Caring for Climate: Session 3

2. Video:

Watch the video or read this script

Hello, I am Sarah Nahar. I was born here in the Great Lakes watershed of Turtle Island, the descendent of willing and unwilling settlers. What I mean by that is I am ethnically mixed between those Europeans who were given privilege when they arrived to North America and those West Africans who were not, and did not come here by their own volition…yet are also not indigenous to this place. So I offer these thoughts with humility and deference to people native to this land mass.

I hope this session will assist you in being “proactive in advocating for, and being part of, climate solutions.” In order to do this, it is important to be led by those most impacted by the ongoing climate crisis. On Turtle Island those most impacted by climate change are groups also impacted by the systemic forces of racism, colonization, corporate capitalism and militarism. Stated more frankly, they are indigenous people everywhere, both across the global south and those displaced into the global north, and those whose societies have been disrupted by industrialized war and resource extraction.

Impacted people are speaking out – there are newsletters, press conferences, calls to action, and much more regarding their concerns for biodiversity, for an end to war, and for land sovereignty. Furthermore, impacted groups often approach climate change issues via public health concerns because the lack of health in a community can come from an environment destroyed by colonization. I am going to focus on a public health aspect that affects every one of us, but is not always talked about because it’s not considered polite. I’m going to talk about poop and pee–urine and feces–we need to talk about our crap in order to do climate justice work.

With so many issues demanding our attention these days, what is significant about sanitation and why should it stir our hearts? Well, forty percent of the world’s population does not have access to dignified sanitation. Like lack of access to potable water, the inability to have a safe, clean place to eliminate has a huge impact on how people—especially women—must structure their day. Unprocessed poop carries deadly bacteria. The number of people who die annually from poor sanitation annually exceeds that of those killed in war, bombings, and natural disasters combined.

The area of sanitation is where I believe that the violence of the interlocking systems of oppression is unseen and routine. For example, the African-American community living near Mobile, Alabama has had raw sewage running in their yards for decades. They have called, over and over, to the state to pay attention to the fact that normal sewage and septic systems do not work in their environment, and to install systems that do work, conserve water, and reintegrate refuse effectively. The responsible state associations of Alabama, formed during segregation, have been slow to respond, and at times denying there are any issues. The community and their allies collected medical data as many in the community were reported to have hookworm–a major public health concern. Supposedly eradicated last century, hookworm only can resurface in people if the drinking water has been contaminated by feces. Instead of an environmental response that recognizes how racism and classism has sidelined these communities, the state health association and municipality has saddled the rural communities with fees for not having the proper equipment to treat their sewage. Here is an example of how racial and class discrimination is playing a role in the state’s lack of responsiveness, which blocks a community’s desire to protect themselves from waterborne illness and their natural environment from spreading toxicity. You can learn more by reading Catherine Coleman Flowers’ book, Waste: America’s dirty secret.

So as you think about climate change and the catastrophes it brings, consider how it is already impacting people who are more vulnerable than you. Beyond Alabama, there have been struggles over the placement of sewage facilities in the US. So many of them have been placed in areas where people of color live, and far away from where white people live. The US system of seeing our African American, Latino, South/Southeast Asian, and indigenous communities as disposable allows policies to go through that put our disposables–both poop and chemicals–right in their backyard. This results, among other things, in greater rates of asthma and cancer, as particulates in the air lower its quality. The fact that those who are least responsible for the massive-scale climate change we face will be the most impacted is what the United Nations calls the Protection Gap.

As you process your emotions around climate change, it can be a lot to think about. I’d invite you to use the moment you are on the toilet to think about it. The toilet is a place where our mundane actions contribute to the crisis–yet there is not currently a simple way to stop our contributions. The toilet is the household appliance that consumes the most water. Perhaps practice mellow yellow, brown down. Break the taboo of talking about toilet practices. When you visit the houses of others, ask them what their toilet protocol is, rather than just assuming that you should flush so much freshwater down after every use.

Once you get off the toilet, ask “where are my poop and pee going?” If you don’t know, get together with a few others and ask your local officials how they are handling this messy question. Are your nutrients poisoning a river or are they being reintegrated into soil to grow orchard fruits? for example.

Because the flush toilet with sewer piping is so good at its work of separating us from pathogens, some who want to solve this crisis talk about providing flush toilets for all. Dignified sanitation is indeed essential for a healthy life, however holding up the European-style fresh water system as the savior is not the solution. That system is already barely sustainable in the global north, and exporting it all around the world is not actually realistic. It relies on immense physical infrastructure and abundant water, and this is a backwards-looking solution. People like SOIL Haiti, MoSan Guatemala, and Sanergy Kenya, are forward-looking leaders in waterless toilet technology that provides jobs, breaks taboos, and creates public health. Funding these organizations and learning from them are ways to participate in environmental regeneration efforts that are led by the most impacted. As they are led by people on the margins, the solutions they come up with will help close the Protection gap.

Beyond toilets, integrating anti-racist action and decolonial analysis throughout any sustainability work will allow for climate justice solutions to emerge. This means finding solutions that work for everyone, not just those on the comfortable side of the protection gap.

Christian discipleship is about dealing with our crap, metaphorically anyway, and not pushing it on to someone else, so Christians have the discipleship opportunity to be leaders in this regard, dealing with our crap literally. We can support efforts to make sure everyone has dignified sanitation and systems that work in their environment, and adjust our society’s reliance on freshwater flushing. As we transition to systems that safely reintegrate what comes out of our bodies into the soil, we can translate the golden rule onto our water systems, doing unto those downstream as we’d have those upstream do to us.