The Adaptable Subject : A Critical Discourse Analysis of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Advocacy on Climate Change

Abstract: In the face of the climate crisis, there is an increasing engagement with climate adaptation and mitigation across traditional development sectors. Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) is one such area. From an intersectional feminist perspective engaging questions of gender, race, disability and sexuality, this research examines international SRHR advocacy materials. The aim is to uncover how climate adaptation is connected to SRHR issues, who is seen as adaptable to climate change, how they are represented, and what the implications of these findings are. Three main lines of argumentation connecting SRHR to climate change are identified. 1) The gender equality argument positions SRHR and family planning (FP) services as a means to increase the adaptive capacity of women. 2) The societal adaptation argument sees SRHR and FP as a way of slowing population growth, resulting in increased adaptive capacity and resilience of society. 3) The mitigation argument also positions SRHR and FP as a means to slow population growth, but in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Further, this research introduces the concept of the adaptable subject to signify how heterosexual, able-bodied, fertile, ciswomen are deemed adaptable to climate change by virtue of their common subordination to gender inequality, a colonial difference, and assumed reproductive capacities. This subject is discursively constructed as both vulnerable and adaptable as a result of her social status. Finally, this research concludes that the characterisation and representation of the adaptable subject implies a need for intersectional and interdisciplinary analyses, a broadening of the SRHR concept in a climate change context, and increased engagement with local contexts and the subjects themselves.