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A quake
survivor waits for aid amid the ruins of her house in |
BANGKOK,
13 October 2009 (IRIN) - Women are being excluded from the debate over climate
change, despite being most at risk, and governments should do more to ensure
their situations and views are represented, campaigners and experts say.
So far,
climate change negotiations have responded poorly to the effects on women,
activists say. And while global policies advocate a gender perspective, and
including women in environment and development efforts, few governments have
incorporated such policies into their national plans.
"Extreme
events and environmental degradation become a women's issue because we are
responsible for providing for the whole community," said Anna Pinto,
programme director with the Centre for Organisation, Research and Education
(CORE), based in northeastern
"If
the rice yield is bad, men have to migrate, find a job and send money back,
while women have to ensure the day-to-day survival of the helpless.
"When
the environment degrades it becomes more of a women's problem. These issues
need to be genderised on behalf of everyone," she said.
UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last month called for women to have a greater
role in climate change debates. "The special perspective of women is often
overlooked in global discussions on climate change," Ban told an event on
women's leadership held in
Climate
change-related weather events claim between two and three times as many female
as male victims, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
"Women
are prone to more danger," Robert Dobias, the ADB's senior adviser on
climate change, told IRIN. "It's the clothes they wear. Maybe they will
run back and get the kids. They are often not in public places where
information surfaces about disasters," he said at the sidelines of recent
climate-change negotiations in Bangkok.
Excluded from
adaptation
"Well-designed,
top-down approaches to adaptation can play a role in reducing vulnerability to
climate change; yet they may fail to address the particular needs and concerns
of women," said Christina Chan, senior policy analyst for CARE International.
In
Africa, women farmers produce up to 80 percent of the continent's food,
according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
However,
because most women work in the subsistence sector, they cannot take part in
market-based adaptation schemes, according to Rose Enie, from Women for Climate
Justice (GenderCC).
|
A Vietnamese farmer tends her
crop of Jatropha, which grows in extremely arid conditions and produces a
seed used to create bio-fuel (file photo). Activists say more women should
become involved in new technology |
"It doesn't work for women
because they are mostly in the informal sector," she said.
Campaigners
say such omissions mean women will continue to be bypassed by
resilience-building initiatives - including access to land, credit, support
services, new technologies and decision-making.
In
addition, women are particularly overlooked when it comes to the development of
environmentally friendly technology that can be used in their daily activities,
said GenderCC's Ulrike Roehr.
"Men
tend to look at big-scale technology, while needs for smaller-scale technology,
such as energy-efficient cooking stoves, are not taken into
consideration," Roehr told IRIN.
"These
are the technologies which help in reducing women's double and triple burdens,
having benefits not only for emissions reduction, but also for poverty
reduction and health," she said.
Alternative energy
Women
and the communities they look after could be big losers in schemes being
considered by governments to mitigate the emission of greenhouse gases,
activists say.
These
include plans to preserve forests, so trees can absorb and store carbon in the
air. The UN's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD)
scheme, for example, will see large areas of land closed to women who had
hitherto depended on the fuel, medicine, food and fodder they could find there,
said Jeannette Gunung, director of Women Organising for Change in Agriculture
and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN).
"Women's
exclusion from forests is not new, but as long as forest land had little
economic value they could get away with these practices," Gunung told
IRIN.
"When
the resource becomes of central importance, women have little voice in
decision-making and are denied access," she said.
Yet
environmentally friendly solutions, such as the use of biogas - flammable gas
produced by the fermentation of organic material - as an alternative and
cleaner source of energy than firewood, are available, Gunung said.
"Once
planners put rural women's needs as a priority, they will come up with
solutions that involve sustainable forest management and alternative energy
resources," she said.
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