women and climate change

MIDLANDS STATE UNIVERSITY By Kudakwashe mwakusha QUESTION: “Another albatross around the neck of the African woman.” Is this a fair assertion of the impact of climate change on Africa? Climate change is the great environmental challenge facing the global community in the 21st century. Women form a disproportionately large share of the poor in countries all over the world. Women in rural areas in developing countries are highly dependent on local natural resources for their livelihood, because of their responsibility to secure water, food and energy for cooking and heating. The effects of climate change, including drought, uncertain rainfall and deforestation, make it harder to secure these resources. By comparison with men in poor countries, women face historical disadvantages, which include limited access to decision-making and economic assets that compound the challenges of climate change. The threat of climate change, manifested in the increase of extreme weather conditions such as, droughts, storms or floods, has been recognized as a global priority issue. Climate change is a sustainable development challenge, with broad impacts not only on the environment but also on economic and social development. The effects of climate change will vary among regions, and between different generations, income groups and occupations as well as between women and men. Due, in part, to their lower adaptive capacities, developing countries and people living in poverty are likely to experience significant impacts. And in these developing countries women and girls will be hardest hit. Climate change has serious ramifications in four dimensions of food security: food availability, food accessibility, food utilization and food systems stability. Women farmers currently account for 45-80 per cent of all food production in developing countries depending on the region. About two-thirds of the female labour force in developing countries, and more than 90 percent in many African countries, are engaged in agricultural work. In the context of climate change, traditional food sources become more unpredictable and scarce. Women face loss of income as well as harvests—often their sole sources of food and income. Related increases in food prices make food more inaccessible to poor people, in particular to women and girls whose health has been found to decline more than male health in times of food shortages. Furthermore, women are often excluded from decision-making on access to and the use of land and resources critical to their livelihoods. For these reasons, it is important that the rights of rural women are ensured in regards to food security, non-discriminatory access to resources, and equitable participation in decision-making processes. In the rural areas of Africa and Asia, men in general and women in particular are highly dependent on biomass, such as wood, agricultural crops, wastes and forest resources for their energy and livelihoods. However, in the face of climate change, the ability of women and men to obtain these indispensable resources is reduced. It is important to note that the declining biodiversity does not solely impact the material welfare and livelihoods of people; it also cripples access to security, resiliency, social relations, health, and freedom of choices and actions. The majority of the biodiversity decline has a disproportionate impact primarily on poor people in developing countries. To give a few examples, declining fish populations have major implications for artisanal fishers and communities that depend on fish. Moreover, in many parts of the world, deforestation has meant that wood - the most widely used solid fuel - is located further away from the places where people live. In poor communities in most developing countries, women and girls are responsible for collecting traditional fuels, a physically draining task that can take from 2 to 20 or more hours per week. As a result, women have less time to fulfil their domestic responsibilities, earn money, engage in politics or other public activities, learn to read or acquire other skills, or simply rest. Girls are sometimes kept home from school to help gather fuel, perpetuating the cycle of disempowerment. Moreover, when environmental degradation forces them to search farther afield for resources, women and girls become more vulnerable to injuries from carrying heavy loads long distances, and also face increased risk of sexual harassment and assault. Climate change has significant impacts on fresh water sources, affecting the availability of water used for domestic and productive tasks. The consequences of the increased frequency in floods and droughts are far reaching, particularly for vulnerable groups, including women who are responsible for water management at the household level. All over the developing world, women and girls bear the burden of fetching water for their families and spend significant amounts of time daily hauling water from distant sources. The water from distant sources is rarely enough to meet the needs of the household and is often contaminated, such that women and girls also pay the heaviest price for poor sanitation. To give an example, in cases where the arsenic contamination of groundwater is prominent, increased flood levels intensify the rate of exposure among rural people and other socio-economically disadvantaged groups. The resulting health problems include: lesions, the hardening of skin, dark spots on hands and feet, swollen limbs and the loss of feeling. Arsenic exposure also manifests itself in the form of skin lesions that usually have negative social repercussions for arsenic-poisoning (arsenicosis) victims—the situation is particularly worse for women who can be shunned, excluded, and stigmatised, based on physical appearance— this also impacts the ability of single women to get married, and in many cases unmarried women are more vulnerable to poverty and social exclusion. Given the changing climate, inadequate access to water and poor water quality does not only affect women, their responsibilities as primary givers, and the health of their families’, it also impacts agricultural production and the care of livestock; and increases the overall amount of labour that is expended to collect, store, protect and distribute water. For In terms of health, some potential climate change scenarios include: increased morbidity and mortality due to heat waves, floods, storms, fires and droughts. What’s more, the risk of contracting serious illnesses is aggravated by environmental hazards caused by climate change. In addition to the reference provided above of climate impacting women’s health through water scarcity and water contamination, an abundance of evidence links the evolution and distribution of infectious diseases to climate and weather. This entails a greater incidence of infectious diseases such as cholera, malaria, and dengue fever, due to the extension of risk seasons and wider geographic distribution of disease vectors. Whilst climate defines the geographical distribution of infectious diseases, weather influences the timing and severity of epidemics. Diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, for example, are particularly sensitive to variations in climate. Warmth accelerates the biting rate of mosquitoes and speeds up the maturation process of the parasites they carry. Sub-Saharan Africa is already home to the most efficient mosquito species and to the most severe forms of malaria. Rising temperatures are likely to accelerate the lifecycle of the malaria parasite and to spread malaria to new areas. Furthermore, floods—increasing consistently with climate change—may also increase the prevalence of water-related diseases, especially water and vector-borne diseases, which affect millions of poor people each year. In addition, an increase in prevalence of diseases will likely aggravate women’s care-giving of family and community members who are ill. These diseases include malaria, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis and diarrheoa. The majority of women in third world countries are in rural areas where poverty hits hardest. These are also the areas that are climate sensitive. These women make the majority of illiterate women who lack access to information, technology, technological know-how, training, health etc (Welshenman, et al, 1997 and McFadden, 1992). Most such women do not own the means of production e.g. land , machinery and capital despite changes in legal instruments. This entrenches them more and more in poverty. Historically, these women were affected by colonial peasantisation. They made up 90% of agricultural workers. However, they had no access to and control of land, seeds, credit facilities etc. These were registered in male names. Males took produce of single crops like maize, cotton, palms and tobacco to marketing boards (Marcus and Dunklin 1998) Money became a medium of exchange in the colonial era, but women were not part of that money economy. Women produced for commercial purposes but only controlled crops that had to do with subsistence (consumption). Climate change has serious implications for women’s human rights. Studies show that global warming and extreme weather conditions may have calamitous human rights consequences for millions of people. Global warming is one of the leading causes and greatest contributors to world hunger, malnutrition, exposure to disease, and declining access to water. Moreover it poses limitations to adequate housing, spurring the loss of livelihoods as a result of permanent displacement. Climate change affects the economic and social rights of countless individuals; this includes their rights to food, health and shelter. As climate change will inevitably continue to affect humanity, a key UN priority is safeguarding the human rights of people whose lives are most adversely affected. Climate change effect all sort of people around the world and but the main group of people that will be affected the most is the poor population of the world in general and women in particular. This is based on the facts that they rely mostly on their natural resource base for instance agriculture, fisheries and tourism activities. These types of industries are known as the climate sensitive industries which contribute to a vital number of national gross domestic products (GDP). Agriculture share in total GDP at world stage is approximately 13% in developing countries and 2% in developed countries. Niasse (2004) state that Africa is considered the most vulnerable region in the world in terms of climate change, because some of its physical and socio-economic characteristics for instance, the fragility of its economy, predisposes it to be disproportionately affected by adverse effects of climate change. Today recurrent extreme climate events such as floods, cyclones and droughts are devastating most economic, social and environmental systems in Africa. In many of these contexts, women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than men—primarily as they constitute the majority of the world’s poor and are more dependent for their livelihood on natural resources that are threatened by climate change. Furthermore, they face social, economic and political barriers that limit their coping capacity. Women and men in rural areas in developing countries are especially vulnerable when they are highly dependent on local natural resources for their livelihood. Those charged with the responsibility to secure water, food and fuel for cooking and heating face the greatest challenges. Secondly, when coupled with unequal access to resources and to decision-making processes, limited mobility places women in rural areas in a position where they are disproportionately affected by climate change. It is thus important to identify gender-sensitive strategies to respond to the environmental and humanitarian crises caused by climate change. Not only does global warming impact on climate, it is predicted to diminish the production of maize, the third most important crop in the world. This will greatly affect women as they are usually the last to eat in any household. A report in the journal of Global Environmental Change, states that global warming could lead to a 10 percent drop in the production of maize in developing countries over the next 50 years. Based on the advanced computer model, Maksim, total annual losses calculated could reach an average of 10 million tones, enough grain to feed 140 million people. This program simulates conditions at different locations from weather stations worldwide, Hoff, (2008). Maize producing countries such as Brazil, Nigeria, Mexico, South Africa and Tanzania are estimated to lose between 20 and 25 percent of production. “Our simulations suggest that rising temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns vary widely from one agro-ecosystem to another,” Thornton, (2008). Subsistence farmers especially women, who grow maize for their families and farm animals, may experience disastrous results from global warming. Poor nations in sub-Saharan Africa find it difficult to cope with drought and the impact on the rural economy. For women it is important to note that the impact of climate change does not affect agricultural production only but other sectors like human health through changes in infectious disease vectors. Infectious disease vectors breed more in high temperatures e.g. mosquitoes; many diseases in Africa such as malaria are known to be sensitive to climate factors. A study in Ghana by Agyemang-Yeboah (2005) (quoted in Nkomo 2006) confirms a positive correlation between malaria, cholera and meningitis, and climatic elements. The strong correlation between malaria epidemics and anomalously high rainfall has been observed in both the east African highlands (Githeko and Ndegwa, 2001) and in semi-arid areas of Africa (Thomson 2006, IRI, 2005). With the high economic costs of malaria in Africa, it is expected that an increase in malaria incidence and prevalence could lead to an increase in poverty. For instance, Sachs and Malaney (2002) have noted a five-fold difference in GDP between malarious and non-malarious countries. This means the manpower of a nation is seriously threatened as bread winners die therefore it is vital for policy makers to be aware of such decisive information. In conclusion, truly climate change has become another albatross around the neck of the African woman. Climate change is not a gender-neutral phenomenon, it has a direct impact on women’s lives due to their domestic work and makes their everyday sustenance even more difficult. Climate change has diminished agricultural production, threatening food security, livelihood sources, water availability, increased diseases and morbidity. In recent times, exceptionally severe climatic disasters wreaked havoc on the Southeast Asian states and Africa, causing massive financial and life losses. In addition, the food supply of these countries was also hampered by the floods and droughts ravaging the entire region while women constitute an estimated up 70 percent of farmers and 80 percent of food processors, yet who lack equitable access to finance, insurance, education and land. Even though climate change will affect every human being on the planet, the most affected are the women. References Gifford, R.M., (1987), Exploiting the fertilizing effect of high levels of atmospheric carbon Dioxide. Proc., Int. Workshop on Climate Variability and Food Security in Developing Countries, February 6-9, 1987, New Dehli, India. Godden, K., (2013), The Effects of Global Warming on Food Security, available www.foodsecurity.htm, (Accessed on 09 March). 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