Why the upcoming referenda are important for the climate
Caring and care work will be centre stage in the upcoming referenda on family and women in the home. File picture: Pexels
As we exit a year of record-breaking weather events and enter a year where care could be meaningfully included in the Constitution, bringing care into the climate discussion is an opportunity we can’t afford to miss.
2023 was a record-breaking year in climate change for all the wrong reasons. It was the hottest year on record, with six months of the year reaching their highest ever temperatures. The extreme flooding in Midleton and Newry as well as a tornado in Leitrim have made it clear that even Ireland, considered one of the ‘safer’ countries in the face of the climate crisis, is not immune to its impacts.
The economy and day-to-day life in Ireland need to become more energy efficient and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. The government’s Climate Action Plan 2024 discusses the need for more green jobs, alongside upskilling and training in green work. But the discourse on green jobs tends to revolve around creating new jobs, or making existing jobs ‘greener’.
Crucially, there already exists work in Ireland that has always been low-carbon, yet it fails to be included in the green jobs discussion — care work.
Caring work, both inside and outside of the home, paid and unpaid, is essential to the survival of the human species and our wellbeing. It is by nature low-carbon work, requiring little to no extraction of natural resources to carry out compared to the jobs typically noted as green jobs.
Caring and care work will be centre stage in the upcoming referenda on family and women in the home, taking place in March.
Care work continues to be taken for granted in society — underacknowledged in the home, underpaid in the formal sector, unrecognised as green work. Care work is still largely the responsibility of women the world over, with women in Ireland undertaking twice as much caring work as men.
This has profound implications for climate policy, and the impacts of the climate crisis for women. Caring for others impacts the way women use their cars, consume energy, and spend money.
Yet Irish climate policy pays no attention to these links, all of which are well researched. The word ‘care’ only appears twice in the 400-plus page Climate Action Plan 2024 — neither appearance relates to the key role care work plays in society now and could play in a climate-neutral one. It certainly isn’t noted that caring duties are the reason why the majority of Irish women consider a car a ‘necessity’ in research conducted by Transport Infrastructure Ireland.
Notably, Ireland’s first climate change assessment, published last week by the Environmental Protection Agency, advocates for the prioritisation of wellbeing and equity in Irish climate policy — naming the valuing of care as a key aspect of this ambition. Not paying attention to how care and climate policy interact is a gaping oversight, given how essential this work is to society.
Transporting a pram or a wheelchair is far easier in a car than it is by existing modes of public transport, which has implications for who uses and benefits from the reduced fares and new routes. ‘Care-less’ climate policy inevitably burdens women, as the primary givers of care in Irish society, the most — but it ultimately burdens all carers.
By 2030, one of the key deadline years in terms of emissions reductions, Family Carers Ireland predict that one in five people in this country will be a family carer.
Recognising care work as green work means labour which is so essential, but often made invisible, becomes a key part of the climate conversation. It necessitates talking about care work and affording it the same value, attention and funding as jobs in retrofitting, renewable energy generation, and sustainable transport, among others.
Green jobs, by many definitions, involve preserving and protecting the environment — an environment that humanity is very much part of. Care work, at its core, involves the protection and preservation of people. The preservation and protection of Ireland’s biodiversity is already a key part of climate policy discourse, which is care for non-human life. Expanding existing definitions around what is considered care work and the environment is crucial in addressing the ongoing climate crisis.
The climate justice conversation — about the intersection of social justice issues and climate issues — is still in its infancy in Ireland compared to other countries. This upcoming referendum is a chance for the Irish green movement, often criticised for a lack of attention to the ‘real’ problems people face, to embrace a climate justice philosophy and to make important connections between the climate crisis and local, immediate problems in the day-to-day lives of so many people.
Climate policy and climate movements which fail to recognise care work will ultimately lead to a future where this essential work remains undervalued and taken for granted. To achieve a ‘liveable’ planet we must go beyond simply countering the worst impacts of climate change — we must create a world that truly cares for people, nature and biodiversity.
Valuing care, essential to the wellbeing of all people, will allow our society to become more resilient in the face of the sheer scale of transformation required for our net-zero transition. It will be transformative. An essential first step will be voting Yes Yes in the referenda on March 8.
- Vanessa Conroy is Climate Justice Spokesperson at the National Women’s Council
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