transition Movement: Perspectives from Trade Unions and Feminists. In Trajectories of Climate Justice: Charting the Path to People-Powered Climate Action. IBON International Foundation Inc. https://www.climatejusticehub.org/2023/03/08/trajectories-of-climate-justice-charting-the-path-of-people-powered-climate-action/