I started this (Skype) meeting with Miri feeling dazed and rusty in my brain, trying to catch hold of the seemingly distant memory of having new conversations, with new people, every week.
This chat was perfect – it cut through it like cold fresh lemon juice. I left feeling like something had been un-stuck and fired up in my brain. It was like taking a lump of solidified cold porridge or soup, and heating and stirring it up until it’s nice and juicy and smooth again. A weird comparison, but an accurate one.
Miri
Miri was one of the people I was meant to meet before lockdown shut everything down around us overnight. She’s a Gender Advisor at the Centre for Counselling Social Services and Research. She helps organisations find which groups of people they should engage and how, runs awareness campaigns, runs workshops on gender equality and violence prevention, and much more.
But how did she get into this area? Miri grew up in a very traditional, patrichacical family in rural Kosovo – in which women have a much lower social standing than men.
To give some context, only 13% women in Kosovo work, usually in the lowest paid jobs – minimum wage being 170 euros per month for over 35s, or less for those younger. Men own most of the money and property in Kosovo, as houses are passed down to the sons of each family. Traditional gender roles are strongly stuck to. Not much more than a generation ago, if a woman didn’t want to marry and have kids, the only way she could do this in a more accepted way is to become a ‘burnnesha’ – a ‘Balkan sworn virgin’ who dressed as, and declared herself, a celibate man.
Domestic violence is also a big issue, and Miri tells me there’s a big lack of awareness and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people.
Kosovo is an absolutely incredible country, full of beauty and warmly welcoming people, but these are some of it’s challenges. And, all of this makes Miri, – a working, highly educated woman, with a strong passion for equality, and rural and ecofeminism -, an anomaly.
“Growing up in these social rules, nothing made sense”, Miri says. “I was against it, but didn’t know why. When I got the scholarship for a Masters degree in the US, my father said ‘If you were boy it would be easy to say you could go, but for a girl, no’.
‘But I’m not asking’, I said.”
So, off she went to Iowa, US, for a two year course, and her interests grew.
“When I starting reading about the issues I’d grown up with, it was mind-blowing, to find that people had been writing and studying this since 80s. I found my calling, and it was impossible not to work on this from then onwards.”
But what is ‘ecofeminism’? And how does it relate to any of this, let alone the climate crisis?
Ecofeminism connects many of the injustices in the world.
Ecofeminism tries to explain any issue to do with valuing one group as more important than another group; For example, men over women, white people over black people, able bodied over disabled people, humans over the environment. All of these are linked by ‘hierachical thinking’ – of putting different groups as higher or lower in importance in the world.
You could endlessly debate the hierarchy we have right now, which has white cis men at the top, but white women above women of colour, and people being pushed up or down the scale depending on if they’re transgender, a refugee, a traveller, disabled… etc. Then under humans, we have animals, ranked based on things like beauty and how domesticated they are, and then natural environments too… you get the point.
This hierarchy of thinking can be seen as the root of so many problems, that we usually try to separate out, but actually all link together in this way.
Miri says:
“Thinking in a hierarchical way actually also puts pressure on you. If we teach young boys that they should provide, be strong, be dominant, and fit this strongly defined role – that is a big pressure, and they have to find ways to meet that expectation. They might have to use violence, as a means to keep authority, and fit this role. So many bad consequences and pressure is put on humans from this way of thinking.”
“It also explains why we have created this relationship with nature, where we exploit it. The capitalist economy says you should profit however you can, gather as much as you can, exploit as much as you can. This way of thinking is what is causing the climate crisis.”
I can totally see this point. The damaging consumer culture, for example, is fuelled by making us believe (whether we’re aware of it or not) that you can increase your status, or worth, or place in ‘the hierarchy’ by having a certain amount of money, or a certain lifestyle, or car, or possessions, or certain looks, to name a few. The hierarchy of valuing humans as much higher than animals and other nature, also keeps us more OK with farming industrially, and deforesting the rainforest for beef, or for palm oil used in cosmetics, etc. The hierarchy of valuing some humans more than others, keep systems of very cheap or child labour, or modern day slavery, in place… which fuels things like fast fashion and cheap fish, demanded by ‘the West’, and many more destructive things.
Through tackling this hierarchical thinking, we tackle so many of the important things that need to change in order to take on the climate crisis – and all the other linked issues! But how on earth do we do that?!
Miri suggests “We need to build a relationship with nature where we see ourselves as totally equal – we are just one thing in this world. To think we are rulers of the whole system is stupid. If we think we are most valuable species, it (exploitation of the natural world) will continue.”
‘BUT HOW?!’ everybody cries in unison.
Start with trying to understand
Miri says this is something that will have no one answer, as everyone lives in different contexts (rural, urban, religions, cultures etc). She says it’s not about making everyone/thing the same, but seeing all as equal.
“We need to try to understand why we think how we think, why we feel the need to dominate, and how we value one another. We have space in the world for everyone and everything – there is no need to build a hierarchy, or a society based on violence.”
Solutions from rural areas
Miri said: “Rural areas are the place to start to fully understand our society. They really are at the heart of traditional values and ways of thinking, so there is so much to learn. We are also more far from nature in urban areas. We can’t create the same connection.”
Miri isn’t talking about ‘nature connection’ in the romanticised way we sometimes think of it in the West – some kind of escapism, experience-bagging, privileged bushcraft course, summit ‘conquering’, dip-in-dip-out thing.
In rural Kosovo, and other places in the Balkans, many people still directly rely on their land for food and survival, living a life very dependent on the nature around them. Although there are big issues, for example with waste, – which unfortunately Westerners who are not used to seeing this often focus on -, connections to nature still seem to exist on a much deeper level than those in the West. In Western Europe, I find that even the people who think they’re ‘connected to nature’ (myself included probably), actually see nature as an escape, playground or hobby. A fair-weather, when-I-feel-like-it relationship. Here, in rural areas, some people still live in a more ‘unconditional-relationship way’ with nature.
“You grow food, have wood for fire, the water is in the well – you are directly linked”, Miri says. “This is where we can understand connection the best. You can’t exploit nature for profit here – you wouldn’t survive.”
She suggested that urban areas should be more connected to their local rural areas, and be less about capitalism and products.
She said: “I dream of a day where I don’t need to be in Prishtina (the capital city). The solution would be when people go back to their villages – as villages will be where we find the answers – and cities are not so much cities any more, but bring us back to nature. We’re not supposed to be so separate from nature – and we can’t find the answer in something so not-natural.”
Demanding change from government
She also explained that “not everyone can know everything”, saying that it’s not individual people’s fault, and change can’t be left up to individuals either. She hopes that people will hold their governments to account more, to pressure them to make much bigger changes – something which basically every person I’ve met, in every country, has said we need to do!
The power of youth
One unique thing about Kosovo is the proportion on young people. 65% of the population are under 30 years old, making it the youngest country in Europe. Miri explained how this means things could change and develop quickly, if those young people stay. Young people are more likely to want change, she says, and “don’t mind going against the rules”.
Not going by the rules, and willingness to change, is pretty much a 2.0 of what we need right now. And so is this awareness that the big issues we need to tackle, are linked by this common heirachical mindset. Without this awareness, it’s easy to waste energy on things that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t make an inch of difference.
We could view world issues like poisened fruits of a tree, that could be split into smaller and smaller parts. Women’s rights, equality for women of colour, transgender women, disabled transgender women, or the climate crisis, deforestation, wilderness conservation, protecting natural carbon sinks… etc. Instead of trying in vain to continuously pull down all the fruits, ecofeminism asks, ‘where the hell did this all come from’?
If you want to get rid of the poison in the tree, there’s no point just chopping at the branches, you have to get rid of the poison being sucked into it. This is why I think ecofeminism is something we all need to get on our agenda, get our heads around and start using it’s findings in all of the battles for a better world.
Rosie Watson 
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