Why effective climate policy needs women – and vice versa

Aira Kalela in Responding to Climate Change:  Integrating a gender approach in the new climate agreement will be vital to provide the legal base for promoting gender responsive climate action both at international and national level.

That will be necessary for the improvement of effectiveness of climate policies and its implementation, as both women and men can make considerable contributions to adaptation and mitigation and because climate change impacts women and men differently. Climate change would actually increase the inequalities if no counter measures will be taken.

In developing countries women are in majority in the agriculture labor force, to name one example. They produce up to 70% of the staple food. Estimates from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) suggest that if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20–30%.

Adaptation to climate change will require strengthening of enabling conditions and practical efforts in agriculture, coastal areas and water management. In most developing countries, women and girls are the primary providers of water for domestic consumption.

Agriculture can, together with sustainable forest management, also provide a considerable mitigation tool, which is readily available with relatively modest investments compared with the energy or transport sector...

Women harvesting rice in Tamil Nadu, India, shot by McKay Savage, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Focus on poverty: Take the gender factor seriously

Roger Williamson in SciDev.net: As climate change takes effect, the time taken to collect food and water will increase, and women and girls will bear the brunt of this, argues Janna Tenzing in a recent article on gender equality through a climate change lens.

All aspects of poverty eradication have a gender dimension — climate change is no exception.

To account for this, there have to be specific gender-related development goals at international level. Gender analysis must be part of all the post-2015 targets that follow the Millennium Development Goals — but there also need to be stand alone targets on gender, as there are in the latest draft. This is because gender-based violence will not be as clearly targeted under a general human rights or violence-reduction goal. One new research report on Sudan — launched just before this week’s global summit to end sexual violence in conflict — shows how terrifying and prevalent gender-based violence is, comparing it with a “bush fire” which can suddenly engulf you.

There are two convincing types of reason why everyone — therefore also men — has to take gender equality and inclusion seriously. One is economic: not recognising the work of women (including caring for children and family members) and preventing women from reaching their full potential damages productivity and well-being, and so undermines poverty-reduction efforts. The other set of arguments is about justice and human rights: gender-based violence is wrong and would be wrong even if there were no economic arguments against it....

A 1913 image of Waziri women carrying water

Women are 'key drivers' in climate change adaptation

Bernard Appiah in SciDev.net: Plans to protect ecosystems and help people adapt to climate change ― also known as ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA) ― must involve vulnerable groups, including women and communities greatly hit by global warming if they are to succeed, according to scientists who met in Tanzania last month (21-23 March).

Scientists and policymakers at the UN-led international workshop on EBA in Dar-es-Salaam, also said that more needed to be done to monitor and evaluate the cost-effectiveness of such adaptation, and to learn from past experiences in order to transfer knowledge into action and policy.

"Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change is vital in order to reduce the impacts of climate change that are happening now, and increase resilience to future impacts," says Richard Kinley, deputy executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which organised the meeting. "Ecosystem-based approaches are part of the solution that countries could use in building resilience to climate change," he adds.

For example, mangroves or forest — rather than artificial sea walls — should be maintained or restored to help protect coastlines. The mangroves can improve water quality and thus increase fish yields, while also protecting fishing communities from future disasters....

Gender relations are changing along with climate

IRIN: A changing climate will inevitably have an impact on gender relations in rural communities, but not enough is being done to boost the resilience of women - already disadvantaged by traditions of inequality.

The UN International Strategy for International Risk reduction (UNISDR), has been arguing for  mainstreaming gender in disaster risk reduction programmes for over a decade. "Disasters don’t discriminate, but people do," the agency noted. "The potential contributions that women can offer to the disaster risk reduction [DRR] imperative around the world are often overlooked and female leadership in building community resilience to disasters is frequently disregarded."

The need for gender awareness in programming became apparent after the Asian Tsunami in 2004, in which more women than men were killed. Research by Oxfam in parts of Indonesia and India after the wave struck found that women were more vulnerable partly because they were more likely to be unable to swim, and many were in harm's way because they were standing on the shore waiting for the men to bring in the fish they would process and sell.

The development agency CARE, along with Kulima Integrated Development Solutions, a South Africa-based consultancy, is trying to develop a methodology to conduct gender-sensitive vulnerability analysis. “Most NGOs have longstanding gender commitments, and are beginning to incorporate them in their climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction,” says Kulima’s Katharine Vincent, who is working on the methodology using Mozambique as their testing ground… 

A girl running along the road in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, shot by Damien Halleux Radermecker, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

African women hit hard by climate change

Denise Darcel in Epoch Times: African women walk for miles across harsh terrain to find clean water sources, planting and harvesting crops through scarcity and drought. Climatic disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, and landslides, can separate families, exposing women to human trafficking, hunger, and loss of life in a matter of moments.

Women must be an integral part of the climate change discussion in Africa, says the United Nations Initiative of the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality. Yet, women are rarely involved in forming climate change policies.

More than 80 percent of African women work in agriculture; approximately 95 percent of the continent relies on agriculture for its livelihood. Women are thus key figures in economic development, and should be key figures in developing preventive measures or plans for repairing the damage caused by climate change, says the U.N.

According to the U.N. website, it is “imperative that a gender analysis be applied to all actions on climate change and that gender experts are consulted in climate change processes at all levels, so that women’s and men’s specific needs and priorities are identified and addressed.”...

Women in Zambia's Eastern Province hold bags of tilapia fingerlings in June 2007. The villagers are learning fish farming from US Peace Corps volunteers. State Department photo, in the public domain

Men and women farming together can eradicate hunger

Isaiah Esipisu in IPS: Three years ago, the residents of the semi-arid Yatta district in Kenya’s Eastern Province lived on food aid due to dwindling crops of maize that could not thrive because of the decreased rainfall in the area. That was until a local bishop, trying to find ways to prevent mothers from forcing their teenage daughters into prostitution, changed everything.

Now, on a Saturday evening in the district’s village of Makutano, Stephen Mwangangi, his wife, Margaret, and their two children pick bullet chilli peppers meant for export to Europe. The family is one of about 2,000 households that are part of a project called Operation Mwolio Out – Mwolio means food aid in the local Kamba language.

The project began after Bishop Titus Masika from the local Christian Mission Impact ministries saw a story on local television that showed women from the area forcing their teenage daughters to peddle sex for food or money.

…What the residents needed was sustainable employment that would lift them out of poverty. “By implementing advice from the experts and using the traditional knowledge from the residents, we have now successfully eradicated Mwolio. But this was not going to be possible without the involvement of all family members at all stages,” Masika said….

Taking bananas to market in the Mount Kenya region, shot by Neil Palmer (CIAT), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Feminine creativity in the face of natural disasters in Cuba

Ivet González in IPS: Blanca Lima raises all her appliances above flood level, puts boxes of clothes on top of wardrobes, and fills the shelves she installed near the ceiling with all kinds of objects. In less than an hour, she is ready to evacuate her home in case of a flood in the Cuban capital.

“When they announce that there will be a high sea and flooding, I already know where I’m going to put the refrigerator and set up a platform to raise the mattresses. I have weathered so many floods that I now have a whole system for dealing with them,” Lima told IPS.

In their homes, Cuban women come up with strategies to minimise the danger and losses during natural disasters like hurricanes. Gender expert Isabel Moya says women have special talents in terms of organising and empowering their communities during extreme events.

“The strengths of women have helped transform traditional practices and dynamics, in environmental protection and risk management, for example,” Moya told IPS. She advocates the recognition not only of the double workday of women, their jobs and household responsibilities, but of a triple workday, which includes their work in the community.

According to Moya, girls are educated in “the culture of care, a capacity that is later transformed into strong neighbourhood involvement by women. “They relate to each other and establish solidarity among themselves in a different way. These skills can generate a change in community ties,” she said....

A street in old Havana, shot by Angelo Lucia, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Women could play key role in correcting crisis in clean drinking water and sanitation crisis

American Chemical Society: People in ancient Rome 2,000 years ago had better access to clean water and sanitation that keeps disease-causing human excrement out of contact with people than many residents of the 21st century, a scientist said here today.

Women in developing countries could play a major role in remedying the situation, if given the chance, she added. Jeanette A. Brown, Ph.D., spoke on the global crisis in availability of clean water and basic sanitation like toilets and sewage disposal at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society. It was part of a symposium, “International Sustainable Development: Institutional Frameworks.” Abstracts of other presentations appear below.

“It’s a sad fact that much of the world’s population in 2012 has less access to clean water and the most basic sanitation than people living in ancient Rome,” said Brown. “About 2.6 billion people – almost 1 in 3 people in the world ― lack access to even a simple ‘improved’ latrine, or pit toilet. More people have access to a cell phone today than to a toilet.”

Brown said the lack of sanitation and clean water, especially in developing countries of sub-Sahara Africa and south Asia, claims an enormous toll in preventable illness, death and human suffering every year. She is with the University of Connecticut in Storrs, and is immediate past president of the Water Environment Federation, an international organization of water quality professionals headquartered in Alexandria, Va. Estimates indicate, for instance, that it sickens hundreds of millions of people every year, causing 1.6 million deaths from cholera and other diarrheal diseases transmitted by fecal contamination of drinking water.

The problem goes beyond the impoverished conditions that prevail in developing countries, Brown said. She explained that “archaic” cultural practices and attitudes toward women sometimes hinder progress in developing safe drinking water and basic sanitation in villages and towns in these developing nations....

Thomas Cole's "A view near Tivoli," showing a bit of ancient Roman aqueduct

Women 'are the foot soldiers of climate change adaptation'

Amantha Perera in AlertNet: In 2006, when the Asian Development Bank (ADB)  decided to launch a multi-million dollar rural water project in eastern and north central regions of Sri Lanka, there was one overriding requirement – women would be placed in key positions. As a result, experts say, the $263 million program, aimed at providing drinking water to over 900,000 people by 2011, has been a particular success.

In the village of Talpothta, in the rural north-central Polonnaruwa District [of Sri Lanka], the village women’s association is now central to the proper functioning of the new water supply plant provided under the ADB programme. Its members visit the over 200 users, read meters and more importantly advise beneficiaries on water usage when drought sets in.  “We know how much is needed. Women do most of the household work like cooking (and) washing clothes. We ask our members to limit use when we have problems,” said Sheila Herath, an association member.

Kusum Athukorala, one of the country’s leading experts on water management, agrees that women are key to adapting effective measures to deal with water challenges and changing climate patterns. “Women are the foot soldiers of climate change adaptation,” said Athukorala who heads the Network of Women Water Professionals, Sri Lanka (NetWwater) and the Women for Water Partnership....

Women picking tea in Sri Lanka, shot by High Contrast, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license

Caribbean: need for a gender focus in climate change policy

Patricia Grogg in IPS: Incorporating a gender focus in public policies for confronting and adapting to the impacts of climate change is still a pending task in the Caribbean, despite women’s proven skills in risk and disaster management.

Women, especially at the community level, tend to head up the networks trained in disaster evacuation and contingency plans, and play key roles in health measures and shelters during emergencies. But they are also among the most vulnerable, as reflected by statistics on the victims of impacts of extreme weather events.

In 2007, Hurricane Noel claimed 88 lives in the Dominican Republic, and left 14 people missing and 66,000 homeless. The official statistics are not broken down by gender. However, United Nations studies have documented cases of sexual violence against women in emergency shelters, where their burden of domestic work also becomes heavier.

...Experts agree that climate change will lead to more intense hurricanes and more frequent and severe drought and flooding. This threat to people’s lives and to food security makes it even more urgent to address risk management and adaptation to environmental changes with a gender perspective.

But “integrating a gender perspective in these processes requires that public policies be based on an assessment and recognition of the inequalities between men and women and between social classes in society,” said Lourdes Meyreles, a researcher at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in the Dominican Republic....

In Tegucigalpa in 2000, one still saw rubble from Hurricane Mitch in 1998, shot by ZackClark, public domain

Philippine women weathering climate change

Kara Santos in AlertNet via IPS: As the world commemorates International Women's Day today, women around the globe are speaking out on various issues that affect them. In light of recent natural disasters and calamities in the Philippines, women are increasingly citing climate change as one of their most pressing concerns.According to the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW)'s executive director Emmeline Versoza, the traditional role played by women makes them one of the most vulnerable populations to climate change.

"During disasters, women attend to the needs of the family and prioritise the safety of family members, especially their children, which makes them more vulnerable," Versoza told IPS.

The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone nations in the world, with an average of 20 typhoons hitting the country every year. The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction reported that in 2011, a total of 33 natural disasters ravaged various parts of the country, resulting in huge losses of life and massive damages to agricultural produce, infrastructure, and properties.

...Pangging Santos, Advocacy Officer of Sarilaya, a community-based organisation working on women's issues and the environment, told IPS that female farmers are feeling the impact of climate change most acutely. "Extreme weather events have really been on the rise, which has affected the farming sector. When yields are low, it's usually the women farmers who have to find a way to make ends meet," Santos told IPS....

International Women's Day in Davao, 2008, shot by International Women's Day, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Time for Peru to adapt to climate change impact on women’s lives

Mariela Jara in IPS: This year’s unusually rainy season in Peru is having a negative effect on the wellbeing and health of women in rural areas who are forced, for example, to spend three times as much time walking to collect firewood and water. But the authorities continue to turn a blind eye to the problems they face.

“It’s very difficult for us to find firewood, but not only that – since it’s wet because of the rain, we have to dry it so it will burn well, and that is causing us bronchial and lung problems,” María Témpora Pintado, a farmer from Peru’s northern coastal region, told IPS.

Pintado, the president of the district association of women of Tambogrande, a farming valley 950 km north of Lima, described how the women, and often their young children, are exposed to smoke for hours as the firewood dries.

“These tasks are done by the women, who stay in our homes, while the men leave early and come back at night, and do not take part in the collection of water or the care of the children that we have to watch after constantly, to keep the mosquitoes brought by the rain from nesting in their eyes,” she said...

A well in Peru, shot by Mampato, public domain

Rural women are leading the way -- witll the world follow?

IPS: The United Nations’ 56th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) opened Monday in New York, with the empowerment of rural women high on a list of priorities for this year. According to a press release issued last week by UN Women, "Rural women constitute one-fourth of the world’s population. (They) account for a great proportion of the agricultural labour force, produce the majority of food grown, especially in subsistence farming, and perform most of the unpaid care work in rural areas."

Yet, "the livelihoods and well-being of rural women and girls are directly linked to the environment they live in," Lakshmi Puri, assistant-secretary-general and deputy executive director of UN Women, told IPS.

"In many countries, rural women and girls have been directly impacted by the effects of climate change. (Throughout) the Commission on the Status of Women, UN-Women will be listening to rural women from all continents about the ways they have been impacted by climate change and, together with partners, amplifying their voices so that they are heard by world leaders," Puri added.

While the U.N.'s high-level conference is just getting started, women on the ground in the global South are already in the eye of the storm and are busy deploying a combination of indigenous techniques and adaptive agricultural technologies to ward off the impacts of climate change...

Zhuang women harvesting sugar cane in Fusui, Guangxi, China. Shot by Rolfmueller, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Women more vulnerable to climate change, says Nigerian official

The Weekend Observer (Nigeria): The Women Environmental Programme (WEP) has urged the Federal Government to mitigate the effects of climate as it affects women more. The Executive Director of WEP, Mrs. Priscillia Achakpa, made the call in an interview with newsmen in Abuja.

...WEP is a non-governmental organisation established to address the gender injustices on issue relating to the environment, economic and social rights of women.

Achakpa had this to say on an extensive research the programme did in the northern part of the country: “Part of the research we have conducted, what we have found out largely is that women are more vulnerable to the impact of climate change not because it does not affect men. It does, but because of their biological buildup, women are more vulnerable to the impact of climate change.

For instance, if a woman is getting to menopause, the heat waves into the body, is much higher than when she is still in her reproductive age. In terms of ageing, the women age faster than the men when you look at the issues of climate change.”

She also decried a situation where women had to travel five kilometres daily to get firewood and water for household use in the rural areas...

On a street in Kano, Nigeria, shot by andy waite, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Climate change to heap more burden on women

Frazer Potani in Africa News: ... Chikhwawa and Nsanje are among disaster prone areas in Malawi due to climate change. The two areas have in recent years experienced climate change related calamities such as floods because they are bare after trees were previously wantonly cut down; hence there is an urgent need to heal their environment.

The areas’ environmental activities mainly deforestation in the Upper Shire Valley for processing charcoal and poor agricultural practices led to land degradation and soil erosion has even resulted in flooding and siltation of the Shire River and its tributaries.

Climate change related disasters resulting from the environmental degradation activities by residents from the two areas have however, seen them reluctant to move upland especially during rainy season because they depend on fish from the river and crop production yet these livelihoods have become unsustainable.

To rescue the people Malawi Government has with donor support been providing relief items including food during climate change related disasters such as floods and droughts...

Why women are world's best climate change defense

Mary Robinson for CNN (she's the former president of Ireland and the head of a climate justice foundation): Women must make their voices heard in climate negotiations. The role of women as agents of change in their homes, places of work and communities is often underplayed. Yet their role is critical: Women understand the inter-generational aspects of climate change and sustainable development. We women think in time horizons that span the lives of our children and grandchildren. We need to use this understanding to influence the political process and to inject a much needed sense of urgency into the climate change negotiations.

Time is not on our side; report after report has shown this. This is not a trade discussion and we cannot wait until the next meeting or the meeting after that to take action. Time is running out for the planet. 2020 is too late to put a legally binding agreement in place. A legal framework with clear and common rules to which all countries are committed is critically important. It is the only assurance we have that action will be taken to protect the most vulnerable. This COP (U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban) must agree to initiate negotiations towards this end -- with a view to concluding a new legal instrument by 2015 at the latest.

Climate change is a matter of justice. The richest countries caused the problem, but it is the world's poorest who are already suffering from its effects. The international community must commit to righting that wrong.

More: In austere times, world needs a climate change 'Plan B'

For me, a high point of the Durban Conference was that it demonstrated once again the value of women's leadership in global efforts to deal with climate change. The outgoing COP President who did an excellent job in Cancun last year is a woman, Minister Patricia Espinosa. The COP President at Durban is a woman, Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane from South Africa and the Executive Secretary of the Convention is also a woman, Ms Christiana Figueres. Collectively these and other women leaders are playing a vital role in highlighting the gender dimensions of climate change....

Mary Robinson with healthworker Nadhifa Ibrahim Mohamed. She has worked in Trócaire's Dollow Health Centre for 3 years and is a certified midwife, Dollow, Somalia. Jennifer O'Gorman/July 2011/Dollow, Somalia, Trocaire, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Tune climate policy to women for real change

Katie Murray in AlertNet: Women are disproportionately affected by climate change effects, and will continue to be until policy makers at all levels - international, national, and local – acknowledge the problem and actively work to create climate change policies that benefit women as much as men.

Seventy-nine percent of economically active women in developing countries work in agriculture, and they represent 40 to 50 percent of the agriculture sector of most developing countries, according to a Chicago Council of Global Affairs report.

But when climate change adaptation and mitigation policies are made, the voices of women in developing countries are little addressed. Policies are put in place with the belief they will equally benefit men and women. But that is rarely possible because of the different roles men and women play and women’s “historical disadvantages” – things like lack of economic assets and decision-making power, according to Women Watch, a UN information and resource group for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

This is a particular problem because women are so heavily dependent on natural resources – far more than most men. Often women are responsible for collecting water and firewood, and do most of the farming. Working without pay, women provide their families with the essentials: water, food and heat....

Irving Rusinow took this 1941 photo in Taos County, New Mexico. Children help to carry water from the ditch or well for domestic use.

Girls can drive economic growth and social stability

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs: Adolescent girls living in rural areas of the developing world have untapped potential to drive economic development and help meet the world’s future food supply needs, says a new report released by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Girls Grow: A Vital Force in Rural Economies identifies opportunities to empower rural girls to spur economic and social change in their families and communities. Catherine Bertini, 2003 World Food Prize Laureate, serves as the publication’s lead author and chair of the project that produced the report.

Adolescent girls must be a key part of successful agricultural and rural economic development strategies, as they are many of the world’s future farmers, rural leaders, decision makers, and mothers. Rural adolescent girls face a triple challenge due to their location, gender, and age.

The report calls on national governments and bilateral donors to provide services and opportunities that both improve girls’ lives and equip them to be successful economic contributors. Recommended actions include ensuring girls complete secondary school, increasing access to vocational training, eliminating barriers girls face in the work place, building girls’ capacity as decision makers, enhancing health services information and delivery to girls in rural areas, and keeping girls safe.

Special attention is paid to how girls uniquely contribute to agriculture. Women in the developing world make up 43 percent of the agricultural labor force. Girls help with these responsibilities and handle, with their mothers, virtually all domestic chores, including fetching water and carrying firewood....

Women unseen victims of resource wars linked to climate change

Noor Aftab in The News (Pakistan): Experts have indicated that women are more likely to be unseen victims of resource wars and violence directly related to adverse effects of climate change. Bushra Khaliq, general secretary of the Women Workers Helpline, said the phenomenon in years 1999 and 2000 clearly indicated the vulnerability when thousands of poor families had to flee from drought-hit areas of Balochistan where women and children were seen the most suffered sections of society.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, in its report, stated that there is a common perception that it is men who are the farmers . Contrary to this perception, women in Pakistan produce 60-80 per cent of food consumed in the house.

A report of the World Bank also showed that in Pakistan, especially in the mountainous regions, men out-migrate for livelihood opportunities (from 50% to 63% of the households) and it is the women who look after the family s agriculture piece of land along with many other responsibilities.

...Many destructive activities against the environment disproportionately affect them, because most women in Pakistan are dependent on primary natural resources: land, forests, and waters. In case of droughts they are immediately affected, and usually women cannot run away. Men can trek and go looking for greener pastures in other areas and sometimes in other countries...

Women filling water from a reservoir on the way to Mubarak Village in Sindh, Pakistan, shot by Shabbir Siraj, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Empowering women key to climate change

Times Live (South Africa): Climate change can't be solved without empowering women, and global problems can't be solved without addressing climate change, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane says. "Women produce up to 80 percent of the food in the developing world as here in South Africa, and especially in Polokwane," the minister said.

She said in the case of all the wars in Africa women were on the frontline of picking up the pieces, and were the carriers of development, ensuring the survival of communities. "It is known that in Africa, women do 90 percent of the work of gathering water and food. Children that are girls often share these responsibilities.

"In flood prone regions, it is women who have to deal with the impact. In drought prone areas, it is women who have to fend for their families ensuring that the children are fed, and that the sick and the indigent are taken care off," Nkoana-Mashabane said.

Women were at greater risk in times of extreme weather. "Drought and unpredictable rains brought on by climate change will make this work far more precarious. Women will have to labour harder and longer to ensure their families have food, fuel, and water.'...

Girl carrying brother alongside the road leading north from Maputo, shot by Andrew Moir, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license