Anmol Irfan Archives

Parenthood, Surrogacy and the Labor of Childbirth

In early October 2025, Reem Alsalem, a United Nations special rapporteur, submitted a report calling for a ban on surrogacy, and describing it as a “system of exploitation and violence”. Alsalem went further to liken the system of surrogacy to the system of prostitution, saying she found a lot of similarities between the two in terms of how they exploited women.

She isn’t the only international figure to take such a strong stance against surrogacy. Pope Francis, who passed in 2025, had also called for a worldwide ban on the practice which he believed was exploiting the women who became surrogates.

This call – which has seen equally heated criticism and support – comes at a time where more and more celebrities have been posting about their surrogacy journeys. The latest was actress Lily Collins earlier that year, who faced a slew of backlash to her announcement about welcoming her baby via surrogacy, including from many people who blamed the rich for exploiting women for their own desires to have children. While some celebrities like Kim Kardashian have been open about their reasons for using surrogates, others like Collins and Priyanka Chopra haven’t shared why they chose this particular path.

But as stories where parents welcome babies via surrogacy become more and more commonly shared publicly, the harms and complications of surrogacy have also been coming to light. More than the stories themselves it’s the fact that so many of these cases are now becoming public knowledge that is allowing people to look deeper into the impact of surrogacy and explore it from different perspectives. Treating surrogacy as inherently exploitative isn’t a recent phenomenon – in fact countries such as France, UAE, Saudi Arabia and even India have long banned the practice, regardless of whether or not the surrogacy is commercial or not. Other countries like the UK and Canada allow altruistic surrogacy but have banned it commercially – which means that surrogates cannot be paid, except beyond reasonable expenses in certain cases. On the other hand, most states in the US do allow gestational surrogacy commercially, although compensation and protections around this vary by state. Across the world, experiences around surrogacy can vary significantly, as governments, families, and agencies work within (or sometimes around) the law to match the desires of would-be parents in wealthy countries while respecting what exists of local law for the birth family and the child. This is much like how experiences have played out with international adoption, where the lure of a payday can complicate and confound the process.

“It would be incorrect to say surrogacy is always exploitation and incorrect to say surrogacy is never exploitation. That’s why it is so important to have proper legal protections, for the parents but also for the surrogate,” says Janene Oleaga, a family formation attorney and reproductive rights advocate, who works closely both with surrogates and intended parents. But for many others, like advocates working with Stop Surrogacy Now, who see it as categorically harmful, or intended parents who see it as the best decision they’ve ever made, the situation isn’t as nuanced. Which brings about the question of who is surrogacy really for? Who benefits from the system and what can be done to protect those most vulnerable?

International Approaches, Varied Responses

With so many emotional, financial and physical considerations coming into play with any decision around surrogacy, reactions to both bans or a lack of them can get quite heated, especially as different groups are affected in very different ways. India’s legislative ban on commercial surrogacy was advanced in 2019 and adopted in 2020, after many critics called international surrogacy an India a system that exploited poor women, but the ban is also seen as discriminatory against LGBTQ couples as altruistic surrogacy is now only allowed for heterosexual couples who’ve been married for 5 years. Italy’s ban on surrogacy has also been criticised for similar reasons. But for anti-surrogacy campaigners, their stance against surrogacy is not discriminatory, simply protective of the women they are hoping to release from this system.

Lexi Ellingsworth the founder of Stop Surrogacy Now UK says that the “euphemistic language disguises the brutal reality. Surrogacy exploits women for their reproduction ability, their fertility and denies newborns their mothers from birth,” she says adding, “Exploitation, human trafficking, obstetric violence, and coercion is rife. And the numbers are increasing. As we are against surrogacy as a whole, we do not discriminate. We reject the practice regardless of sex, sexual orientation, age, religion, income, marital status and circumstance.”

A recent case where a stillbirth in a surrogacy case turned into a legal battle is just one of many examples that campaigners like Ellingsworth point towards to showcase just how easy it is to harm surrogate mothers within this process.

Ellingsworth also points out that support for surrogate mothers who may feel exploited or harmed in the process is rare, and it’s not just the mothers campaigners like Ellingsworth are concerned about. Olivia Maurel, a spokesperson for the Casablanca Declaration also shares Ellingsworth’s views regarding the importance of protecting both surrogate mother and child. For Maurel, the issue is also deeply personal.

“My activism began with a double awareness, that of a child and that of a mother. As a child born through surrogacy, I quickly realised that this practice tramples on the most fundamental rights of the child: the right to know and be raised by the woman who carried and gave birth to them, and the right to an identity that isn’t fractured by contract,” shares Maurel, further adding, “Behind the glossy marketing lies a global market going to be worth 200 billion dollars by 2032, one that operates with virtually no oversight. Reem Alsalem’s report calls this what it is: a form of gender-based violence and reproductive exploitation. She urges states to recognize that consent obtained under structural inequality is not true consent.”

But Oleaga, who’s worked in cases where parents from various countries have come to the US for surrogacy still sees the positive in it, even as she agrees that safety and protections are crucial. “So I’ve had intended parents come from China and Europe to the US for surrogacy because it may be less expensive to go to other places but it’s oftentimes less legally secure. In the US it is a legally secure process,” she says adding that while the bad stories deserve to be reported on and exposed, “For every negative story you see in the news, there are hundreds if not thousands of opposite stories not just for the intended parents but surrogates as well. That’s why you see surrogates coming back”

And while financial exploitation remains a major concern, Rachel Goldberg, a licensed marriage and family therapist finds more nuance in working around that and safeguarding clients than calling for an outright ban. “If someone is pursuing surrogacy out of financial desperation, it can feel like I’m preventing them from moving forward, but my role is to protect them as much as the intended parents. When someone is in a desperate situation, there is more room for exploitation,” she says, adding that she will also consider many other factors including stability in the home and emotional readiness before assessing whether a client is ready to take this step.

In a 2023 paper, Dr Yingyi Luo argues for the application of labor law to bolster surrogate rights and protections while operating in a global market of cross-border surrogacy. Building on the example of Bulgarian labor law and safeguards for non-standard workers, Luo writes, “Surrogate mothers, even those who have not signed a surrogacy contract, do not need to validate their employment status. Once a surrogate mother becomes pregnant with the child of the intended parents, her status transitions to that of “employed.”” This labor-law forward approach could ensure accountability, financial and health protections, standards of care and due diligence, and compliance that can all be lost in the often informal or discreet nature of facilitating surrogacy.

An Inside Look At What Works, And What Doesn’t

For those who’ve worked in the surrogacy industry or been connected to it, the gaps are clear. Belal Breaga Bakht used to run a concierge service that provided on ground services between surrogacy companies based in the US and surrogates in India between 2007 and 2011. Bakht’s job became a way make sure the surrogates were cared for and looked after, both medically and financially and he shares that his position as an Indian who had been raised in the UK allowed him to connect well not just with the surrogacy company and intended parents, but also with the surrogates themselves.

“There are many working parts of this complex process, you’ve got marketing company and surrogacy company in US (or anywhere else), you’ve got the IVF side which is usually not linked surrogacy side – and they are the crucial part of this equation, if they are complicit in exploiting the women you can’t really stop it. So we took over that role slightly, even though we were not supposed to, and that’s because we had a very very strong Indian team,” Bakht shares. While Bakht was mindful of the gaps in the industry and where exploitation was possible he shared that would ideally like to see a regulated but legal surrogacy industry, where with the right care and protections both sides could benefit.

Yessenia Lattore, a mother of three in the US, who is currently undergoing her second surrogacy journey shares her own experience of what it meant to be working in an industry that is largely self regulated. Despite the fact that she’s aware of bad actors, and has seen bad experiences, she chose to come back as a surrogate because of her own positive experience.

“I don’t think surrogacy should be illegal, but in the US its not regulated and I personally think it should be regulated,” she says adding, “The first time I did it I was very naive, I kind of went with the first agency that responded to me – was communicative with me.” Still Lattore got lucky, both with the family she chose and her agency, although she chose to work with a new agency this time around.

Focus on the birth mother and child - policy makers building laws and restrictions around surrogacy need to put the health and safety of the surrogate mother and baby first and foremost. This means safeguards that limit exploitation and restrictions where needed

No Cookie Cutter Approach - communities and countries across the world will need localised policies, with countries with higher rates of exploitation of women needing stricter laws and maybe even bans where necessary.

Labor Protections Protect Laboring - clear, transparent protections built not just on human rights but labor law frameworks could improve conditions, protections, and accountability while protecting against exploitation.

For Lattore, the decision to become a surrogate was motivated from her own experience with pregnancy loss, and when she was able to have healthy children after that she realised that she wanted to help other women have children too. She likes to joke that she can’t be doing it for the money because she receives “minimum wage” – if she looks at it compared to the hours being put in. But even for someone who’s had a positive experience, she knows the industry can do better in making sure it’s the same for everyone. “Surrogacy should be done ethically, so a surrogate isn’t left with 3 babies that aren’t her own. We have a psych evaluation, contracts, and our own lawyer. I personally think it should be regulated because right now it is done in different ways,” she says.

Both Oleaga and Goldberg, who’ve worked with different actors within the industry, agree that self regulation is difficult, but question the extent to which regulations may be the answer, particularly under the current US administration.

“I do think safeguards are important, but when they become overly restrictive, they can prevent families from growing. More regulation means more red tape, which is the challenge when involving politics. At the end of the day, even though it shouldn’t be this way and doesn’t feel fair, consumers still have to do their own homework to protect themselves from bad players,” Goldberg says.

Oleaga also agrees that regulation is important and there needs to be more consistency, particularly in laws that offer protection to surrogates, intended parents and children.

While Oleago and may seem like they’re miles apart from what Ellingsworth or Maurel are saying – and in some ways of course they are – what all of them are asking for and working towards are protections for the women and children often left most vulnerable in the world. And that should be the main goal for the industry, regardless of what side of the argument you lie on.

Anmol Irfan is a Muslim-Pakistani freelance journalist and editor. Her work aims at exploring marginalized narratives in the Global South with a key focus on gender, climate and tech. She tweets @anmolirfan22

Borrowing from the past for sustainable future fashion

On the red carpet at Cannes in May, Indian actress Parul Gulati stunned by wearing a dress made entirely out of human hair. Her dress was designed by ITRH², an innovative design label known for pushing the boundaries of what’s considered acceptable in sustainable fashion, and in it she took one high-heeled step further into what counts as formal and decent in high fashion. Gulati wore the dress to a Cannes film festival freshly revisiting its fashion rules, and launched a soft salvo into how and where the auteurs of attire must think about sustainability. Earlier this year, Copenhagen fashion week also highlighted sustainability as a key feature of the ramp. Sustainability requirements were introduced at the event in 2023, and this year collections were smaller, inclusive and used far more natural fabrics.

Gulati is just one example of how South Asian fashion has also quickly become a key part of the global fashion industry, with designers like Gaurav Gupta, Tarun Tahiliani and even Rastah all making appearances at Cannes, fashion shows and even the Met Gala. But the globalisation of fashion has also led to an increase in fast fashion – one that’s worrying sustainability advocates everywhere. In the last 20 years, global fibre production has almost doubled from 58 million tonnes in 2000 to 116 million tonnes in 2022. It is further expected to continue to grow to 147 million tonnes in 2030. The fashion industry is responsible for 2-8 % of global carbon emissions, and 85% of textiles go to the dump each year.

This comes at a time when countries across the world are already seeing the impacts of climate change, through increasingly drastic changes in weather patterns, heatwaves and disasters. It also coincides with Trump’s controversial global tariffs, many of which have targeted countries that are home to some of the biggest fashion production factories, including countries like Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. And in the US, South Asians are taking a stand against the silencing of a culture that has long embodied sustainable fashion. From brands like Labyrinthave and eight thousand miles, to spaces like Society of Cloth, South Asians are diversifying the sustainable fashion space through age-old traditions.

With the South Asian diaspora also increasing in the US, South Asian fashion is quickly becoming a part and parcel of US society, and more and more sustainability advocates are emphasising diversity in that area. Even within the western fashion space, South Asian trends are making a mark, but not always in the right way. In April, fashion brand Reformation was called out for culturally appropriating South Asian attire and it’s not the first time. Last year the dupatta was repackaged as a “scandinavian scarf” trend. South Asia has a long and rich fashion history that has, until recently, prioritised long term, slow, sustainable fashion through its intricate hand techniques, traditions of hand me downs and mending, and use of natural materials. But as Trump’s tariffs and policy changes come into play – connecting to global fashion may be getting harder, and less sustainable.

“I’m more likely to tell you where Pakistani or Indian embroidery comes from compared to western fashion. There’s hand techniques like block printing and materials like khadi that are indigenous and have a lower environmental output,” says Zainab of Ahista Stories – a slow fashion advocacy platform based in London.

Building brands, sustainably

As more and more South Asians in the US and across the world raise their voices within the sustainability space, they’re building brands and fashion spaces that bridge the gap between generations worth of South Asian sustainability and the modern sustainability movement.

Nisha Khater founded Society of Cloth as a marketplace for designers based across South Asia to find a home in the US. In November 2024, they opened a store in New York as well, where they keep pieces from a range of designers they collaborate with. The goal is to bring ethically made South Asian fashion that represents South Asian traditions to customers in the US. Khater, who has lived between various cities in India, Bangladesh and the US, and was living in Dhaka when the Rana Plaza collapse happened, says she’s always been aware of the missing pieces in the western sustainability conversations regarding supply chains and garment workers.

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“The whole concept around textiles in South Asia is very circular. It prioritises low waste and environmental impact, whereas sustainability in the west focuses on specific facets of it and the reason I don’t mean this as a critique is that it’s just about the way we grow up in the US,” she says. For her, this is merely an opportunity to build up more sustainable fashion choices for consumers in the US through education. Collected xx, a Pakistani brand that Khater stocks at Society of Cloth, just did a line of bags made from recycled fabric waste. “Our brands put a lot of educational material on the tags so we try and include that in our messaging like “hey when you look at the pieces don’t forget to look at the tags”,” Khater says, adding that it allows customers to connect to what they’re buying and the journey of the piece. She says this entire process is inspired by South Asian sustainability practices.

“I think within South Asian tradition and I’m just speaking from personal experience as well, we’ve always been so connected to the earth. A common thread is always connection to the earth, the idea of it is life giving,” she says adding, “There’s a collectivist mindset we see in South Asian cultures. The passing down of clothes between families and friends creates lots of interactions in communities where garments are passed down and used much more frequently than they probably are in US communities.”

This is a stark comparison to the heavily consumerism-led society in the US, where decisions are made focusing much more on economics. With Trump’s latest tariffs, those divides may have increased further. “The harmful thing is that they [tariffs] do create a lot of uncertainty around a market that’s already foreign to somebody and that creates fear both ways, for audience shopping from these brands and also from our brands side,” says Khater.

Experts also worry that tariffs could make it even more difficult for already struggling consumers to spend on sustainable clothes.

Worn Out

Even South Asian consumers within the US have started thinking about how to connect their heritage with their everyday choices. Shwetha Ravishankar, a sustainable fashion advocate and host of podcast “Chai Break” points out that for many South Asians, traditional fashion has become fast fashion because it’s only for occasions, and so no one really puts thought into the clothes they are getting and where they are coming from. Ravishankar adds that it wasn’t easy to make the shift, saying sustainable South Asian brands in the US still do struggle to find a market. But she points out that there’s a space for brands to do everyday wear using sustainable South Asian techniques.

That’s exactly why Shweyta Mudgal founded 8000 miles, a sustainable & ethically handcrafted lifestyle collection for children. Mudgal uses sustainably sourced cotton and block printing techniques done by artisans who have been printing for generations.

“The story of my brand has been very simple and straightforward and the idea was to create social impact through design. We wanted to start with the art of block printing, because it’s been an age old technique in South Asia. The idea was to contemporize block printing, make it accessible to western markets,” Mudgal shares.

She adds that in the last decade of working in this space, she’s seen a growing awareness around these age-old techniques and the unique nature of hand printed clothes. “If people come across our work for the first time or work across a booth they always ask because I think our fabrics speak,” Mudgal points out, talking about the importance of having such products available so that people can know more about them.

Ravishankar also points out that these things take time and the price points are higher, and in a world where everyone needs instant gratification, a shift back to South Asian traditions can help us appreciate the value of crafts again.

Still, this already niche industry may struggle further under Trump’s new tariffs. Both Khater and Mudgal share that they have a lot of decisions to make with regards to how they need to adjust the tariff costs into their supply chain. Neither wants their customers or artisans to have to bear the brunt of it. For now, most brands, like hers, are ‘trying to make sure tariffs don’t cause loss of value to the garment,” Khater says.

Current research on the impact of tariffs so far has shown little change in the way the fast fashion industry is working. True change may need more than just restrictions – but collaboration with the communities that have been harboring these traditions for so long. Michelle Gabriel, program director of MS in Sustainable Fashion at IE New York College, said in a recent article that fashion needs policy solutions if we need to see long term sustainable change.

Bills for companies to disclose environmental impact are already underway, but international trade policies also need to reflect these commitments. In September, the EU set up new rules

where producers of clothing and other textiles, cover the costs for collecting, sorting, and recycling their products

“State-level fashion acts are meaningful because they could force brands to take real responsibility for their supply chain emissions in some of the world’s largest economies,” Rachel Van Metre Kibbe, CEO of American Circular Textiles (ACT) in Brooklyn told Trellis.

With the future seeming so uncertain, it’s even more important for these brands to continue raising awareness as they’re doing. Until conversations around sustainability become truly global and encapsulate how communities in the global south have been harbouring sustainability for generations, we won’t see any solutions.

Global Social Media Bans Will Hurt Vulnerable Communities

In early January, Meta put out a sudden and unexpected announcement that the platform would be ending its third-party fact checking model in the US, saying that their approach to manage content on their platforms had “gone too far.” Instead, Meta will now be moving to a Community Notes model written by users of the platform, similar to X. These changes came amidst other larger changes to the platform’s hate speech and censorship rules which will be applied globally, with the announcement stating that the platform will be “getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate.”

Support Alternative Platforms - users can move to platforms like Bluesky and support the AT protocol which are decentralised and challenge the control of the major tech companies
Raise the Right Questions - advocates and governments need to look beyond profits and face value and start asking big tech companies the right questions about why their profits are based on potential harm
Account for Cultural Nuance - governments and international organisations should establish safety protocols and ethical regulations around

But while the announcement focused on the idea of promoting “free speech”, critics pointed out that it didn’t actually detail just how those changes would take place. News outlets like NPR reported that Meta now allows users to call gay and trans people “mentally ill” and refer to women as “household objects and property.” Those are just some of the more obvious changes in a larger shifting power dynamic that over the last year has slowly made it clear that the digital realm is increasingly unsafe. With the monopoly of digital communication and connection in the hands of a few Big Tech platforms, these US based companies like X and Meta have enough power and access across the world to not just impact everyday communication but influence social dynamics and even global politics. Facebook’s facilitation of the Rohingya genocide isn’t new news, but it is an example of how the safeguards these platforms have supposedly had in place for years haven’t been working, and these changes may seek to worsen the situation further particularly for vulnerable groups.

Is Social Media Becoming More Dangerous?

Across the United States and the world digital spaces already unsafe for many marginalized groups are predicted to become more exclusionary, and even dangerous in many ways.

“When people talk about tech policies, when they talk about vulnerable communities they have a very narrow perspective of the US based minority,” says attorney Ari Cohn, who works at the intersection of speech and technology. That excludes the culturally-nuanced and global conversation that is needed to safeguard global vulnerable populations.

With fewer fact checkers – even in just the US – and lesser controls online, these platforms are creating digital spaces that now account even less for cultural nuances and needs than they did before, which can further endanger people in the Global South. Because these decisions are made by tech company leadership in the US, many vulnerable groups across the world aren’t even factored into the conversation about safety or risk

“With the tech landscape generally the regular terms we acknowledge or are worried about are non consensual sexual or intimate images, but the definition of intimate is something we need to work around, so for example if we see a picture of a couple is leaked from Pakistan, to Meta it’s just a picture of people holding hands but for us the context will make it different, put those people at risk”, says Wardah Iftikhar, Project Manager at SHE LEADS, which focuses on eliminating online gender based violence.

It’s these cultural nuances and the risks posed to marginalized groups that make it essential to understand just what this push for “free speech” really means. Yael Eisenstat, an American democracy activist and technology policy expert, summarizes the three changes that she says help us understand that these directives aren’t about free speech and risk contributing to more hate and extremism, pointing out that 1, the algorithm on platforms like X favors Elon Musk and the people he prioritizes, 2, previously banned users being let onto the platform, and 3, the new verification systems now prioritizing people who can pay which further skews the power into the hands of people who have money.

“These changes combined are important because they are the opposite of actually trying to foster free open speech and tilting it towards people willing to pay, or people the owner is willing to prioritize, while at the same time making it clear that they don’t want to while at the same time making it clear that they no longer want to engage with civil society and outside experts,” Eisenstat shares, emphasizing how this disparity increases further in the global south in countries where X/formerly Twitter’s $8 verification fee could mean a significant amount for many people.

The risk of false, and possibly dangerous information further increases with the move away from fact checking. “If there were a fair community notes system I could see that this could be a better solution than the fact checking, but you have to take it into account that all or most of the community notes in the past which countered a claim, referred mostly to these fact checker organizations and their articles which were paid by meta, and now they’re gone,” says Berlin-based writer and lecturer Michael Seeman whose work focuses on the issues of digital capitalism.

It also further silos users within their own information bubbles online, which can lead to radicalization as well, particularly as Eisenstat points out that in the case of X many of those allowed back on the platform were extremists and white supremacists. Iftikhar, says that social media platforms have the power to let us remain in our silos.

“For people supporting Palestine they thought everyone was supporting Palestine and people supporting Israel thought everyone was supporting Israel and people in Palestine were being offensive,” she says.

Big Tech & Global Autocracy

Of course there is the actual shadowbanning on pro-Palestinian that took place across many of Meta’s platforms, which in the larger picture also raises questions about what the future of these platforms’ relationships with global governments will look like – particularly those governments that want to exercise control over their citizens.

Dr Courtney Radsch, a journalist, scholar and advocate focused on the intersection of technology, media, and rights points out that we’re already seeing the ripple effects of these policies globally through the de-amplification of journalists and Meta’s news ban in Canada.

“This leads to an increase of harassment of people using these services especially people who are already marginalized, it has led to a rise in extremist and right wing populism being expressed on these platforms around the world and led to what many see as a rise of degradation on these platforms due to a rise of what many see as AI generated crap that flourishes on these platforms,” Radsch shares.

The monopoly of these platforms over communications also means that governments only need to ban access to one or two platforms to completely silence any dissenting voices or citizen-led communication, and as is clear from Meta’s catering to Trump, they could just as easily cater to the demands of other governments as well.

“They no longer put a strong emphasis on filtering out the mis- and disinformation so it’s easy for autocracies to use platforms as a channel to augment their voice and send their message across the board,” says Xiaomeng Lu, director of Geo-technology at Eurasia Group.

Decentralising Control

However Eisenstat doesn’t believe that misinformation should be made illegal.

“The questions I think are more important is not how should these companies moderate misinformation but what is it about their design and structures where misinformation and salacious content is being amplified more than fact based information,” she says.

It’s important to be raising the right questions around tech policy and cutting through the noise these platforms are creating in order to be able to come up with long term solutions that can create a more decentralized control around digital spaces. Radsch also believes that there shouldn’t be content focused regulations.

“There will always be propaganda, there has been throughout history, and platforms monetize this, they monetize engagement. Polarization and extremism do well, and the issue is less about a piece of misinformation and more about industry operations that have risen because it’s so profitable and because algorithms designed in a way to make platform money,” she says.

Cohn also points out that too much regulation may also have its own issues. “There is room to worry about to whether there’s too much centralized power about what is fact,” he says, adding “I think the answer lies somewhere else, in decentralization, like the AT protocol that Bluesky operates on , when people have the easy ability to build a network that taps into a protocol that a lot of other people are using, it becomes a lot more difficult to tap into that or control that.”

Radsch further believes that the domination of these platforms needs to be broken up, and also needs to be seen in line with the rise of AI dominance, which she says cannot be separated from what we’re seeing in terms of social media platforms consolidating power.

The answers to curbing power from platforms that have grown so big, and have so much control over the globe aren’t easy – and as authoritarianism rises across the world they may only seek to get more difficult. But the first step can come from changing the way we are asking the questions in the first place, and start questioning what drives these platforms instead of only questioning the content.

Cooled Prospects for Gender Justice from COP29

For years, gender activists have been trying to draw attention to the disproportionate ways in which the climate crisis has been affecting women and girls. Studies show that by 2050, climate change may push 158 million more women and girls into poverty, which is 16 million more women and girls at risk than men and boys at the same level. For gender activists, there were small victories at this year’s United Nations COP29 climate change conference, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, but overall morale seems low as many find progress within this arena slow and tiring.

COP 29 participants described the discussions as slow in many ways – and the intersection of gender and climate has been one of them. Following the conclusion of the conference, some of the victories recognized with the gender justice space have included the extension of the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender, for 10 years which will help hold governments accountable as they implement their climate policies. There was also an acknowledgement of gender within climate finance goals and an increase in participation of women at the conference, though it was late in the conference. With COP29 wrapped up in Baku this year, gender activists leave Azerbaijan fatigued and unsure about the future of their work.

“I’ve been to so many COPs and this was one of the hardest ones” says Elise Buckle, founder of Climate Bridges and SHE builds bridges, when talking about what it was like to be in the room when gender just policies and solutions to climate change were being discussed and proposed at this years COP29 in Baku. “ We thought we wouldn’t have any texts, and then at the last minute we got it [extension of the Lima Work Programme ] so it gives me hope that this can be a floor not a ceiling”, she adds.

Despite pushing for gender just solutions for decades, many have called this COP a “disappointment” and questions remain about whose responsibility it really is to accommodate the needs of women and girls within climate justice.

What Went Wrong?

Lorena Aguilar, Executive Director at the Kaschak Institute for Social Justice for Women and Girls, describes the conversation around gender justice as constantly being in motion between success and failure. “When you talk about women rights and when you talk about gender equality , it’s like a pendulum, sometimes they [leaders] ignore, sometimes they accept and that’s what is happening with the UNFCCC,” she says.

At Baku, it seems the pendulum swung the wrong way. As one of the nine stakeholder groups of the United Nations Framework Convention For Climate Change (UNFCCC) the Women and Gender Constituency was one of the main groups leading the call for more focus on gender-just initiatives during the conference. Environmental lawyer, researcher and activist Claudia Rubio Giraldo, who was one of the co-coordinators of the Gender Working Groups and the WGC’s representative in the room for many of the gender related negotiations, expected parties to move onto negotiations that built on red lines set by previous discussions.The Women and Gender Constituency typically divides areas around which red lines are often established into three groups: finance and implementation, language, and praxis. Rather than start from this point, Rubio says that backtracking on many previous discussions [by many countries who had an issue with the language around gender] made it tough to be in the room. She points out that despite parameters being set in forums before COP, many parties wanted to re-negotiate boundaries which meant actual action plans didn’t go forward till much later.

“There was a backtracking of previously agreed human rights language,” Rubio says. She’s talking about how the use of the term “women in all their diversity” became an issue at this year’s conference, as many other gender advocates also pointed out.

Much of the contention came from conservative countries, led by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Russia and the Vatican, who felt that the use of the word ‘diversity’ within gender related language meant supporting LGBTQ communities, which is a topic many of those governments still have issues with. But while it’s sometimes easier to pass the burden of this thinking onto more ‘conservative’ countries, Imali Ngusale, founder of the African Center for Health, Climate and Gender Justice Alliance, also adds that there had been speculation that the US was supporting Saudi Arabia, which many believe was for personal gain.

“In the past 2 weeks we saw how parties stepped forward to accommodate women “women in all their diversity”, and other countries opposed this. There’s significant language that remains bracketed around diversity. There’s a war around narratives and that’s how we’re coming to see how different countries and different parties receive lang around it,” says Natalie Sifuma, founder of Sisters in Climate.

Another barrier that gender justice groups faced was the lack of women within decision making and leadership positions. “In terms of the lack of women representation at the highest level of leadership, that’s the same, that hasn’t improved. Only 8% women were represented in the world leaders summit,” Buckle says, adding “ So in a way Cop29 is a mirror of the world. And it’s true there is a backlash on women’s rights in many countries around the world, like the issue of abortion rights in the US, or the more serious situation in Afghanistan.”

She connects the overall backlash against women’s rights in many places across the world – including the US, as many feel has been demonstrated by the recent election – to the backtracking of gender justice in the climate space.

Ngusale also further points out that the lack of gender diversity in leadership is amplified by the fact that women are burdened with unpaid care work across the world, making it difficult for them to also take up leadership positions because they “ cannot be in two places at one time.”

Not A Monolith

But even as we talk about women’s rights across the globe, Aguilar points out that the “women of the world” as it’s often termed, are not all the same. “They try to put all women in the same bag, we need to understand the knots of gender inequality, which can be very different for different women, such as the way that our countries allow us to have control, or how we can have agency,” she says.

This is also what makes it far more complicated for groups like the WGC to advocate for the different needs of women and girls across the world, because they already find themselves fighting for space in these discussions which can make advocating for all the diversity in a nuanced way very difficult.

One example is how cultural norms manifest into gender restrictions differently across the world in ways other cultures or countries may not understand. Mobility restrictions on women due to religious and cultural norms in Kyengeza, Uganda, mean that men are twice as likely as women to travel to purchase improved seeds or visit markets, both of which are crucial factors to agricultural productivity and climate adaptation. This means if the solution international platforms are implementing is something like drought-resilient seeds, women on ground are probably not benefiting from it even if documents say that they should be.

With gender and climate often being an afterthought in policy drafts and papers, it doesn’t leave a lot of room to go into further “knots” around class, access, ethnicity and much more. Aguilar also shares one instance of how a group of low-income women on the coast of Honduras were affected by disaster.

“There were women in Honduras who were told winds of 260 km comings but they didn’t know what that meant, whether that was fast or slow, and so they continued to be on the coast and one of them lost two of her kids,” she says adding that when an NGO came to help them rebuild their house which had also been destroyed, they asked them for land property rights papers which these women didn’t have.

“That’s a group of women that need to be supported,” Aguilar says.

Implementing the Policies

But agreeing that women should be supported is one thing and actually implementing policies that work in the aftermath of discussions at spaces like COP becomes a whole other hurdle.

Some of the biggest barriers within implementation are a lack of accountability and climate financing.

“We want funds that are more liberating. Most of the funds given are not even sufficient to reach the grassroots, so there needs to be a scaling up of global finance in climate action,” Ngusale says, adding that it is crucial that these funds are scaled up in a way that directly funds locally led grassroots level action so the most vulnerable groups of women and girls can be affected.

Unfortunately a big area of contention at this year’s COP – and previous conferences – has been that receiving countries have thought the finance pledges were too low and givers thought it was too high.

But what many activists like Aguilar and Sifuma point out in different ways is that until countries like the US, and international bodies that have undeniable influence over global action – and in this case are also being called to account with regards to climate financing – don’t design implementable policies that take gender into account, nothing will change on ground.

Aguilar shares that many countries being called on for climate finance keep sidelining gender because “they have bigger fish to fry.”

“To which I always ask which fish and how are you frying them,” she says. She adds “You can’t leave half of the population behind. Disregarding the potential of half the world’s population is not logical, it’s absurd.”

Can Climate Refugees Find A Home In The Metaverse?

With a total land mass of fewer than 26 square kilometers across its three coral islands and six atolls, the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu is expected to be the first nation in the world lost completely to climate change. Facing this very near threat, authorities are working with international organizations to mitigate the impacts of climate change, as well as resettling people in other countries like New Zealand. But there’s a third approach being taken as well – creating a digital Tuvalu. At the Cop27 climate conference in November 2022, then-Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs Simon Kofe gave a speech where he said that the threat to Tuvalu left them with no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation.

“Our land, our ocean, our culture are the most precious assets of our people and to keep them safe from harm, no matter what happens in the physical world, we will move them to the cloud,” Kofe said in a video. At the time, Kofe hinged the expectations for a digital Tuvalu on the metaverse. Now, almost two years on from his announcement, experts still remain confused as to what that digital nation can really look like, and more importantly if tech like the metaverse is really the future for the climate action movement.

For Tuvalu, becoming a digital nation encompasses multiple aspects, including a digital replica of the country’s landscapes, digital citizenship, and archives of cultural heritage so that the Tuvalese diaspora can stay connected to their identity, and visit a digital replica of the country they were forced to leave behind. They also want citizens to be able to participate in polls and events. Whether all that can be possible is a question of the sustainability impact of such undertakings, the policies surrounding these decisions and the investment of those in power.

“Technology is for the most part perceived to be neutral, though that is not always in fact the case and of course almost any innovation can be used in both positive and negative ways” says Professor Karen Morrow, professor of Environmental Law at Swansea University. She adds, “It’s taken us a long time in human history to reach a point where there’s enough of us and our technology is invasive enough to change the planet. Some things no amount of technology can help reverse, like dealing with polar ice melting, but what technology can do is help us understand the issues better,” especially when talking about how what we really need is pursuing the law and policy around these issues in a way that leads to action.

The metaverse itself might be abandoned before the people of Tuvalu leave their islands and atolls, but the question of a “digital nation” remains. With such little regulation over, or even research around its energy-impact, backing such a large scale project as a digital migration to a virtual space might just do more harm than good. But that doesn’t mean abandoning any such action. Rather, policy makers should focus on the best course of action for the Tuvalu and the Tuvalese diaspora that prioritizes their needs.

Virtual safety

For Tuvalu’s case, this digitization offers a means to preservation of artifacts and culture – but on a policy level, there’s still little knowledge of how these digital boundaries can be managed. Manann Donoghoe, senior research associate at Brookings Metro, whose work focuses on climate reparations says that a digital nation cannot be the only solution. “I think for a lot of the people of Pacific Island nations, perhaps it makes more sense to be pursuing a strategy where those people can gain sovereignty somewhere else. Australia, for example, is in talks about settlement agreements which are not perfect but you need to start thinking about where you put these communities,” he says. He’s also wary of the way tech advancements have divided the globe in the past. “Unfortunately, a lot of tech advancements in the past have led to increasing division in Global North and Global South countries. If you don’t have strong policy structures about who has access, who’s using them and how, that could happen again,” Donoghoe adds.

Tuvalu may succeed in creating a digital replica of the landscape in the metaverse, but historically, technological advancements haven’t favored Global South nations, and it’s likely that the people’s experience in that digital replica may be coloured with the impact of that history.

Besides offering a digital home for climate, the metaverse could join other technologies used to fight climate change, if it can shift user behaviors away from emissions-generating activity. Last year, a Cornell study stated that by replacing the air pollutants, the use of a virtual world through the metaverse could potentially lower greenhouse gas emissions by 10 gigatons, and help lower the global surface temperature by 0.02 degrees. To get there, the metaverse needs to join other technologies that facilitate digital learning, remote working and other digital aspects of everyday life. But what about the policy needed to put this future into action?

“There are huge opportunities for advances in technology to enable policy and action. Using machine learning to analyze satellite imagery or field sensors can help to close data gaps. One recent example is [the World Resources Institute]’s work with Meta where we developed a new algorithm for measuring tree height at global scale. As this work matures, we’ll be able to measure an individual tree’s height anywhere in the world, which is critical for carbon measurement, restoration monitoring, and so much more,” says Evan Tachovsky, the Global Director of WRI’s Data Lab.

But even for something as big as WRI, Meta and technologies work has been largely focused on data and inanimate objects, not people. And unlike other data collected, people cannot and should not be so neatly categorized. Nor can their actions be controlled or limited, and with unchecked environmental impact, the Metaverse at this scale may be a climate disaster waiting to happen.

Material Limits

Assistant Professor Robert Verdecchia at the University of Florence worries that policies around technology regulation aren’t sustainable enough for tech to really have a net positive impact. The impact that many optimists are looking for can only be positive when the technology being used isn’t having a negative impact on climate in the first place. “The lack of standards of what sustainable means from an IT perspective then leads in turn to a complete lack of policy, IT is consuming more and more energy and the lack of standardization especially in measurement of sustainability leads to complete lack of policy.”

Which is why Verdecchia and other experts are concerned that not enough policy is being geared towards managing the sustainability and equitable division of AI development. Verdecchia further adds that AI’s energy consumption is currently very high, and that’s not being talked about enough in conversations around taking action.

A 2023 study found that ChatGPT consumes 500 ml of water for every 20-50 simple questions and answers. Another, specifically looking at reducing the carbon footprint of the metaverse, pointed out that training an AI model consumed 284 tons of carbon dioxide, which is more than 5 times the amount of greenhouse gas a car emits in its lifetime. While the research around the metaverse’s energy consumption is much less precise, one comparison can be seen through the energy consumption of transactions. While a credit card transaction in the real world consumes about 149 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy, a similar transaction digitally in the metaverse consumes 2189 kWh, which is 14 times that amount.

Precedent also shows that much of the power for development and mitigation both in terms of resources and finances lies in the hands of the Global North, which raises further questions about equity within policy. Currently a major chunk of technology development, whether it be in projects like the metaverse, generative AI or other similar innovations, lies in the hands of private companies, like Google and Microsoft.

Public-private partnerships to involve these developments in climate action might seem like a good way forward when it comes to scaling them up, but Morrow questions whether these would really be true partnerships at all. “Partnership is a word that’s everywhere, you’ll see it used in climate contexts globally. But the word partnership can only be used if you have the same goal. Furthermore, Big Tech is more powerful than many governments, and that’s not a partnership when power isn’t equal,” she says.

So even when countries like the United States, who have more resources, think of funding projects like Tuvalu in the metaverse, they need to reckon with the power private institutions – who don’t always have citizen’s interests in mind – will have in these decisions. That coupled with the still vague environmental impact of such projects creates perhaps too many question marks for this to be seen as a major solution.

There’s other issues like international collaboration, and putting vulnerable communities first to consider as well. Michelle Solomon, senior policy analyst at Energy Innovation, says, “This is something we think about with the transition of communities, particularly like coal plant communities in the US where the situation may be similar to what Tuvalu is facing in terms of identity loss. Putting communities first and what the communities priorities are is crucial. Ultimately solutions built from the ground up will be most positive and long lasting for the community.”

It’s why Tuvalu’s example needs to become the starting point for governments to start thinking about how technology can actually be used to benefit vulnerable communities. Verdecchia suggests that might be easier in Global South nations away from the strongholds of the major Big Tech companies. While tech may be the answer to some environmental problems, such mass usage of tech that consumes energy on such a large scale cannot be the answer to an already existing climate problem.

Instead of the last word, Tuvalu’s efforts to preserve the nation in the metaverse can be the start of a conversation. Beyond digital preservation, the effort can spur efforts towards resettlement, physical archives and attempts to preserve cultures in other ways that align with the values of the communities that are most vulnerable.

Resource Author: Anmol Irfan