WUNRN
Women’s
Role in a Warming World
An
Untapped Resource in Climate Adaptation
SOURCE: AP//Gurinder Osan
Women are at the heart of their families’ and communities’ resource management and well-being, and should be full participants in global climate change negotiations.
In June
climate negotiators will reconvene in
Women are likely
to be hit harder by climate change than men due
their social roles and the simple fact that a majority—as much as 70 percent—of
the world's poor are women. As a result, they are much more devastated by natural disasters than men.
One researcher concludes that women are 14 times more likely than men to die in a
natural disaster such as a tsunami. Experts predict climate change will only
exacerbate such inequities.
But over the
last few years the increasing portfolio of climate solutions is beginning to
include gender-sensitive approaches and women's involvement. Observers realize
that women need to be protected, engaged, and empowered for climate solutions
to truly succeed. They also see that a vulnerable segment of the population is
in fact one with mass potential to bring positive change.
Women are a
largely untapped resource that we must use to effectively and justly combat
climate change. They need to be harnessed to prepare communities for global
warming's effects, particularly in developing countries where warming will have
the most severe consequences.
Women in
developing countries have an intimate knowledge of the social and natural
systems global warming affects. They are at the heart of their families' and
communities' resource management and well-being, notably in rural areas. Women
and girls, for example, are responsible for gathering cook stove fuel and
producing 60 percent to 80 percent of the food in
developing countries. According to the United Nations, women in Sub-Saharan
Africa spend 40 billion hours a year collecting water. They
can therefore provide valuable insight when it comes to formulating adaptation
policies and implementing projects as fuel and water become scarcer and
agricultural yields shrink.
The first
step to making women full participants in adaptation is recognizing their value
in international climate negotiations and supporting advocacy group work (more
on both of these below). Next is finding concrete ways to integrate women into
the planning, development, and execution of climate adaptation strategies.
Climate
adaptation strategy literature is minimal, but observers often turn to
experience with disaster risk reduction to craft informed approaches. The
disaster risk reduction community is also giving gender issues more
consideration, which involves evaluating regional, national, and local response
systems through a gender lens, collecting supplemental data, and ensuring women
have equal access to early warning systems and the resources for preparedness
and disaster assistance.
Further,
these techniques are made much more possible and effective with targeted
financing, which is why some advocates argue that part of adaptation funding
should be set aside for gender-specific training, community workshops, and
disaster plans. It's hard to disagree.
U.N.
officials, UNFCCC country delegates, and nongovernmental organizations are
beginning to integrate gender into their discourse and policy pushes. A handful
of NGOs have more publicly championed ěgender justice,î such as the international
antipoverty organization CARE and the Women's Environment and Development Organization,
or WEDO. They held side events at the
Negotiators
seem to be listening. UNFCCC interim negotiating text released in Bonn, Germany
in June 2009 made 13 mentions of gender and 17 of women—a significant
advance over previous texts, which excluded both. During the December meetings,
NGOs maintained pressure to include gender-sensitive language in the final
text, and several governments were on board.
The
Copenhagen Accord—the document that UNCCC delegates agreed to at the final
plenary session of the conference—makes no specific mention of women or gender,
but the tabled Ad Hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action, or
AWG-LCA, text still contains gender-sensitive language (eight references)
that will hopefully be retained through the 16th meeting of the U.N. Conference
of Parties or COP16 in Mexico this year.
Groups like
WEDO and GenderCC
continue to push the United Nations to involve women at high-level climate
negotiations. They note that at
U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—while not explicitly a
We should
similarly place women on the front lines as we craft solutions to abate global
warming and adapt to it. They embody much knowledge, responsibility, and
unrealized potential, and are therefore essential if we're to achieve any
meaningful degree of success.
================================================================
To contact the list administrator, or to leave the list, send an email to:
wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com. Thank you.