Climate Change

Gender in Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction Congress

 

Background and Context
    Climate change is the 21st century crisis  but "(I)t still preventable crisis--but only just". The world is now at or near the warmest level on record in the current interglacial period, which began in 12,000 years ago. There is strong evidence that the process is accelerating. The urgency of climate change was underscored by Faith Birol, the Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency: "without serious policy shifts we may be heading toward the double crisis or insecurity and climate change...". The macroeconomics are clear with prevention now costing a good deal less than adaptation late:1% of GDP if we act now and 5-20% if we wait...We must treat the earth as if we intended to stay...". The world has less than a decade to change its course.
    Climate change threatens to erode human freedoms and limit choice and undermines global efforts to combat poverty. Today, an average one person out of 19 developing country will be hit by a climate disaster, compared to 1 out of 1,500 in an OECD country and climate change creates life time traps. Increased exposure to drought, to more intense storms, to floods and environmental stress is holding back the efforts of the world's poor to build a better life for themselves and their children. In short, climate change would stall and reverse progress in human development, including cutting down extreme poverty, health, education and nutrition.
    Key mechanisms through which climate change could stall and then reverse human development:
1) Climate change will affect rainfall, temperature and water availability for agriculture in vulnerable areas-- for example drought affected areas in sub-Saharan Africa could expand by 60-90 million hectares, with dry land zones suffering losses of US 2 billion by 2060; other developing regions will experience losses in agricultural production; those affected by malnutrition could rise to 600 million;
2) Water stress and water insecurity--an additional 1.8 billion people could be living in water scarce environment by 2080; Central Asia, Northern China and the northern part of South Asia face immense vulnerabilities; seven of Asia's great river systems will experience an increase in flows over the short term;
3) Rising sea levels and exposure to climate change--over 70 million people in Bangladesh, 6 million in Lower Egypt and 22 million in Vietnam could be affected; small island states in the Caribbean and the Pacific could suffer catastrophic damage; with over 344 million people currently exposed to tropical cyclones, more intensive storms could have devastating consequences for a large group of companies;
4) Climate change is transforming ecological systems -- with 3 degrees centigrade of warming, 20-30 percent of land species could face extinction.
5) Human health - major killer diseases could expand their reach due to impacts of extreme summer and winter conditions and heat waves; for example, an additional 220-400 million people could be exposed to malaria which already claims 1 million lives annually.
Climate change is global but its effect is local. Hence, concerted actions must be undertaken at local and global levels.
Why Gender and Climate Change?
Differentiated impact of climate change on men and women-- Climate change is not a neutral process; first of all, women are, in general, more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, not just because they represent the majority of the world's poor but also because they are more than proportionally dependent on natural resources that are threatened. The technological change and instruments that are being proposed to mitigate carbon emissions, which are implicitly presented as gender-neutral, are in fact quite gender-biased and may negatively affect women or bypass them.
The negotiation process tends to be driven by a masculine view of the problem and its solutions. Women's participation in the whole process, at international, national and local levels, is very low, both in the South and in the North; skills and resources  need to be developed to overcome this.
Gender, like poverty, is a cross cutting issue in climate change and needs to be recognized as such. In fact, gender and poverty are interrelated and create mutually reinforcing barriers to social change. There is a need to be strident to overcome the uninformed view of many involved in climate change that climate change is neutral, and real life examples are needed to make the alternative case clear and convincing." (Gender and Climate Change web site: http://www.genc.internconnection.org/about.htm).
For example, women comprised the majority of those killed and who were at least likely to recover in the 2005 Asian tsunami. In Aceh, more than 75 percent of those who died were women, resulting in a male-female ratio of 3:1 among the survivors. As so many mothers died, there have been major consequences with respect to infant mortality, early marriage of girls, neglect of girls' education, sexual assault, trafficking of women and prostitution. (in Gender Aspects of Climate Change, Gender and Disaster Network, 2005/REF).
If action on climate change is partly about reducing vulnerability and building resilience then it is important that vulnerable groups do not suffer disproportionately from its adverse effects. Women, figure among such vulnerable groups. (Point de Vue, Bulletin African Bioresources, Oct. 2001).
Lack of Women's Participation-  Women and environment experts have raised concern over the absence of women in the discourse and debate on climate change, a global mainstream issue that is currently impacting on the entire world. "An overall assessment of the climate change debate to date shows women are patently absent in the decision-making process. Their contributions in environmental policies are largely ignored. Decision-making and policy formulation at environmental levels such as conservation, protection and rehabilitation and environmental management are predominantly male agenda. The climate change debate is an indicator of how gender issues tend to be omitted, leaving rooms for complex market-driven notions equated in terms of emission reductions, fungibility and flexible mechanisms. Nevertheless, in the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development reflected in Agenda 21, one notes the key role ascribed to women as principle actors in the management of natural resources and the development of sustainable and ecologically sound policies. Perhaps the fact that there are few trained women environment specialists tends to accentuate this gender deficit in environmental policy. Institutional weakness in women's organizations and under-representation in informal decision-making are factors that lend to swing the pendulum away from their oft-valuable input".
Women can contribute to the solution-  The involvement of women in areas of environmental management and governance should not be perceived as an afterthought. Women's roles are of considerable importance in the promotion of environmental ethics. Their efforts in waste management through recycling are re-use of resources are an indication of the extent of their significant input to community development. Women in rural areas, due to their daily contact with the natural habitat for the provision of food, fodder and wood, tend to have sound ecological knowledge that could be useful in environmental planning and governance.
Women are most vulnerable to the bad effects of climate change and yet women are absent in the decision-making process, the discourse and the debate on climate change, a global mainstream issue that is affecting the entire world. Changing and influencing the course of climate change and preparedness thru disaster risk reduction are the two main strategies which women must understand and engage in.
Women must understand and engage in mainstream issues. And gender must be taken up as part and parcel of these mainstream issues. Women must understand these mainstream issues and how they are affected by it as well as how they can become part of the solution. It is in this spirit that the Third World Congress of Women in Politics and Governance is organized this year, focusing on gender and climate change.
The current imperative is for women to understand the phenomenon of climate change and its impacts and implications at individual, household, community and national levels.
Objectives of the Congress
Overall Purpose
To provide a forum for leaders and decision-makers at all levels in formulating a gender responsive legislation and programs related to gender in climate change and disaster risk reduction.
Specific Objectives:
1) To understand the phenomenon of climate change, its impacts and its implications and study the appropriate risk reduction strategy;
2) To review and examine the gender aspects in climate change and disaster risk reduction and formulate appropriate actions to address these aspects;
3) To define the roles women can play in addressing the impacts of climate change and disaster risk reduction programs and policies at the global, national and sub-national levels; and
4) To identify and define the action agenda for parliamentarians, policy advocates and women leaders to support global and national actions to adapt gender responsive legislation and programs related to gender in climate change and disaster risk reduction.
The Congress Program
The Congress program has been designed to generate discussions on climate change in the community of practitioners, including legislators/parliamentarians and senior executives, who could translate the "global talk" into "local walk" in their respective countries of origin. Legislative action to support adaptive national responses to climate change is a strategic intervention to address the challenge of the century. The emphasis of the Congress is adaptation to climate change and endeavors to define and elaborate actions toward adaptation, risk reduction and preparedness.
Adaptation entails actions that moderate harm or exploit benefits, of climate change. Mitigation entails actions that minimizes or cushions the adverse impacts of climate change. Preparedness and disaster risk reduction is about building individual and community capacities to position themselves and their communities so that the likelihood of climate change-induced disasters is reduced; the intensity or adverse impacts of disasters are cushioned and that inhabitants are able to respond promptly, expeditiously and effectively.
And in all these actions, special attention will be given to defining how women and gender could be mainstreamed. In other words, the Congress should define how women can be given the social space to participate, influence and benefit from the global and local responses to climate change.
Discussions on gender and climate change adaptation and risk reduction are organized in three (3) major plenary sessions on the first two days of the Congress. The discussions are intended to shed light on key issues, such as the following:
Conference Mechanics
Opening Ceremonies: The Congress will open with welcome remarks from CAPWIP and short messages from its partners and co-organizers. Officials from the Philippine Senate and the House of Representatives will have brief welcome remarks as well. Keynote address will be delivered by the heads of the United Nations International Society for Disaster Risk Reduction (UN-ISDR), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). There will be video tape messages from the United Nations Environment Program and the Founder of the Greenbelt Movement of Kenya.
CAPWIP has designated Facilitators to ensure the smooth flow of the sessions. All sessions will be documented and tape recorded. Participants to parallel sessions will designate a chair, rapporteur/presentor from among them. Staffs from CAPWIP Secretariat have been designated to assist each of the parallel sessions in the recording of their proceedings. Discussion guides will be provided for the parallel sessions and will be circulated accordingly. As well, the Facilitator will provide instructions and guides for the small group presentations to the Plenary Session. The results of the various discussion groups will be synthesized and presented in the final Plenary Session.
Results of the Congress
A CALL TO ACTION and a legislative agenda are expected to emerge out of the discussions during the Congress. These two (2) outputs will be used to guide future action and programming in response to climate change and will be handed by Congress organizers to the UN System through its various partners. The results will serve as a tool for advocacy at the national and global levels to urge national authorities to take action for climate change adaptation and risk reduction. Their attention will be called to pay attention to gender aspects of impacts and national responses.
Post Congress Actions
Papers will be compiled, edited and eventually published into a resource book. The proceedings of the Congress will be prepared and disseminated to all participants.
Congress Organizers and Partners
Congress Schedule
The Congress was held from October 19-22, 2008 and the Dusit Thani Hotel, Makati City, Philippines.
CONGRESS PAPERS FOR DOWNLOAD
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
CONGRESS VIDEOS
CONGRESS PHOTOS
 

 

Gender, climate change linked together in Danish torch ceremony

 Women suffer the most from consequences of climate change. Gender issues must be considered as we react to climate changes. Today UNDP Administrator Helen Clark made a commitment to focus on gender and climate change as she received a MDG3 Torch from Danish Minister of Development Cooperation Ulla Toernaes.

 

 “Gender and climate changes are closely interlinked. One example being women facing greater challenges collecting water at wells as climate changes cause more severe droughts. Women and girls play a significant role in agriculture in many developing countries – agriculture being one of those areas likely to be affected the most by climate changes according to UN. An agreement on climate changes should recognize women’s position and special needs. For that I am very delighted that Helen Clark today as she received the Torch accepted to focus on gender and climate,” says Ulla Toernaes.

Receiving the MDG3 Torch Helen Clark committed UNDP to advocate for women with regard to climate change and to raise their voices in the negotiations leading up to COP15 to secure that women’s needs and perspectives are to be taken into consideration as well. 

 “Today I accepted commitments to focus on gender issues in negotiations prior to COP15. Together with partners in UNEP, IUCN, and WEDO, we in the UNDP will support delegates from the developing countries on gender issues and climate change. In UNDP we will also support female environment ministers taking the lead on a wide range of activities. UNDP will also continue its efforts to secure equal economic possibilities for men and women in the world’s poorest countries,” UNDP Helen Clark said.

Source: http://content.undp.org/go/newsroom/2009/september/gender-climate-change-are-linked-together-in-danish-torch-ceremony.en 

 

 

Australia

Is Australia's Climate Policy Gender Literate?

When governments and think tanks deliberate on strategies for combatting climate change, they'll very likely bypass one highly salient variable. This variable is that global warming's causes, effects, and solutions, are gendered. Do those who frame Australia's climate change policy take into account that women's ecological footprint is negligible in comparison with men's or that women and children will be the main victims of global warming? Will Australian climate change policy rectify women's under-representation at every level of climate change negotiations?

Sociological factors are rarely considered in the climate change dialogue, although the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change does have potential in this respect. The phrase 'common but differentiated responsibilities' acknowledges socio-economic differences and the historical role of the industrialised North in causing unsustainable greenhouse emissions. However, this phrase 'common but differentiated responsibilities' might also be given a gendered meaning. For it is quite apparent that decisions about development models and energy consumption are driven overwhelmingly by high resource-consuming males.

Gendered consumption, transport, and leisure

One way to illustrate the systematic gender difference of the impact of climate change is to use the ecological footprint indicator. This measure compares the food, shelter, mobility and waste disposal area required to maintain the standard of living of an average individual in one country against another. In the USA, for example, the individual footprint is 12.5 hectares, while in India it is 1 hectare. 

High tech economies likewise reveal gendered patterns of resource use. Swedish research finds men's ecological footprint in that nation to be remarkably larger than women's. On average, men (as a social category) are found to be big consumers of energy expensive manufactures and durable assets like houses, cars, and computers, while Swedish women are mainly purchasing weekly domestic consumption items - nature's perishables. Women's ecological footprint is smaller again, if adjusted for the fact that most shop for other household members.

A European Parliament report, Women and Transport in Europe, shows that EU men make trips by car for a single purpose, and over longer distances than women do. Conversely, it is mainly women who travel by public transport or on foot. When women use private cars, it is for multiple short journeys meeting several purposes on the one outing. The reason for this complex activity pattern is that even among women in the waged workforce, most undertake reproductive or domestic labour for husbands, children, or elderly parents: the double shift. Women's days are characterised by multi-tasking and so their transport needs have 'spatio-temporal scatter' - from office to kindergarten to supermarket, for example.

Of course, it is important to not ignore class and generational differences between women. Around the world, the number of childfree career women is increasing, with their transport footprint becoming more like that of men in the waged productive sector. But these emancipated women remain a statistical minority. Generally the pattern in industrialised economies is that men have determinate job hours and simpler schedules than working women, so could more easily use public transport options, but they don't - at least in Europe.

Again, this choice is a gendered one, having to do with structural differences in earning capacity. Internationally, women are concentrated in lower salaried jobs, and even when they enjoy the same careers as men, their wages are lower. Thus, it is mainly men who have money available for purchasing big status cars, as well as time available for leisure pursuits. Here they favour high energy consuming recreations like motorbikes, computerised entertainments, speed boats, and golf courses. Speed and technology are associated with the psychology of masculine prowess. By contrast, due to the time consuming double shift of work and home, women's leisure footprint is all but non-existent.

Internalised or externalised responsibility?

Economic scarcity and ecological stress extract more time from women's lives. But women tend to meet fewer resources by using good organisation and time management. This internalised response to environmental conditions contrasts with the standard political practice of externalising or displacing problems on to less powerful sections of the community. The Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is one such approach, in this instance, costs of the North's consumer lifestyle are displaced on to lives in the global South.

Meike Spitzner, an author of the Women and Transport in Europe study, says that men interviewed about solutions to social and environmental problems, prefer technological end-of-pipe remedies. (2) This policy choice is another form of deferred or displaced responsibility. Thus, whereas women readily adjust their own energy consumption habits, far too many men opt for risky responses to climate change like nuclear power, or ecologically untested solutions like ocean sequestration. This high tech tunnel vision is encouraged by the fact that many collateral impacts of industrial growth are not experienced by men. They are remain uncounted as 'economic externalities' and left for women to pick up. A greater awareness of social consequences therefore, leads women to resist risky technologies. As feminists say: 'the personal is political!'

Women's socially reproductive labour results in their having expertise in the management of living resources - ecological and human ones. These skills derive from subsistence agriculture in many regions of the global South, and from domestic care giving work in industrialised countries. Most women's up front precautionary perspectives on climate change support an eco-sufficiency model of economics, one that internalises responsibility for economic provisioning in a cradle to cradle way. By contrast, the dominant masculine public model is fast forward production, externalisation of responsibility, then ad hoc bandaid repair.

These observations on the asymmetry of learned gender norms, responsibilities, and capacities, apply just as much in the global South as in the North, and so an international cohort of women is now monitoring the IPCC, aiming to bring the Kyoto Protocol into line with international agreements on women's rights. To help governments synchronise their international treaty commitments, Women for Climate Justice enlists the Beijing 1995 Platform of Action, inviting nations and international agencies to get their heads around the multiple structural links between gender and environments; to empower women in research and program design and at decision making fora. But first, it is critical to provide gender disaggregated national statistics for the energy sector.

In Australia, it is promising that the interim report of the Garnaut Climate Change Review seeks to distance itself from 'business as usual' approaches and is receptive of alternatives. But at this stage, it does not look as though the Garnaut Review will be able to consider the crucial dimension of gender in its report. Professor Garnaut's open agenda is compromised by his terms of reference. The first of these terms (1) 'the maintenance of rising living standards' is snared by the contradiction which underpinned World Commission on Environment and Development convened by the United Nations and chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland in 1983 - the thermodynamic nonsense of 'growth plus sustainability'. This undermines the feasibility of term (2) 'contribution to a global approach', and (3) 'fair distribution of burdens among individuals and nations'. It is twenty years since Brundtland's report, Our Common Future appeared, and the Garnaut team deserves an opportunity to demonstrate how environmental understanding has evolved since then.

Women want public transit systems not subsidies for hybrid vehicle design. Women want prior community impact assessments of CDMs for our neighbours in Indonesia or PNG. The methodology of 'contraction and convergence' supported by Garnaut is an excellent guide, as long as it is read through the lens of 'common but differentiated responsibilities'. Thus, in a geopolitical sense, nations of the global South should not be obliged to carry the externalised costs the North's growth. And, in a gendered sense, women should not be obliged to carry the externalised costs of bad economic decisions made by powerful men.

Global warming causes, effects, and solutions are gendered, and therefore, gender justice is a prerequisite of sound environmental governance. - Will Environment Minister Penny Wong be in a position to take on board findings about the ecological footprint? Can the Rudd Government climb over the flawed logic of Brundtland? The absence of gender literacy among policy analysts, academic researchers, and even many climate change activists in Australia indicates that urgent 'capacity building' is wanted. For without a grasp of basic sociological notions like gender difference, it will be impossible to identify accurate long term global warming strategies or to implement workable short term ones.

 

References

(1) See the research housed at GENANET and Women for Climate Justice.

(2) Meike Spitzner, 'How Climate Change is Gendered' in Ariel Salleh (ed.), Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice (London: Pluto Press, forthcoming).

More About the Author

Ariel Salleh is a Research Associate in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney. She has taught at NYU; Institute for Women's Studies, Manila; York University, Toronto; and was Associate Professor in Social Ecology at UWS for a number of years. Her ideas are widely debated in eco-politics and ecological ethics. She recently served on the Australian Government's Gene Technology Ethics Committee and is a co-editor of the international journal Capitalism Nature Socialism. Some of her work can be accessed here. 

International Negotiations

WENA speaks at UN Climate Summit!

Statement by the Women and Gender Constituency for the AWG - KP Closing Plenary, Copenhagen 15th December 2009

   

Or you can read the text:

Mr Chairman, my name is Jo Tenner, I come from Australia which is among the world’s highest per capita emitter of greenhouse gas. I speak today on behalf of GenderCC, the Gender and Women’s Constituency and the Women’s Caucus.

Gender is about all of us, men and women, it is critical to understanding the social and economic context in which policies, programs and legislation are constructed. This is no less true in the case of a global climate change agreement.

The focus of my comments is the mitigation dimensions of climate change. As we know the vast majority of emissions have come from developed countries, when we examine the attitudes of their people we find that mitigation is gendered.

Significantly, in the countries that will have to undertake the greatest mitigation efforts, women express higher levels of concern about climate change as well as greater levels of willingness to take action in their own lives to mitigate climate change.

Unfortunately, this level of concern is not matched by women's representation in decision making on climate change, nor are women adequately enabled to take actions in our own lives to abate emissions.

Many women have undertaken activities to lessen their carbon footprint but in the absence of an effective international framework, these efforts are negated by the continued growth in emissions.

An acceptable outcome from these negotiations includes both: very ambitious, effective commitments from developed countries in the form of emission cuts and funding for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, as well as strong language on gender. Only one of these two is not sufficient. Developed nations must resolve to do this, the women of your countries expect nothing less.

Thankyou.

Your Chance to Talk to the Chief of the Climate Negotiations

 

Christiana Figueres, the UNFCCC chief, wants to engage women in a discussion on the role of women in responding to climate change. 

 

 

Join the Twitter chat with Christiana Figueres 24 October 2011, 17:00 -18:00 CEST.

 

Unfortnately, this works out to be Tuesday, 25th October 2011 at 4am in Melbourne, so if you are a night owl, early bird, join in. 

If you can't, send me your questions and I will ask some collegues the more amenable time zones to post them on twitter for you.

 

 

How to Join the discussion
To participate, all you need is a Twitter account. Follow the hashtag #climatewomen to keep track of the conversation and use the same hashtag in your posts if you would like to comment to all users following the conversation. If you want to ask Christiana Figueres a question, you can address the question to @CFigueres, but it is best that you also follow the @CFigueres account so you may see all the questions from other users and answers to those questions.

 

Not on Twitter - No Worries
If you don't have a twitter account you can follow the stream from this page: http://unfccc.int/home/items/6307.php

If you have a burning question to ask and no twitter account let me know and I will send your question for you.