Vibhuti Patel
Mainstreaming of Gender Concerns in Discourse on Climate Change:
As women bear a disproportionate burden of climate change consequences, women’s groups working with rural and tribal organizations are lobbying for gender mainstreaming of women’s concerns in discourse on climate change. Women’s groups in India are seriously concerned about impact of climate change on women’s survival struggles in rural and urban areas. Women scientist such as Dr. Jyoti Parikh and Dr. Vandana Shiva played crucial role in engendering the discourses by coming out with World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and The Rights of Mother Earth Indigenous Peoples’ Declaration on Wednesday, April 28, 2010. This declaration has been rallying point for highlighting gender concerns in Climate Change debate advocated by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Practical Gender Needs are those that Women identify in their socially accepted roles in society. Practical gender needs do not challenge the gender divisions of labour or women’s subordinate position in society, although rising out of them. Practical gender needs are a response to immediate perceived necessity, identified within a specific context. (Moser, 1993, p40)
Strategic Gender Needs are the needs women identify because of their subordinate position to men in their society… They relate to gender divisions of labour, power and control and may include such issues as legal rights, domestic violence, equal wages and women’s control over their bodies. Meeting strategic gender needs helps women to achieve greater equality. (Moser, 1993, p39).
The distinction between these two types of needs can provide a useful tool to aid us in analyzing how gender is being addressed in proposed policy or project interventions when faced with challenges arising due to Climate change. .
Decreased food security: With changes in climate, traditional food sources become more unpredictable and scarcer. This exposes women to loss of harvests, often their sole sources of food and income.
Impact on livelihoods: Women are more dependent for their livelihood on natural resources that are threatened by climate change. For instance, climate change causes a rise in the sea level, affecting the fishing community (both men and women) not only in terms of fish‐catch but also with regard to water scarcity, as seawater gets into fresh water. Besides, when the land is inundated, infrastructure (roads and houses) are damaged. Large scale migration from inundated areas is expected and much of the burden of migration falls on women.
Water resources ‐ shortage and access: Climate change may exacerbate existing shortages of water. Women are largely responsible for water collection in their communities and therefore are more affected when the quantity of water and/or its accessibility changes.
Increased burden of care giving: As primary caregivers, women may see their responsibilities increase as family members suffer increased illness due to exposure to vector borne diseases such as malaria, water borne diseases such as cholera, and increase in heart stress mortality.
Women are particularly vulnerable because they are more prone to the adverse impacts from climate change. Their limited adaptive capacities arise from prevailing social inequalities and ascribed social and economic roles that manifest in differences in property rights, access to information, lack of employment and unequal access to resources. Further, changes in the climate usually impact on sectors that are traditionally associated with women, such as paddy cultivation, cotton and tea plantations, and fishing. This means increased hardship for women.
For example, studies show that climate change has an adverse impact on fishing, as the sea level rises and saline water enters into freshwater systems, making fishing difficult. Further, in extreme events more women deaths are observed for women’s inability to swim or run or lack of strength to withstand physically demanding situation such as storms, floods, typhoons, etc.
From a long term perspective, this will have serious implications for gender relations, as women may end up spending more time on tasks that reinforce stereotypical gender roles. Thus, women are faced by a situation where their ability to adapt is low but the share of the adaptation burden falling disproportionately on them. This makes the consideration of the impact of climate change on gender most imperative.
Adaptation
The fundamental goal of adaptation strategies is the reduction of the vulnerabilities to climate induced change in order to protect and enhance the livelihoods of poor people. Experience shows that vulnerability is differentiated by gender. Adaptation to climate change or indeed climate variability is dependent on issues such as wealth, technological power, access to information, all of which are major problem areas for women. However, women can be key agents of adaptation and mitigation to climate change. Their responsibilities in households, communities and as stewards of natural resources position them well to develop strategies for adapting to changing environmental realties.
Mitigation
Women also have a role deriving from their own strength. Women are engaged in a number of activities such as brick‐making, charcoal‐making, waste management and agro‐processing where energy efficiency can lead to Carbon Dioxide (CO2) mitigation and their role in mitigation in these areas can be vital. The development of Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM), through carbon sequestration from afforestation and reforestation can also be done by poor rural women. Women in urban areas can implement energy efficiency programmes at the household level ‐ lighting, the use of appliances, etc., while women in rural areas may be encouraged to use biomass and biogas (for fuel generation), and switch to solar energy.
Poor women, without access to modern energy fuels are faced with problems relating to indoor air pollution and bear huge health burdens as a result – there is a high incidence of bronchitis, asthma and other health problems. While women should not be denied the use of fossil fuels like LPG or Kerosene, yet at the same time appropriate technologies that take into account the specific socio‐economic realities of different rural areas reduce women’s workload, free‐up time and enable them to pursue income generating or other activities that need to be developed.
What is the way forward?
It is clear that gender differences must be taken into account to understand the impact of climate change. Gender differentiated strategies for responses and capacity‐building are needed due to differences in gender specific roles and responsibilities created by society. These findings should feed into the climate negotiations as well as national debates to enable decision‐makers to have a better understanding of how different groups of people are affected and what kind of capacity and support is needed.
More specifically the following actions are required:
- Recognise that women are more vulnerable in climate change driven scenarios:
Government should analyze and identify gender‐specific impacts and protection measures related to floods, droughts, diseases, and other environmental changes and disasters. An inter‐ministerial task force could be set up towards this end. - Understand and address gender‐specific natural resource use pattern:
Government should develop strategies to enhance women’s access to and control over natural resources, in order to reduce poverty, protect environmental resources, and ensure that women and poor communities can better cope with climate change. - Identify women’s particular skills and capacities that lend themselves to mitigation and adaptation:
Given that women’s knowledge and participation has been critical to the survival of entire communities in disaster situations, government should take cognizance of women’s specialized skills in different aspects of their livelihood and natural resource management strategies and utilize those that lend themselves to mitigation and adaptation. Increase women’s participation in decision‐making at all levels in climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Conclusion
It is crucial to acknowledge the contribution of rural and urban women as “Guardians and Promoters of Life-Centered Cultures”, seed savers, leaders of resistance movements (Chipko in Himalayas, Appiko in Karnataka, Save Aarey in Mumbai), commendable role Kutumshree when Kerala Faced devastating floods in 2018, 2019 and 2021, collective efforts of SHGs to generate alternative farming/market/banking models (Green-belt Movement in Africa, Navdanya in Dehradun). Women’s full humanity becomes the healing force that can break the vicious cycle of violence based on treating the inhumanity of man as the measure of being human, of greed as the organizing principle of the economy.
What has changed is greater awareness. Women, even in rural India, now understand better the larger issues like climate change that affect them directly, as is evident in this declaration adopted at a training programme on Gender, Climate Change and Food Security on November 16, 2011, at Saharanpur in UP: ‘… Women hold the key to food security, and it is important that women’s contributions to agriculture and food security be documented, recognised and celebrated.’
Women are refusing to be part of the culture of hate and violence. Women, in and through their lives, are showing that love and compassion, sharing and giving are not just possible human qualities; they are necessary qualities for us to be human. Living cultures are cultures of life, based on reverence for all life – women and men, rich and poor, white and black, Christian and Muslim, human and nonhuman.
In India are involved in 11 types of environmentalism: wildlife management, conservation, preservation, reform environmentalism, deep ecology, environmental justice, environmental health, ecofeminism, Eco spiritualism, animal rights and green movements. For promoting gender-responsive and inclusive state climate change plans in India, we as economists will have to seek answers to questions like
- Is there gender disaggregated data on impacts of climate change?
- Are the gender differential impacts of adaptation measures understood and addressed?
- Do the adaptation programmes reach poor women?
- Are there ‘additional’ financial resources for women and men?
- Are women present in the decision-making structures in climate-sensitive areas?
- Is there recognition of rights/entitlements for poor women and men in adaptation programmes?
Crucial mandate for us is to initiate an inter-disciplinary public debate involving scientists, social scientists, practitioners, planners and policy makers on gender and climate change, including catalysing more research on the subject and wide dissemination of the outputs of these researches through niche scientific journals and popular media, public meetings and mobilization of youth.
References:
- Health Action. Combating Climate Change, Special Number, Secunderabad: HAFA National Monthly, Vol. 31, No.8, August 2018.
- Health Action. Combating Climate Change and Health, Special Number, Secunderabad: HAFA National Monthly, Vol. 35, No.8, August 2022.
- Maathai, Wangari. The Challenge for Africa. New York: Anchor Books, 2009.
- Moser, Carolyn. Gender, Planning and Development: Theory, Practice and Training, New York: Rutledge, 1993.
- Patel, Vibhuti and Karne, Manisha. Macro-Economic Policies and the Millennium Development Goals. Delhi: Gyan Publications, 2006.
- Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed Books, 1988.
- Shiva, Vandana. Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. London: South End Press, 2005.
Websites:
Vibhuti Patel is a distinguished Visiting Professor IMPRI and Former Professor, TATA Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.
Part 1 Gender, Climate, and Development: An Ecofeminist Perspective on Women’s Vulnerabilities
Part 2 Gendered Impacts of Climate Change: Ownership, Inequality, and Adaptation Strategies
The article was first published in People’s Reporter as Gender Concerns- In Climate Change Discourses.
Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.
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Acknowledgment: This article was posted by Bhaktiba Jadeja, a research intern at IMPRI.
