A “lifeline out of the COVID‐19 crisis”? An ecofeminist critique of the European Green Deal

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• Author: Stefanie Khoury
• Date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12211

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

A“lifeline out of the COVID-19 crisis”?An

ecofeminist critique of the European Green Deal

Stefanie Khoury

School of Law, Centre for Climate Crime & Justice, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

Correspondence

Stefanie Khoury, School of Law, Centre for Climate Crime & Justice, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.

Email: s.khoury@qmul.ac.uk

1|INTRODUCTION

In early 2020, the world was rocked by a highly contagious, acute respiratory virus. Within a

few months, many countries had gone into lockdown and were issuing mandatory mask-

wearing and social distancing in what came to be known as the COVID-19 pandemic.

1

Many

theories quickly developed as to how and where COVID-19 emerged, although the definitive

answer is still not available. Scientists do agree, however, that it is a zoonotic virus—meaning it

is an infectious diseases transferred from animals to humans or vice-versa—and that the Wuhan

market in China was a major, initial spreading location (Maxmen, 2022; Pigenet, 2020;

WHO, 2021b). For some time now, the scientific community has been warning of the potential

for increases in zoonotic diseases with the intensification of climate change and the rise of

global warming as by-products of anthropogenic activities that have pushed animals and

humans into closer contact (see, e.g., Schrag & Weiner, 1995). A joint-report from the UN

Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (, 2020,

p. 11) recently recalled that, “While pandemics such as [COVID-19] are sometimes seen as a

‘black swan’—an extremely rare event—they are actually a widely predicted consequence of

how people source food, trade animals, and alter environments.”That report warns that, “the

rising trend in zoonotic diseases is driven by the degradation of our natural environment”and

results from anthropogenic activities, including agricultural intensification and conversion of

land, wildlife exploitation, resource extraction, increased demand for animal protein and cli-

mate change. Despite the world being taken by surprise in early 2020, COVID-19 was in fact a

foreseeable event.

In the wake of the pandemic, Vandana Shiva called attention to how zoonotic diseases are

intimately linked to patriarchy, colonialism, and neoliberal capitalism. She connected the dots:

The health emergency of the coronavirus is inseparable from the health emergency

of extinction, the health emergency of biodiversity loss, and the health emergency

DOI: 10.1111/lapo.12211

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Law & Policy. 2023;45:311–330. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/lapo 311

of the climate crisis. All of these emergencies are rooted in a mechanistic, militaris-

tic, anthropocentric worldview that considers humans separate from—and superior

to other beings. Beings we can own, manipulate, and control. All of these emergen-

cies are rooted in an economic model based on the illusion of limitless growth and

limitless greed, which violate planetary boundaries, and destroy the integrity of

ecosystems and individual species (Shiva, 2020, 177).

Shiva identifies a causal link between neoliberal capitalism and the climate crisis. That link has

inspired some to refer to our era as Capitalocene

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or “the age of capital”(Moore, 2017)and

COVID-19 as a “neoliberal disease”(Wallace et al., 2020). The interconnectedness of the emergen-

cies Shiva refers to is supported by the connections made by scientists between climate change and

“zoonoses spillover”—the link between environmental change and disease emergence (Carlson

Colin et al., 2022). One sector has been called out as playing a pivotal role in the destruction of the

environment and the loss of biodiversity: extractivist industries.

3

One UNEP study estimates that

extractive industries are responsible for approximately half of the world’s carbon emissions and

over 80% of biodiversity loss (Watts, 2019). The relationship between anthropogenic activities,

capitalism and the climate crisis has stirred protest and defiance, which has catapulted the climate

to the fore of policy discussions. The climate crisis impacts upon worsening developments of

environmental breakdown leading to the emergence and threat of zoonotic diseases, migration,

massive displacements—of which the UN estimates 80% of people displaced by climate change are

women (Habtezion, 2016), threats to food security, energy crises, social unrest, and a rise in right-

wing extremism. Despite these circumstances, the political response is anchored in adaptive strate-

gies aimed at reforming capitalism.

In Europe, the EU’s response to the climate crisis came just weeks before COVID-19

erupted onto the global stage. Ursula von der Leyen, Head of the European Commission, pres-

ented the European Green Deal (EGD) to the world in December 2019. In early 2020, the EU

was quick to acknowledge the connection between the climate crisis and the pandemic and

doubled down on the EGD as its main policy framework for tackling both crises, hailing it as a

“lifeline out of the COVID-19 crisis”(European Commission, n.d.). This article seeks to evalu-

ate that claim by applying an ecofeminist perspective to question the prevailing orthodoxy

upheld by the EGD. Ecofeminism is an umbrella term, as Karen Warren (1994) has suggested:

one that captures a multitude of perspectives on the nature of connections within social systems

of domination and is premised on the intersections and interconnectedness of people, nature,

and the environment. As a theoretical framework, it is a way to frame the analysis of power

within structures of patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism, and the role of institutions and poli-

cies in reproducing that power with an explicitly social, gender

4

–understood as a social con-

struct and not reduced to the male/female binary, and climate justice perspective.

5

Ecofeminists

argue for care-sensitive approaches to climate policy and see the current crises as a catalyst for

changing the distribution of care work upon which our society is built. What has become clear

is that we cannot tackle the current social and climate crises without recognizing how they are

interlinked: climate, COVID-19, capitalism, and care (MacGregor, 2021).

The first section explores ecofeminism as a useful theoretical framework with which to

analyze the EGD. It expands upon how the interconnected and intersecting sites of oppression

and domination that include patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism are intimately linked to the

destruction and pillage of the environment. Section 2addresses the issue of structural inequalities

and the global challenge of climate change and zoonotic diseases by providing a critical analysis

of the regulatory framework of the EGD. As studies have shown, policies intended to respond

to the climate crisis have rather exacerbated existing inequalities (Beck, 2010; Harlan et al., 2015;

World Bank, 2020). Furthermore, climate justice is all but void in the EGD’s framework, with

a glaring absence of the consideration of the “…intersection between climate change and the

way social inequalities are experienced as structural violence”(Porter et al., 2020,p.293).

312 AN ECOFEMINIST CRITIQUE OF THE EGD