In a new study quantifying how gender shapes people’s experiences of climate change, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) found that, by 2050, higher temperatures and changing rainfall patterns could mean women globally spend up to 30% more time collecting water.

PIK guest researcher Robert Carr, the study’s lead author, explained how this results in more physical strain, psychological distress and lost time that could otherwise be spent on education, leisure or employment.

“Even when people talk about gendered climate impacts, there is very little attention on time poverty and how that affects someone’s ability to improve their life,” Carr told Climate Home.

In addition, the cost of lost working time for women affects economies, and is projected to reach tens to hundreds of millions of US dollars per country annually by 2050, the study said.

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Carr noted that the data underpinning PIK’s study only recently became available and is a valuable tool for connecting women’s welfare issues to climate impacts, with more such analysis expected as new datasets emerge.

“But more still needs to be done to act on, and implement, research findings like ours at the local and national levels,” he added.

For that to happen, research like PIK’s has to resonate in government offices and negotiating rooms at UN climate talks, where gender activists see 2024 as a milestone year. Countries are expected to renew key global initiatives for advancing gender-responsive climate action and improving gender balance in official delegations at UN negotiations.

Gendered impacts of climate change

So far progress has been slow. After more than a decade of working towards those aims within the UN climate process, wilder weather and rising seas are still disproportionately affecting women and gender-diverse people, as global warming continues apace.

For example, female-headed rural households experience higher income losses due to extreme weather events like floods and droughts, through impacts on farming and other activities.

Rates of child marriage and violence against women and girls have been shown to increase during and after climate disasters. And studies have identified a positive correlation between drought-induced displacement and hysterectomies among female farm labourers in India.

At the same time, barriers like caring responsibilities, lack of funding, difficulties in obtaining visas and even sexual harassment in UN spaces persist, standing in the way of women’s equal participation in the climate negotiating rooms.

Yet, despite the mounting urgency, governments made little progress in talks on gender issues at the mid-year UN conference in Bonn this month.

Delegates arrive for a workshop on implementing the UNFCCC gender action plan and on future work to be undertaken on gender and climate change, at the Bonn Climate Conference on June 3, 2024. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)

Advocates had hoped to leave the German city with a new, stronger version of the UN’s flagship gender initiative, known as the Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWP). Instead, discussions were tense and slow, leaving the LWP – which is supposed to be renewed by 2025 – to be finalised in November at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan.

No rise in women negotiators

Claudia Rubio, gender working group lead for the Women and Gender Constituency at the UN, said the LWP has enabled a better understanding of “what is prohibiting women and other genders from being in [UN negotiating] spaces”.

But Mwanahamisi Singano, senior global policy lead at the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), reminded delegates at a workshop in Bonn that “time has not been the magic ingredient in bridging disparities between women and men in participation”, which has “stagnated or even declined when it comes to COPs”.

According to data from WEDO, women made up only 34% of COP28 government delegations overall, the same percentage as 10 years ago. Azerbaijan’s initial men-only COP29 organising committee – to which women were hastily added after an international outcry – and its line-up of negotiators at Bonn were a case in point.

The UN’s own analysis of men and women’s relative speaking times at the negotiations shows that women often – though not always – speak less, and that themes such as technology and finance see consistently lower numbers for women’s participation.

Progress has been gradual even with programmes like WEDO’s Women Delegates Fund, which has financed hundreds of women – primarily from least developed countries and small island developing states – to attend UN climate talks. Since 2012, WEDO has also run ‘Night Schools’, training women in technical language and negotiation skills.

Gender in the NDCs

Increasing the gender diversity of decision-makers in UN negotiations is important in its own right, but it does not necessarily translate into more gender-responsive climate policy, experts said. Not all women negotiators are knowledgeable about the gender-climate nexus, they noted.

But having an international framework to boost gender-sensitive climate action has also “catalysed political will” at the country level, according to Rebecca Heuvelmans, advocacy and campaigning officer at Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF).

Delegates listen to discussions on the UNFCCC Gender Action Plan at the Bonn Climate Conference on June 4, 2024. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)

This is evidenced by an increase in the number of official National Gender and Climate Change Focal Points – up from 38 in 2017 when UN climate talks first adopted a Gender Action Plan, to 140 across 110 countries today. While the precise role of these focal points depends on country needs, advocates say they have been pivotal in spurring action on national gender priorities.

So far, at least 23 countries have national gender and climate change action plans, and references to gender in national climate plans submitted to the UN, known as NDCs, have increased since the earliest commitments in 2016. Around four-fifths now include gender-related information, according to a UN review of the plans.

In practice, this ranges from including gender-diverse people in the development of national climate plans to legislation that specifically addresses the intersection of climate change and gender.

For example, nine countries – including Sierra Leone and Jordan – have committed to addressing rising gender-based violence in the context of climate change. South Sudan acknowledged that heat exposure and malnutrition can increase infant and maternal mortality, while Côte d’Ivoire recognised that climate change hikes risks to pregnant women and those going through menopause.

Nonetheless, only a third of countries include access to sexual, maternal and newborn health services in their climate commitments, according to a 2023 report by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and Queen Mary University of London, showing how much work is yet to be done.

Next year, countries are due to submit updated NDCs, which campaigners see as a crucial opportunity to embed gender equality more deeply, including by involving women and girls in their planning and implementation, and collecting data disaggregated by sex and gender that can help shape policy.

Cross-cutting issue

Ahead of COP29, gender advocates are pushing for a stronger work programme with new language around intersectionality – the recognition that gender interacts with other parts of identity like race, class and Indigeneity to create overlapping systems of discrimination.

Angela Baschieri, technical lead on climate action at UNFPA, said gender commitments in the UN climate process must be more ambitious and include actionable targets for countries to address gender inequality.

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Beyond the gender negotiations themselves, the Women and Gender Constituency wants to boost the integration of gender with other streams of work.

“Whether you’re talking about green hydrogen, climate finance or low-carbon transport, there is always a gender dimension,” said Sascha Gabizon, executive director of WECF International, a network of feminist groups campaigning on environmental issues.

“We have so much evidence now that climate policies just aren’t as efficient if they are not gender-transformative,” she added.

(Reporting by Daisy Clague; editing by Megan Rowling)

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15-year-old Meera Gaikwad*, who is six months pregnant, knows her life will change forever when she moves 100km to cut sugarcane in Karnataka this season. There is no work at her drought-prone home of Paargaon, a small village in western India’s Maharashtra state.

Gaikwad told Climate Home News that she is afraid she will have to deliver her baby in a hut next to the fields, without access to medical care.

Thousands of girls like Gaikwad migrate from their villages every year to join in the sugarcane harvest from October until April. In total, more than 1.5 million workers leave their homes for the sugarcane fields.

Climate impacts, in particular heatwaves, droughts and floods, are worsening their plight. Women, some of whom are pregnant, cut and package sugarcane in temperatures of up to 46C.

In August and September, Climate Home travelled to the states of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, where most of India’s sugarcane is grown and manufactured. Reporters found women and girls working in in dangerous conditions for up to 18 hours a day, without access to health or sanitation facilities.

Climate Home spoke to dozens of women who have had their wombs surgically removed, in the misguided belief it would help them to cope with the intensive workload.

Thousands of young girls and women migrate from Maharashtra’s drought-prone Beed district each year to harvest sugarcane

Double shift

Climate change is aggravating an already dire situation for women in Maharashtra’s drought-prone Beed district, where farming grinds to a halt for almost eight months due to a lack of rainfall. The region suffered from droughts in four separate years between 2010-2019, according to a government report.

Sugarcane cutting is physically demanding. Women work the fields in all weathers, they told Climate Home – and are also expected to do the heavy lifting at home.

Typically, they wake up at around 3am, two hours before the men, to fetch water and carry out domestic work before heading to the fields at 6-7am. After returning home in the evening or late at night, the women cook dinner for the family and finish off other tasks, such as cleaning and washing clothes.

“The men get some rest, but the women don’t,” said Arundhati Patil, executive member of Marathwada Navnirman Lokayat, an organisation working on socio-economic issues in Beed.

A 2020 study by researchers of Pune-based Symbiosis International University concluded that the working and living conditions of these women “violate basic human rights”. They have to bend for hours, pick up very heavy cane bundles and mount them at risky heights, sometimes in complete darkness at night.

Inadequate healthcare

Many women, like Gaikwad, carry out this backbreaking work while pregnant. They work in all weathers right up until their delivery.

20-year-old Anisha Sharad Bhavale, from Koyal village in Maharashtra, gave birth in a hut near a sugarcane field in 2020. Her baby boy died two weeks later. The nearest hospital was 30km away.

She had borrowed 70,000 rupees ($840) from a labour contractor for her son’s medical care. A week after the birth, she was back at work to start paying it off.

A teenage girl sits on a suitcase in her family’s hut near the sugar fields in Beed, Maharashtra

The unsafe working conditions in the sugar fields also sometimes result in miscarriages. One of Bhavale’s relatives was six weeks pregnant when she tripped and fell into a hole, which led to a miscarriage. Her husband, Sharad Bhavale, said there was no vehicle available to take her to the hospital or a nearby healthcare facility where she could have treatment.

The lack of healthcare and sanitation facilities is a major concern, Patil said. “There is no provision of medicines or doctors that can address their issues.”

A 2020 report by Oxfam India said “public health facilities at the villages are inadequate to address [women’s] ailments”, making medical treatments “impossible”, and prolonging any illnesses they suffer from.

Constant harassment

Gaikwad was married two years ago, when she was just 13. She became pregnant earlier this year. “Until we have a baby, we are considered young and poachable, even after we are married. That is why, we try to become mothers as soon as we are married — to avoid any disgrace to our family,” she said.

Thousands of girls are forced to marry by their parents soon after they start having their period – between 12-15 years of age. According to social activists, parents insist on this to ensure their daughters’ safety and because couples are hired more easily and earn more money in the sugarcane fields.

Thousands of young Indian girls like Meera Gaikwad* migrate from their villages every year, to work as labourers harvesting sugarcane

During their early teenage years, many girls also start working in the fields, said Mahadev Chunche, associate professor at the Kumbhalkar College of Social Work in Wardha, Maharashtra. This is partly to avoid them staying behind at labour tent camps, where parents fear they will be abused and harassed by men, he said.

“If a girl is good at cutting sugarcane, she starts getting a lot of marriage proposals. Single men are on the lookout for life partners as couples get a better advance for working in the fields,” Chunche told Climate Home News. “Marriage [eligibility] is mostly dependent on a girl’s skill in the field rather than her education or how she looks.”

A married couple receives a higher amount as an advance for cutting sugarcane – in the range of 150,000 to 300,000 rupees ($1,800-3,600), whereas a single woman is paid 50,000 to 150,00 rupees ($600-$1,800).

Abuse goes unreported

Sexual harassment and abuse are rife in the sugar fields, the investigation revealed. More than a dozen women and girls told Climate Home, on the condition of anonymity, that they had suffered or witnessed abuse.

“When I stay back in the tent and my parents go to the sugarcane fields, sometimes men come to the hut and say bad things… and harass us. They come when they see I’m alone at home… I feel scared,” a 20-year-old widow, who has one child, told Climate Home.

According to a study by Symbiosis International University in Pune, India, “physical abuse and rapes [by male contractors at the worksite] happen quite often though they are not formally reported”.

Chunche spoke to more than 400 women in Maharashtra for his PhD on India’s sugar labourers, seen by Climate Home News. He said that almost 80% of them told him they faced sexual harassment, were molested or raped by male sugar labourers, drivers and middlemen.

“Usually no one says anything or files a complaint,” Chunche told Climate Home News. “Sometimes the pressure is from the labour contractors not to speak but the main reason is their poverty. They fear that if they report [the abuse], it will bring disrepute, they will get no more work and there will be no one to marry them.”

Whenever such an incident happens, parents view it as a disgrace to the family and choose to marry their daughter off at a very young age, said Gaikwad.

In many cases, teenage girls don’t complain about sexual harassment as they are scared that they will lose their chance of going to school and be forced to sit at home, she said.

The working and living conditions of women working in India’s sugar fields “violate basic human rights,” researchers say.

Choosing hysterectomy

Women working in the sugar industry endure daily pain, as they lift 20-40 kg sugarcane bundles on their heads, including while pregnant or suffering from menstrual cramps.

“When women work long (15-18) hours or they squat in agriculture fields or when they lift heavy weights, they can develop abdominal pain,” said Himani Negi, a Delhi-based gynaecologist who runs a women’s care clinic.

To escape this constant pain, many women choose to have their womb removed. The practice has been prevalent among sugar workers for years. Women in Maharashtra’s Beed district were twice as likely as the state average to have had a hysterectomy, according to analysis of official data by Climate Home News.

In many villages in Ambajogai, a division of Beed district, at least 50-60 hysterectomy cases have been recorded over the past two decades, according to Patil.

Ishmala Raghu Patwade, who is in her mid-40s and has several children, told Climate Home News that she had a hysterectomy three months ago.

“My stomach was hurting. I was going through a lot of pain. My uterus had developed knots because of working in the fields. It had to be removed,” she said. Other women recommended the surgery to relieve her pain.

But the operation didn’t help her. Since having it, she can no longer work or lift any heavy items. As a result, the sole earner of the family now has to sit at home. Her husband Raghu used to also work in the sugarcane fields but stopped five years ago after he got severely injured working in the field.

Misinformation and complications

In 2019, a report by the Maharashtra government found that over 13,800 women (about 16% of the 82,300 surveyed) involved in harvesting sugarcane from the Beed districts had their womb removed in the last 10 years. Most of these women were in the 35-40 age group.

According to a report by the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management, one of the main reasons women choose to have surgery is to avoid losing wages when pain prevents them from working.

Dr Nitin Chate, associate professor at the Swami Ramanand Tirth Rural Government Medical College in Beed, who comes from a family of sugarcane labourers, blamed misinformation.

“Poverty and illiteracy are two devils,” said Chate. “Due to poor awareness, women choose hysterectomies. After this surgery, many women face a disease called osteoporosis, which is related to weak bones.”

Ishmala Raghu Patwade chose to have a hysterectomy after other women told her it would relieve her abdominal pain

Other common complications include vaginal prolapse, back pain, poor balance and urinary incontinence. “Women should be made aware that this surgery won’t address their pain,” said gynaecologist Negi.

Gaikwad told Climate Home it was her dream to go to university, but she has accepted her reality. “We cut sugarcane, no matter what. Whether there’s sweltering heat, frigid cold, or even if the sugarcane fields are flooded with rain, we have to work in the field to cut the sugarcane. There’s no other option,” she said.

“Do girls like me not deserve any justice?”

*Meera Gaikwad is not the subject’s real name, to protect her identity as a minor.

Reporting by Meenal Upreti, Mayank Aggarwal and Arvind Shukla. Photography by Meenal Upreti. Data visualisation by Gurman Bhatia. The Pulitzer Center supported this project with a reporting grant as part of its Your Work/Environment initiative.

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They included Fikile Ntshangase, a South African grandmother murdered at home in front of her grandson, following opposition to the expansion of a neighbouring coal mine.

Defenders like Fikile are on the frontline of the climate crisis and are most at risk from attacks and violent reprisals. The consequences for women – both from climate impacts and the reprisals faced after speaking out – are grounded in historic gender inequalities.

Women often lack land and legal rights, making them vulnerable to exploitation. As climate breakdown takes hold, the gap in social inequality looks set to widen – and many more women will be confronted with the need to speak out to protect their homes and livelihoods. This can be a life and death decision – but women also face additional threats, as it is not just their activism that makes them a target, but their gender too.

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Those working on land and environmental protection are often surrounded by a culture of silence. Fear of public disapproval and suspicion of authorities can prevent women defenders from coming forward to report attacks. Between 2015 and 2016 alone, there were 609 instances of aggression against Central American and Mexican women working to protect the environment.

While sexual violence and harassment can be perpetrated against any rights activist, gender-specific risks tend to be reported by women defenders. “When they threaten me, they say they will kill me, but before they kill me, they will rape me. They don’t say that to my male colleagues,” says Lolita Chavez, a Maya K’iche indigenous defender from Guatemala.

Away from protests, women defenders also face more elusive forms of violence. Smear campaigns undermine their reputations and social standing, dampening wider public support for their cause. These slurs are often gendered, with many women defenders bombarded with insults like “whore” or “slut”.

While violence against women is a widespread global phenomenon prevalent in all walks of life and across all sectors, there is some evidence that the extractive sectors – particularly industries like large-scale mining – pose a significant violent risk for women. Nearly 30% of women defenders killed since the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 were campaigning against extractive industry projects.

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Research shows that where there are extractive industries, cultures of violence exist. Women working in the extractive sector are at an increased risk of attack including sexual assault. Similarly, domestic violence against women also appears to increase in proximity to large-scale extractive activity. This is the result of many factors, including disruption of traditional property ownership, the increase in male migration to towns close to extractive projects, and economic uplifts which tend to benefit men.

Not all women face the same vulnerability. Our data shows a higher number of reported killings of women belonging to indigenous or Afro-descendant communities in Colombia. Experiences of violence against women differs depending on a range of intersecting factors from race to socio-economic status.

So, what can be done? Environmentally damaging projects trigger shifts in social fabrics, affecting entire communities, with unique impacts on women. Corporate behaviour is at the heart of so much of this damage, and companies must be required to evaluate their impact with rigorous human rights and environmental due diligence designed to identity the acute impacts of their projects across all facets of a community. Governments must hold companies who fail to do that legally liable.

Gender inequity is intimately tied to the climate crisis – conversely, we won’t solve the climate crisis while gender inequity persists. Solving both requires a paradigm shift.

Rachel Cox is a campaigner with Global Witness, a climate advocacy group

The post Around the world, women are putting their lives on the line to defend the climate appeared first on Climate Home News.

Gender often remains the untold story behind climate change. After the television snapshots of devastation wrought by climate-induced disasters, our thoughts often remain with the local people forced to deal with the wreckage.

The destructive forces of nature, warped by rising global temperatures, manifest in cyclones, floods and other extreme weather conditions, can act as negative force multipliers in societies already riven by inequality. The onset of droughts, accompanied by heightened food and water insecurity, also have a disproportionate effect on those least able to deal with the resulting increased social strains.

While climate change is a global phenomenon, its impact is not spread across a level playing field. Its effects are felt locally, and poor people suffer the most. Among the world’s 1.3 billion poor people, the majority are women.

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During the past few decades, considerable achievements have been made in narrowing the gender gap in many countries. Nevertheless, across the global spectrum, women tend to be marginalized from economic and political power, and have limited access to financial and material resources. This increases their vulnerability to climate change and limits their potential to adapt.

Studies show that after climate disasters, it is generally harder for poor women to recover their economic positions than poor men. Women’s mortality from climate-related disasters is also higher than that of men.

Women are also often less represented in the corridors of power; have fewer legal rights, including access to land; and occupy fewer leadership roles in the workplace. This means while they are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, they also have fewer opportunities to make decisions on how to deal with it. We must change this. Women have the right to – and need to – be at the forefront of efforts to deal with climate change.

Report: The making of Sweden’s climate law – and that (↓) photo

Just signed referral of Swedish #climate law, binding all future governments to net zero emissions by 2045. For a safer and better future. pic.twitter.com/OqOO2y8BU6

— Isabella Lövin (@IsabellaLovin) February 3, 2017

The shift to low-carbon development and climate change adaptation is a major transformative endeavour requiring the participation of all countries, communities and genders. While gender equality is often solely associated with female empowerment, it is also important to note that transformative change requires the participation of all members of society. Women, girls, men and boys all need to be part of the solution.

In a more positive sense, the climate agenda can also help advance gender equality. There are numerous examples where renewable energy investments also contribute to increased employment opportunities for women that foster female entrepreneurship.

An innovative climate action project supported by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) in east Africa provides a good example of how women can be at the forefront of moves to leapfrog fossil fuels to use solar energy. The $110 million KawiSafi project has dedicated funds to train women to become solar technicians, while also supporting women-led micro-finance groups to generate demand for solar energy in Rwanda and Kenya. From its inception, gender equity has been central to this project, implemented by US-based Acumen Fund Inc.

Report: ‘Bad-ass business women’ bring solar empowerment to Nepal

The majority of these countries’ populations, 70% in Rwanda and 80% in Kenya, are not connected to main power grids. Subsequently, many use oil or kerosene for domestic power generation. These fossil fuels are often expensive as they are imported, while noxious fumes pose a serious health risk – especially to women and girls, who generally spend more time performing household work. The move to solar can then reduce emissions and domestic budgets, while also improving women’s and girls’ health. This is a clear gender co-benefit of climate action.

In another GCF-funded project in Mongolia, over half of the loans provided in this $60m private sector initiative, implemented by Mongolia’s XacBank, are going to women-led enterprises starting up renewable energy and energy efficiency businesses.

Gender equality is a core principle of all GCF operations, and is mainstreamed in all decision-making and projects supported by the Fund. To aid this process, GCF is releasing a manual, “Mainstreaming Gender in Green Climate Fund Projects”.

Devising ways to consider gender in climate action will not always be easy or obvious. Societies are made up of complex relationships, sometimes based on differing structures of kin, power and financial resources. But continuing efforts to place gender consideration at the center of climate finance are necessary.

Climate change is a challenge that affects us all. So all members of society must rally together to deal with it effectively and inclusively.

Isabella Lövin is Sweden’s deputy prime minister and also its minister for international development cooperation and climate. Howard Bamsey is executive director of the Green Climate Fund. They launched the GCF’s new gender toolkit at the World Water Week in Stockholm on Tuesday.

The post Gender remains one of climate change’s great inequalities appeared first on Climate Home News.

“I started selling firewood when I was young, trees were all over and we could collect outside our homestead,” says Easther Tuiya, a 63-year-old mother of eight.

Like many women in rural Kenya, she began selling firewood and charcoal as a teenager. It was a particularly good way to get through drought periods, when farming didn’t pay.

But in this part of Africa, climate change has aggravated the cyclical droughts. Growing food crops has become increasingly challenging and more women are looking for alternative ways to survive, crowding the market for firewood and stripping the landscape around Tuiya’s village of Motony, west of Nairobi.

Twenty years ago the area was full of trees but it has been cleared leaving only bare and dusty ground. Getting trees for firewood isn’t easy any more, she says. “Nowadays those who are going on with the trade travel 80km and the more distance you travel it increasingly becomes unsafe for women.” So after a lifetime, she has packed it in.

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In 2012, Tuiya joined the Elenerai Cooperative Women Society. The group largely consists of former firewood and charcoal traders. Through dairy farming, tree planting and rain water harvesting project, they are slowly rehabilitating the landscape and building its resilience against drought.

Each member of the cooperative started by contributing KS 3,000 (US$29) to a kitty for the purchasing of dairy cows.

“We started as a merry-go-round by planting trees, nippier grass and buying a cow for each member, now I have almost two hundred trees and I no longer rely on firewood and charcoal for money,” says Tuiya.

Women were trained in dairy farming management through the support of the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV). This helped them improved the dairy’s milk yield to 3,500L per day.

The introduction of dairy farming diversified the women’s sources of income as well as healing the degraded landscape of the Mara Basin. Each member constructed an underground water tank, which reduced watering of animals in the river – a cause of erosion. The replanting of trees, as well as the reduction in the number of women collecting firewood, is also bringing new life to the basin.

As its dairy business has grown, ancillary services are required. Josphene Kirui, a member and also treasurer of the society, left the firewood business and started a food kiosk at the group’s dairy premises. “I’m a treasurer and the group gave me an opportunity to start my own business. I no longer go to the hill for charcoal business.”

The charcoal and firewood market got oversupplied, stripping areas of their trees (Pic: Center For International Forestry Research/Jeff Walker)

In Kenya, it is rare for women to take part in farming, let alone run their own dairy. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, giving women equal access to agricultural resources could increase production in developing countries by 20-30%, raise total agricultural production by 2.5-4%, and reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12-17%. That’s 100-150 million people who would have enough food as well as be more resilient to climate change.

Richard Langat, the chairperson of the women’s group, said common traditions confined women to water collection and firewood harvesting. “The firewood business was becoming risky to these women and also destructive to the environment, so I saw the need of helping and organising them to come up with business ideas that can help them earn a living as well as taking care of environment,” he said.

On 6 May, Kenya’s Climate Change Act became law. The act provides a framework for action that promotes low carbon, climate resilient development in Kenya. The guidance issued alongside acknowledges the importance of ensuring that women are support to gain equal access to the country’s natural resources for sustainable development.

In this community where women do not traditionally participate in resource management and decision making, women have made a paradigm shift in regards to gender role and the perception of their place in society.

“I was uncertain about this project when she bought her first cow, planted grasses and trees,” says Arap Tuiya, Esther’s husband. “Nowadays we have milk, no longer travel looking for grass and water for our cattle. In fact I have given her land to manage and she is always around at home, unlike when she was in the firewood business.”

“Previously, sometimes, I didn’t have anything to give my children, only wait for my husband to give us, but now I can help him buy food and we are now living peaceful,” said Norah Tangus, another of the cooperative members.

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A widow, Jha lives in one room with her three teenage children. In rural Nepal, widows are treated as social outcasts. They are seen as predatory, potential husband-stealers and their interactions with men are frowned upon.

“You should do what you want,” says Jha, who received training from Empower Generation – an NGO that on Thursday will be awarded a £20,000 Ashden award for promoting the role of women and girls in the clean energy sector.

Another Empower-trained solar entrepreneur, Lalita Choudhary, also faced cultural barriers. “Individuals are going to say all sorts of things” about business women in rural Nepal, she says. Choudhary lives not too far from Jha, in Lahan, Siraha, just 17km from the Indian border. Most people in the area work in agriculture, growing rice and corn or tending to goats and cows.

Runa Jha, in her solar shop in Janakpur, eastern Nepal (Photo: Lucy EJ Woods)

In many communities, women “hide their faces and do not talk to men” and “are not really allowed to get a job,” says Abhilahsa Poudel, Empower Generation’s communications coordinator.

But solar power’s effect on village life is inarguable. Its allows for cleaner home environments, with light into the evenings and the ability to charge a mobile phone.

The social benefits that flow from the women-run solar businesses, means that Jha and Choudhary have become admired for their work by both men and women in their communities. “Everyone wants to be like [Choudhary] and to work like her,” says Poudel.

Jha and Choudhary are two of the 23 women that NGO Empower Generation has trained to be renewable energy entrepreneurs, who in turn, employ and manage a further 170 sales agents. Some of the agents are men, but most are aspirational young women, creating a ripple effect of empowerment through sustainable, profitable employment.

“Before, women were not allowed outside the house, and were told not to study as they have to do the housework,” Jha says.

Empower Generation mentors and supports women registering their own businesses to sell solar lanterns, solar home systems, clean cook stoves and water filters. The trainee entrepreneurs are given lessons on climate change and the adverse effects of fossil fuels, becoming leaders in their community for promoting renewable energy and environmental awareness.

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As women do not traditionally work in energy, Empower Generation’s work aims to “really move the needle on how women are valued,” and change the rural Nepalese culture of women being considered to be the property of their husband’s families, says Empower Generation co-founder Anya Cherneff.

The “priority is to create bad-ass business women,” says Cherneff.

Since owning and running a solar business, Jha has taken on other leadership roles, including leading a community clean-up group. “I feel like I want to lead now; I like to lead,” says Jha.

Many of the women working with Empower Generation apply their skills and confidence to further business ventures and other arenas of public life. Choudhary is currently running as a candidate in local government elections, and Sita Adhikari, Empower Generation co-founder is now a United Nations adviser.

The Ashden awards ceremony on Thursday will host former US vice-president Al Gore as keynote speaker.

Adhikari said that receiving the award “encourages us to work even harder to cultivate more women entrepreneurs who are providing reliable, affordable clean tech solutions.”

The post ‘Bad-ass business women’ bring solar empowerment to Nepal appeared first on Climate Home News.

The embankment wall that kept the ocean at bay from their homes and fields in Cox’s Bazaar district in Bangladesh had breached again and seawater was flooding in. Crops could no longer be grown and homes and belongings had all been claimed by the marauding tides, as the sea kept rising due to climate change.

Hafiza’s husband, a manager in a betel leaf farm, was out of a job. After days of struggle when they had to sell most of their cattle to survive, her husband decided to leave for Malaysia for work with 20 other men from nearby villages who were to be smuggled by boat via Myanmar.

Left with three young children, Hafeza worked as a domestic servant in the one of the richer homes in the morning, and as a labourer in a betel leaf farm in the afternoon. While the older boy helped her, the younger two stayed in the house, unable to attend school.

There was never enough food for the four of them. Illness set in, sometimes mild sometimes serious enough to keep Hafiza from work and the daily income they so desperately needed.

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A report released last month warns of the devastating and increasing impact of climate change on migration in South Asia. Climate Change Knows no Borders, prepared by ActionAid, Climate Action Network South Asia and Bread for the World (Brot Fuer Die Welt) calls on national policymakers to especially monitor impacts of climate-induced migration on women and urgently address the policy gap.

“The rights of migrants and their families are being threatened by unsafe migration, which is often driven by desperation and a lack of options caused by climate disasters.

The impacts of migration on women, both those migrating and those left behind, is also not yet adequately understood or addressed by national or international policies,” Harjeet Singh, ActionAid’s Global Lead on Climate Change, told indiaclimatedialogue.net.

“Environmental migration is a gendered process, but discussions within public, policy, and academia regarding environmental migration are often gender-neutral, few studies making the link between migration, environment and gender,” said the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in 2014, flagging the gap when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Fifth Assessment Report said, “Climate change is projected to increase the displacement of people throughout this century.”

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— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) January 5, 2017

According to IOM, vulnerabilities, experiences, needs and priorities of environmental migrants vary according to women’s and men’s different roles, as do responsibilities, access to information, resources, education, physical security and employment opportunities.

The ActionAid report putting the issue in the current South Asian perspective says, “Young females from neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh who migrate to India as well as internal migrants from rural areas moving to cities are increasingly vulnerable to abuse and trafficking. As they often use so-called ‘agents’ to help them find work, these can turn out to be traffickers, who once they arrive in the city, force them to work in brothels,” it cautions.

The 2016 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons by UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released in December says women and girls make up 71% of human trafficking victims. Including for the first time a thematic chapter on connections between trafficking, migration and conflict, it underscores that trafficking in persons and migration flows resemble each other, increasing vulnerability of forced migration victims.

After repeated extreme or slow onset weather events have reduced a rural family to extreme poverty, the migration of younger women, usually daughters (even minors) increasingly appear as the best option for the entire family, finds an IOM study.

Pull factor

This is because the demand for labour in highly gendered but low-skilled niche jobs, such as domestic work, child and elderly care, is rising, as more and more educated women in South Asian cities are taking up careers outside home. Bangladeshi migrant women are seen increasingly in such jobs in Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai. Together with garment and entertainment industries in India, this demand is acting as a powerful pull factor.

Even so, available figures show male migration is more common in the region. Millions of women like Hafiza Khatun, left behind at home, are facing an overwhelming burden.

Increasingly, research is documenting that the workload on women left behind is multiplied many- fold because the nature of migrant work being uncertain, remittance from migrant males is often sporadic. Agriculture remains critical for the family remaining at home to survive, finds an International Water Management Institute (IWMI) study.

Not only must the women do household work and child and elderly care, but also generate income usually by taking on their husbands’ role in agriculture. This too without access to capital or credit, while negotiating existing agricultural services dominated by men, where the women have to overcome several cultural barriers.

Women are thus reporting exhaustion, poverty and illness, and fields are being left uncultivated as they struggle to cope alone. In many areas these single women called drought widows or flood widows by their communities, report increased incidences of assault and violence. When disasters happen, such as the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, the lack of men in the village can put communities in further danger, the ActionAid report says.

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— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) December 22, 2016

The struggles of women environmental migrants have been documented but there is no statistical data to formulate effective policies. The crux of the problem is that while disaster-driven forced migration is likely to increase further, there is no systematic data and statistical record of internal and cross-border migration on which governments can base their policies.

A 2016 IWMI infograph says as many as 3.23 million migrants from Bangladesh are in India. India’s Minister for State for Home informed Parliament in November that 20 million illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, equivalent to Australia’s population, were in India. This is a volatile political issue; in 2004, Parliament was told the 2001 figure was 12 million.

A recent report from The Economist quotes a former head of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) saying 15 million Bangladeshis are living in India. A 2016 IOM study, titled Migrant Smuggling Data and Research: A global review of the emerging evidence base, says 25,000 Bangladeshis are thought to enter India each year.

While there is no available age or sex-disaggregated data of irregular migrants to India from neighbouring countries, particularly Bangladesh and Nepal, estimates can be surmised from a UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 2015 study, which found that irregular migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal into Middle Eastern countries, such as Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Libya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are predominantly women. They work as housemaids.

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UNODC South Asia Office said in 2012 that no systematic data on irregular migration is maintained in India either at the state or national level. But globally, there is better clarity on the gender dimension of migration. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) in 2015 estimated there were almost 244 million migrants in the world, approximately half of whom were women and girls. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated in 2013 that out of 150 million international labour migrants 44% were women.

IOM’s 2016 Atlas of Environmental Migration, the latest and most exhaustive study on the subject, claims that in 2015, 19 million people were newly displaced due to climate disasters globally. This figure does not even include displacement from drought and slow onset environmental degradation. Overall, one billion out of the planet’s 7 billion people are presently on the move, either within countries or beyond borders.

The increasing participation of women of various skill levels in regional migration, whether forced or voluntary, driven in large part by socioeconomic factors underpins the greater gender sensitivity and attention that needs to go into laws, policies, programmes and even climate migration studies.

Slow response

Aside from lack of concrete data and figure what is also obstructing South Asian governments from according the urgency that climate migration requires is that economic migration, also known as South-South migration, has been happening since long.

For a poor Bangladeshi who wants to better his income or escape poverty, irregular migration to India costs only USD 40 to USD 60 including the payment for the migrant smuggler, finds the IOM’s Migrant Smuggling Data and Research study.

“Migration has always taken place in South Asia, for long before climate change became an issue. Push factors include conflict, poverty, land access and ethnicity; while there are also many pull factors such as development, livelihoods, seasonal labour, kinship and access to health or services,” ActionAid’s Singh said. “Therefore, South Asian countries are slow to recognise the role of climate change as an additional push factor, and the extent to which it is driving migration. Climate change is thus still largely invisible in the migration discourse in South Asia.”

When forced migration triggered by extreme climate adds to the economic migration, clashes over resources and jobs, political seclusion and xenophobia would not be far off, as is seen in the on-going European crises. “There is need for clear definitions of climate migration and displacement which national governments should use, to gather and analyse data on the role of climate change in migration, and develop appropriate policies accordingly,” Singh said.

In South Asia as also in most countries now, disaster risk reduction and building resilience to climate-induced hazards is a key policy component to reduce distress migration. With high levels of poverty, low development indicators and large-scale dependence on agriculture in South Asia, building resilience within a timeframe will remain a major challenge. A challenge, which Hafiza Khatun will brave for many more years, for the sake of her three children.

As the boat reaches the jetty near Hariakhali village, Hafeza stands jostling with several other hopeful women, scouring the faces of the worn out, weather-beaten men who had been rescued from a Myanmar jail, caught while trying to land on its shores on a fishing boat without legal papers One by one, the men are reunited with wives and joyous children, excited to have their fathers back. After everyone had left, for Hafeza there was just the sound of the waves breaking on the shore.

Manipadma Jena is a journalist based in Bhubaneswar. She is on Twitter as @ManipadmaJena. This article was originally published on TheThirdPole

The post South Asia’s women suffer as climate migration rises appeared first on Climate Home News.

It seems a curious question given most analysis on global warming focuses on renewable energy, finance or infrastructure to protect against rising tides.

But substance abuse and domestic violence are inextricably linked to low levels of resilience to extreme weather among some communities, a study has found.

Compiled by Practical Action, the Overseas Development Institute and Climate Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), it raises questions over how to help people to adapt to climate impacts.

“Alcoholism adds to the workload of men, and can lead to them not being able to feed their family,” said Reetu Sogani, an Indian development specialist and one of the report’s authors.

“Climate change aggravates these impacts, so we cannot really divide alcoholism and climate change… they are all connected.”

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Alcoholism is a rising concern in developed and developing countries and a causal factor in over 200 diseases and chronic conditions.

An estimated 3.3 million die in its grip every year, says the World Health Organisation in a 2014 report, with men twice as likely to succumb.

According to the study, cheap alcohol is widely available in the Indian city of Gorakhpur, located in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh near the border with Nepal.

This makes it – like many other areas where addiction rates are high – uniquely vulnerable to extreme events which can rip apart already weak social units.

“In India, men’s income-generating possibilities are affected by weather events, which causes tension and anxiety,” says the study.

“When waterlogged roads prevent men from getting to work, many stay at home, help with rearing animals, go out to search for work or turn to drinking.”

Report: Climate adaptation brings men back to women-only village

In India alcoholics are less likely to have loans approved, meaning they and their families are more likely to suffer from extreme events that mean they cannot work or have damaged homes.

The findings call for a drive to ensure climate policies offer broad support to communities, alcoholics and the large numbers of women who often suffer violence linked to these addictions.

“You can’t look at climate change in a silo – we need to integrate it into social cohesion,” said Sam Bickersteth, head of CDKN.

“Clearly good development is gender sensitized, and climate change [policy] has developed without being gender sensitive, particularly mitigation.”

Blog: Why women are key to tackling climate change

Change brings its own troubles.

Including women in planning is often seen as “slowing and complicating” by some communities, said Virginie Le Masson, a geographer with the ODI.

That means rolling out policies that combat these views and address gender imbalances, allowing women to contribute in public discussions and have access to finance.

And, says the report, it means equality between men and women must be a principal target of new climate projects, however hostile communities may be.

The post Alcoholism, domestic abuse weakens climate resilience appeared first on Climate Home News.

As rainfall patterns become more erratic, many women face longer walks to gather water (Pic: Practical Action/Dfid)

By Ed King

Women are frequently portrayed as being vulnerable to climate impacts.

This much is true, especially so in developing countries where they are responsible for running households, collecting water and feeding their families.

But there’s another critical side too. Women are leading actors in enabling change, in educating communities to become more resilient and influencing regional, national and international leaders.

To mark International Women’s Day 2016 we picked out nine views explaining why women are critical to global efforts to address and prepare for a warming world.

Please add your own comments at the bottom or send @ClimateHome a tweet using the hashtag #IWD2016

Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South African foreign minister

“Being gender smart is not about pushing men away, but as African proverbs – which we have many of – say, one hand does not clap, but two do and make a sound. This about time we acknowledge the contribution of women.”

Christiana Figueres, UN climate chief

“Women are disproportionately affected by climate change, the most vulnerable, and women are the strongest key agent of adaptation. On both sides because of the vulnerable and potential to contribute they are one of the most important elements here.”

Natalie Isaacs, One Million Women

“Women have incredible power to transform society. In Australia women make 85% of the consumer decisions that affect the household’s carbon footprint. We’re 51% of the electorate. Everything we do is about empowering women and girls to take practical action. Once you start taking action and you see a result: you can’t stop.”

Farah Kabir, ActionAid Bangladesh

“If we don’t discuss women’s rights then whenever we are discussing or negotiating on climate change we are leaving out half the population. It impacts men and women differently. If a disaster kills one male, four females will die. We need gender sensitive responses to address climate change.”

Mary Robinson, former Ireland president

“This is fundamental to climate justice. Women are agents for change who will bring about change on the ground. They will be the ones having to adapt to the climate shocks so they need to be empowered, valued and included at the table for decision-making.”

Fatou Ndeye Gaye, former environment minister, Gambia

“When we say sustainable development, we start from the homes and houses. When you wake up it’s women and children who do the chores in Gambia. Many of those chores we share in the house but it’s the responsibility of the women. Women can inform the top.  Women’s issues are family issues.”

Mafalda Duarte, Climate Investment Funds

“Every day all across the world, billions of women – farmers, land-managers, commuters, entrepreneurs, consumers, investors – make decisions that affect the future of our children and our planet. We need women to be empowered to make decisions but in order for that to happen they need to be engaged in decision-making processes and provided with leadership opportunities.”

Justine Greening, UK secretary of state for international development

“Quite simply, no country can develop if it leaves half of its population behind. Girls and women everywhere need control over their lives – the power to make their own choices about their health, their marriage, their family, their education and their careers. That is why we will continue to put improving the lives of girls and women at the heart of everything we do.”

Radha Muthiah, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

“If we can deliver cleaner cookstoves women will gain time because they are not spending so much time collecting firewood, more efficient stoves mean they spend less time cooking and it means there’s cleaner air so they are healthier and their children are healthier.”

The post Why women are key to tackling climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.