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ENVIRONMENT: UN
Skips Gender Perspective in Climate Change
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 2 (IPS) - When the United Nations
concluded a two-day debate Thursday on the potential devastation from climate
change, it covered a lot of territory: deforestation, desertification,
greenhouse gases, renewable energy sources, biofuels and sustainable
development.
But one thing the debate lacked, June Zeitlin executive
director of the New York-based Women's Environment and Development Organisation
(WEDO) told IPS, was a gender perspective.
"Women and children are 14 times more likely to die
than men are during a disaster," she said.
In the 2004 Asian Tsunami, 70 to 80 percent of overall
deaths were women. And in the 1991 cyclone disasters that killed 140,000 in
Bangladesh, 90 percent of victims were women.
"Similarly in industrialised countries, more women than
men died during the 2003 European heat wave," Zeitlin told a panel
discussion Tuesday, in advance of a first-ever thematic General Assembly debate
devoted exclusively to climate change.
She also said that following the August 2005 Hurricane
Katrina in the United States, African-American women who were the poorest
population in some of the affected states of Alabama, Louisiana, and
Mississippi faced the greatest obstacles to survival.
She argued that women make up the majority of the world's
poor, and in particular the world's rural poor, and are largely responsible for
securing food, water and energy for cooking and heating.
"These statistics beg the question: Why? And what can
we learn from this to fashion more effective solutions to the climate change
crisis," Zeitlin said.
She told IPS that she was the only one at the panel
discussion to provide a gender perspective about the crisis at hand.
Over 120 of the U.N. member states addressed the Assembly
Wednesday on a subject which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says should be
tackled "head-on."
"I am convinced that this challenge, and what we do
about it, will define us, our era and, ultimately our global legacy," he
told delegates.
"We cannot continue with business as usual," he
noted, "The time has come for decisive action on a global scale."
Speaking on behalf of the 130 developing nations of the
Group of 77, Pakistan's Minister for Environment Mukhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat
said climate change poses serious risks and challenges, particularly to
developing countries.
Therefore, he said, the present crisis demands urgent global
action and response.
"We are concerned about the fact that adverse effects
of climate change and the associated phenomena, including sea level rise and
the increase in frequency and intensity of hurricanes, cyclones, floods and
other weather patterns, as well as de-glaciation, drought and desertification,
threaten the sustainable development, livelihoods and the very existence of
many developing countries."
He particularly singled out countries in Africa, the 50
least developed countries, the land-locked developing countries and disaster
prone developing countries.
The minister said that in order to enable developing countries
to pursue sustainable development and to address the challenges posed by
climate change, developed countries should provide adequate new and additional
financing to support developing countries in their efforts to adapt to climate
change and the response measures designed to address climate change.
He also called for the transfer of technology to developing
countries, including through improved financial instruments and mechanisms.
And most important of all, he said, industrial nations
should implement their commitments made at various U.N. summits and conferences
-- since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio -- relating to economic and social
development and environmental sustainability.
Meanwhile, in a report released here on "Energy and
Gender", the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation said women have
been largely absent in the decision-making process, and their roles in
environmental management are often overlooked.
"There has been little reference to gender in the
international climate change discussions," the study said.
Zeitlin of the Women's Environment and Development
Organisation said women have always been leaders in community revitalisation
and natural resource management.
"Yet women are so often barred from the public sphere
and thus absent from local, national and international decision-making related
to natural disasters and adaptation."
There are plenty of examples where women's participation has
been critical to community survival.
In Honduras, she said, La Masica was the only community to
register no deaths in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in Central America in 1998
due to an early warning system operated by women in the community
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