“Marina is a young 29-year-old activist, biotechnologist and environmental defender with great ability to mobilize and raise awareness and a role model for future generations of activists. She is a firm defender of the introduction of the ecofeminist perspective in the collective transformation processes in which she has been involved.” This is how the text of the ruling begins through which the Youth Institute (Injuve) awarded its 2024 annual award to the Aragonese Marina Gros Breto in the environment category. And the two examples of his work that are mentioned in the text are the Platform in Defense of the Mountains of Aragón and the Gas No Es Solution network, in which he participates as a member of Ecologistas en Acción, the organization in which he works from Huesca. .
Gros Breto considers this award as a collective, not individual, recognition, because “with activism, no one does things alone” and celebrates that it is allocated to youth on an issue as sensitive as the environment: “Young people have an undeniable right to raise our voices, as we are going to face the consequences of a climate crisis that we did not cause. Our generation is going to be the one that has to deal with the effects of the decisions that leaders, companies, people who have names and surnames have made.”
Why is gas not a solution?
Because it has brutal consequences in the countries where it is extracted and because it enhances the climate crisis. We must change our outlook regarding fossil gas, a polluting fuel that is harmful to people’s health. Many of us live tied to fossil fuels and cannot get out. We believe that we must remove gas from our homes and that is why we talk about that in 2030 we should decarbonize all homes and in 2035 remove gas from the industrial sector, which is the one that uses the most gas.
What energy alternatives do you propose?
First it is necessary to evaluate what uses are being made of fossil gas and whether it is necessary to maintain them. Here we have an ecosocial debate on the table: which industrial sectors we want to maintain and for what. Maybe some will not be needed in the future. From the network we propose the use of renewable energies for the industrial sector. And in homes, solutions such as aerothermal or solar thermal for heating and hot water.
With the Platform in Defense of the Mountains of Aragon, the viability of a cable car project in the Aragonese Pyrenees is being discussed, financed with Next Generation funds and which, in theory, is defined as sustainable tourism.
Yes, there are several projects. And the most important is the one that aims to unite the stations of Astún and Formigal, in such a way as to cross the entire glacial valley of Canal Roya. This poses a concrete threat to the natural environment and since 2022 we have been working on the platform to protect the valley. There was a lot of citizen mobilization and efforts in different institutions in Europe, we even exposed the problem in the European Parliament and the project was stopped. But there are two more that are similar and from the platform we continue to alert the European commissions that the environment is not being used appropriately, but they have not yet been able to stop it.
Today the main industry in Spain is tourism, with all the dire consequences that it entails and that have been studied and analyzed for years. Is sustainable tourism possible in this context?
It is possible if we consider why we travel and what type of consumption we make of natural spaces. But it has to be possible because the survival of the people is at stake. Today we have a very big housing problem in rural environments. And this is even more pressing in tourist sites, such as towns in the Aragonese Pyrenees where there is already talk of an Ibization, the same thing that happens in the Balearic Islands. We meet workers at ski resorts who cannot rent a house because prices are skyrocketing.
What is happening in Aragon with climate policies?
It’s a bit of a disaster and what is done is insufficient. Not only from this government but also from the previous one. To begin with, the economic model remains unquestioned. For example, laws on renewable energy are being proposed in Aragon that only benefit the energy oligopoly, an unplanned renewable energy implementation system that does not take citizens into account and that does not serve public access to energy. . And one of the topics that I think are going to be one of the hottest is that of data centers, how all these projects are beginning to appear within the Aragonese territory. We have not yet analyzed this issue in depth, but we know that they have a fundamental impact, especially on energy and water consumption. The question is also why these types of projects are promoted, with very low social benefit and very few jobs and which are absolute sinks of energy and water. Why Aragón always rolls out the red carpet for this type of projects that fall into an extractivist logic of the territory.
The ecofeminisms
Marina Gros studied biotechnology motivated by the idea of changing the world through research. One of his childhood dreams was to discover a vaccine to cure a disease that affects many people, for example. But during his studies he found a lack of epistemological reflection on why and for whom research is being carried out, especially on the issue of GMOs, which can be used to manufacture insulin or to support the ruthless extractivity of Monsanto. So, he decided to join a space that would allow him to develop all that critical capacity. And she found it in Ecologistas en Acción, to whose youth section she will donate part of the 5,000 euros of the Injuve prize (another part will go to the Los six of Zaragoza campaign) and where she managed to converge two of her fundamental motivations: feminism and environmental awareness. .
Françoise d’Eaubonne was the French thinker who first coined the term ecofeminism. The Indian physicist and philosopher Vandana Shiva gave that name to one of the key books to understand this confluence that, in Spain, has Yayo Herrero as one of its greatest references and, in the world, Berta Cáceres as an international symbol, an indigenous ecofeminist and Honduran social activist who was murdered in 2016 after opposing the illegal installation of the Agua Zarca dam in her country.
What is ecofeminism? Why is it important in today’s world?
We talk about ecofeminism because there are different perspectives. What it seeks is to bring together a dialogue between ecology and feminism, trying to dismantle that logic of domination, that we have the right to possess women’s bodies, to plunder and use them. And the same thing happens with nature, that idea that we can use it for our benefit and that’s it. What ecofeminisms seek is to place life and care at the center. And put an end to the logic of productivity, because we cannot be producing 24 hours a day, that is not our goal in life. We also have to understand that human beings are not outside the ecosystems in which we live, the territory in which we establish ourselves. And everything that happens there ends up affecting us. We cannot live on the margins, that is why we say that we are ecodependent. And also interdependent: the importance of conceiving ourselves as collective beings, within an environment and not as isolated subjects.
A few days ago, Eldiario.es published a report from the internal commission of Ecologistas en Acción on the alleged sexual and workplace harassment carried out by one of its founders. How did that news affect you and your colleagues?
It is an issue that has generated a lot of pain in the organization. It’s hard for me to talk about it. I believe that the necessary steps are being taken from our solidarity with the victims, keeping in mind the presumption of innocence and from a perspective of restorative justice, which does not follow the punitive logic to which we are accustomed. I am very confident in the work that the colleagues of the anti-harassment commission are doing, who have the support of two experts from outside the organization.
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