Women Feel the Impact of Climate Change
No comments“We are dependent on agriculture, which is totally dependent on good weather”, says Nompumelelo Maluleke as she shades her eyes from the fierce glare of the mid-day sun.
As a rural woman, she says, the biggest challenge she faces is food insecurity caused by changing climatic conditions. Gazing over her dry and dusty fields, she adds: “If there was good weather, timely rain, and availability of water, energy and food security, our work as women would be much easier.”
Maluleke, a 66-year-old KwaZulu Natal small farmer, has seen many changes for the worse in weather and climatic conditions on her land in Ntshongweni, north of Durban. “Over the years I have seen floods and drought ravaging my village, which was once considered the provincial maize basket,” she says.
In good years her maize would be shoulder-high by the end of the growing season. Even in bad years, her crop would rustle around her waist. But this year only a few plants have survived to grow knee-high, withering in the heat. Maize production on her land has dropped from five tons per hectare to three. Experts now believe dry-land maize production could fail entirely in much of southern Africa by mid-century, forcing a switch to alternative crops.
“We have experienced droughts recently but this is the worst I can remember,” she said. “The sun is so hot, and there is little hope now that we are going to survive.” The negative effects of climate change are likely to hit the poorest people in the poorest countries hardest.
Maluleke is the primary care-giver for her family in times of disaster and environmental stress.
“The existing shortfalls in water have been exacerbated and now, the time I take to fetch water or wood has certainly increased my workload, limiting my opportunities to branch out into other, non-traditional activities,” she said.
People hereabouts used to farm in keeping with a familiar seasonal pattern. The farmers would clear their land in October and November so they could spend December and January planting and working their fields. “But things have changed. When we think we should be planting, harvesting or resting, in fact it’s the opposite, because of the climate,” Maluleke explained.
Rural women form a disproportionate share of the rural poor. The developing world is likely to feel the consequences of climate change particularly in terms of water availability and from a compounding of the effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, says Maira Zahur of Gender and Climate Change (Women for Climate Justice). It is a global network of women, activists and experts. Zahur, a researcher, adds: “Women are more vulnerable to climate change because they are more likely to be poor and have fewer coping mechanisms than men, and have additional responsibilities.”
Themba Linden, political adviser to Greenpeace in South Africa, said the effects of climate change worsened existing problems like food security, water scarcity and HIV/AIDS.
A UN Development Programme report says women in sub-Saharan Africa spend about 40 billion hours a year collecting water and doing their household chores. This means that increased water scarcity would particularly affect women, girls and to some extent boys, because they would have to travel further to collect water, or would have to use a less safe water source closer to home, Linden said.
“Seventy per cent of human beings worldwide living below the poverty line are women. In particular, in developing countries and communities that are highly dependent on local natural resources, women are likely to be disproportionately vulnerable to the effects of climate change,” says Ulrike Röhr. Röhr is director of Genanet, a Berlin-based group working on gender, justice and sustainability.
She said climate change often affects the areas that are the basis of livelihoods for which women are responsible, for example nutrition and water and energy supplies. “And because of gender differences in property rights, access to information and in cultural, social and economic roles, the effects of climate change are likely to affect men and women differently,” she said.
Those effects are not limited to immediate impacts and changing behaviour but also lead to subsequent changes in gender relations. Spending more time on traditional women’s tasks such as collecting water and fuelwood and feeding the family reinforces traditional work roles and works against a change in which women might begin to play other roles.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), women farmers in Africa produce up to 80% of the continent’s food. “To be successful, adaptation policies and measures within both developed and developing countries need to be gender sensitive,” Röhr said.
So far, climate change negotiations have responded poorly to the impacts on women, she said.
“And while global policies advocate a gender perspective, and including women in environment and development efforts, few governments have incorporated such policies into their national plans.”
“Extreme events and environmental degradation become a women’s issue because we are responsible for providing for the whole community,” said Anna Pinto, programme director with the Centre for Organisation, Research and Education (CORE), an NGO based in north-eastern India. She was speaking at a side event during the UNFCCC Bonn climate talks in early June.
