Chenchen Wang
This autoethnographic paper explores how I, as a woman of color from the Global South, construct, challenge, and reshape my environmental identity. Drawing on personal experiences, the paper traces my journey from an initial gender-neutral understanding of climate action to a gradual realization of the gender and regional inequalities embedded in global climate governance systems, ultimately seeking pathways for self-expression in academic research, policy engagement, and climate communication. This study reveals the dynamic shaping process of environmental identity within discourse structures. The paper not only reflects on the realities faced by women from the Global South in climate action, but also critically examines how the global climate communication system defines the roles of Southern women through a ‘victim-savior’ binary narrative. It explores the transition from being ‘defined’ by others to ‘self-defined’ within this system. In this process, I came to understand that environmental identity is not a static accumulation of individual experiences, but something continuously constructed through dialogue, negotiation, and resistance.