Women take the lead in adaptation projects
No commentsBangladesh is clearly really vulnerable and there is no question about it, and I wouldn’t think of submergence. Even before that, the impacts are going to be very serious. Every time you have cyclones, every time you have a storm surge. One reason why it was so severe is the fact that the sea level rise today is much higher than what is was earlier
Host: Dr. Rajenda Pachauri, chair of the IPCC speaking to fellows of the Climate Change Media Partnership at UN negotiations on climate Change in Poznan, Poland. Earlier this week, the environment and development organisation Germanwatch reported in its Global Climate Risk Index that Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. The South-Asian nation has consistently over the past ten years been ranked as one of three countries most affected by extremes of weather. For this reason, significant amounts of money have been invested in developing adaptation strategies. As Sokhoeun Khut reports women – traditionally homemakers in rural communities – have especially benefited from these projects.
SFX: ducks Clip: Mosamot Amena Begaumin + voiceover (1) Our family has been rearing ducks on a large scale since 2003. Care Bangladesh and other NGOs showed us how to go about rearing ducks. They also gave us ducklings to get us started and we haven’t looked back since then.
SK: Mosamot and her family live in the south-western region of Bangladesh and spend four months a year living inundated by flood waters. Her husband used to grow onions but they have now been forced to find a new way to survive.
FX: ducks. Clip: Mosamot Amena Begaumin + voiceover (2) We started rearing duck because we don’t have any land to cultivate on high ground. All our land is now under water and we can’t grow anything in water.
SK: Bangladesh is repeatedly afflicted by flooding. For many, life has become a constant struggle to fight poverty and floods. Duck-rearing was just one micro-level initiative introduced early on to offer women the chance to contribute to the family income. Angie Daze from CARE International was involved in these adaptation projects as early as 1998. It immediately became clear how beneficial they would be for women.
Clip: Angie Daze, CARE International (1)
We really did find that women have been empowered within the household because they were generating income for the family and that gave them more opportunity to make decisions as to how the household managed its finances and that was important.
SK: CARE International encourages existing organizations in the community to work closely with local groups. Initial discussions are set up to find out what issues are affecting their livelihoods. Topics were not limited to climate change, but as Angie says each time they tried to open up the debate, the top three issues always returned to the changing weather patterns.
Clip: Angie Daze, CARE International (2)
They’re talking about droughts, they’re talking about floods, and they’re talking about changing rainfall patterns. So not only that there are more droughts but also that the rainy season is shifting in terms of timing and that makes it very difficult for them. Even in a year with no drought, it’s difficult to get a good crop, because they don’t know anymore when the season is. They can no longer predict when the rain will come. Small changes like that. We’ve seen they talk about changes of vegetation. Generally speaking the changes they’re talking about in term of climate are backed up by meteorological data.
SK: With the gathered information the women are introduced to an awareness raising project which focused on folk media. The projects have reportedly reached out to as many as 1.5 million women. Ahsan Uddin Ahmed from the Center for Global Change – a local NGO in Bangladesh- designed these programs.
Clip: Ahsan Uddin Ahmed (CGC) (1)
We used local level drama involving local people with the climate change message. So we spent three – four days talking to them and trying to share the learning from climate change. How is going to affect their lives and their circumstances? Then they were allowed to perform in their own way. So those kinds of performance were in the presence of thousands of people actually. And then of course, women were much more interested because they found that eventually this kind of phenomena will affect their livelihood and since they’re caretakers within the households they felt it more serious even than their male counterparts.
SK: As women are becoming more aware of how to cope in a changing climate and opportunities are opening up for them to contribute financially to their households, the traditional role of women as homemakers is changing.
Clip: Ahsan Uddin Ahmed (CGC) (2)
In waterlog areas, or saline-prone areas, men are becoming more respectful to their female counterparts because of rising income and perhaps because of an additional security they were not aware of in some point of time. Now they are feeling that’s OK. She’s coming up with income and all that and now her contribution to the family is well understood. Previously hard silent contribution to the family without coins or money was not properly clearly understood by the males. Now they can see they (women) can also become a very influential partner in the same household and the level of respect has risen.
