17 Aug 2009: ISS Today: Gender and Climate Change: Why Women`s Perspectives Matter

17 August 2009: Gender and Climate Change: Why Women`s Perspectives Matter

 

Rose Mwebaza, Senior Legal Advisor, Environmental Security, ISS Nairobi

 

Although climate change will affect all countries, different regions, generations, classes, income groups and genders will experience its impact differently. Climate change does not affect women and men in the same way and it has and will have a gender-differentiated impact.

 

According to a report published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) the poor, of who up to 70% are women, will be disproportionately affected. Women in Africa are particularly vulnerable and influenced by the adverse impacts of climate change. Their limited adaptive capacities arise from prevailing social inequalities and ascribed social and economic roles that manifest themselves in differences in property rights, access to information, lack of employment and unequal access to resources. Further, climate change usually impact on sectors that are traditionally associated with women in Africa such as food production, water collection for the family and biomass fuel gathering for family cooking and other family energy needs. This means increased hardships for women. From a long-term perspective, this will have serious implications for gender relations in Africa as women may end up spending more time on tasks that reinforce their stereotypical gender roles.

 

Women are the main producers of the world’s staple crops providing up to 90% of the rural poor’s food intake. Maize, Sorghum, millet and groundnut yields have a strong association with the year-to-year variability in Africa. For southern Africa, the productivity is expected to drop by 20-50% in extreme el Niño years further burdening women in their responsibility to meet the food and water needs for their families.

 

Climate variability especially in the East African highlands will affect the relationship between parasite and host, and parasitoids are key agents of control of herbivore populations. An increase in pest outbreaks would not only reduce crop and milk production but also add to the number of hours and resources women have to invest in pest control in order to ensure adequate food provision for their families.

 

A study on disasters in 141 countries provided decisive evidence that gender differences in deaths from natural disasters are directly linked to women’s economic and social rights. In inequitable societies in many parts of Africa, women are more vulnerable to disaster and women and girls are more likely to suffer more from shortages of food and economic resources in the aftermath of disasters. Also, women and children are 14 times more likely to die than men during a disaster, as reported by Nuemayer, E. and Plumper, T (2007) in an article entitled “The Gendered nature of Natural Disasters: The impact of catastrophic events on the Gender Gap on life Expectancy”.

 

Climate change has been recognized as a serious threat to sustainable development, with current and projected impacts on such areas as environment, agriculture, energy, human health, food security, economic activity, natural resources and physical infrastructure.

 

As yet another round of negotiations on climate change opened last week in Bonn Germany, key government negotiators need to critically take into consideration the important role women can play in addressing the challenges posed by climate change. It is important to ensure that the key negotiation working groups namely; the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) include gender specific language and take special cognizance of women’s perspectives especially on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

 

Women’s perspectives must be carefully considered because women are powerful agents of change in many societies in Africa. Women can play a critical role in either hindering or promoting vital climate change mitigation and adaption initiatives relating to energy consumption, deforestation, burning of vegetation, population growth, development of scientific research and technologies and policy making.

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