Women and climate change

The victim or the victor?

For what seemed like decades, as men left to find jobs abroad and in the absence of adequate rainfall, the female farmers of Kavre struggled to get significant returns from their harvests to make a reasonable enough living. The reason for such low yields was attributed not just to climate change but also to the social standing of rural farm women which made accessibility of essentials like land, seeds, water, training, credit and technology more difficult than it had ever been for their male counterparts. Overwhelmed with such hurdles (while also trying to juggle household chores and secure necessary resources like water, firewood and fodder at the same time), more and more overworked females opted out of farming leaving stretches of land barren.

But this trend may be reversing now, thanks to the help of agencies like ICIMOD that has been teaching women adaptive practices like mulching to retain moisture in soil and helping them construct plastic-lined ponds to ensure availability of harvested rainwater year round. Others like Practical Action is training women to detect early signs of floods so that the human and economic toll of such climate induced disasters in Nepal are much less in the current scenario than ever before. INGOs like the USAID have been actively involved in increasing women’s accessibility to necessary resources like seeds and trainings with programs like the Hill Maize Research Program, Action against Malnutrition through Agriculture etc.
With almost one in every ten men working abroad, the feminization of agriculture has been an increasing phenomenon for quite some time in Nepal: CBS reported that women involved in agriculture were 36% in 1981, 45% in 1991 and 48.1% in 2001. Pundits and INGOs in related fields regard these figures as under representative and consider the number of Nepali women involved in farming to be much higher.
It is clear that the absence of men on the fields today means that a rural woman’s role in her household is no longer confined to resource collecting and other household chores but has also expanded to income generation through farming. With climate change already heavily impacting the availability of resources and women having to travel greater distances for resource collection, the added responsibility has made life of such women much more strenuous than it already was.
Such strains devastate a woman’s life in many ways including negative impacts on their physical and psychological well-being. But one that is likely to perpetuate the cycle of poverty viciously to subsequent generations is when she, inevitably, decides to keep her children – especially young girls – back from school so that they can help her out instead.
Climate change has been regarded to affect women much more severely than men all over the world. One study that focused on disasters in 141 countries concludes that in nations where women lack basic economic and social rights, more women will die from natural disasters than men compared to developed nations where the death rates of the two sexes will be similar.
More women are likely to lose their lives in climate induced disasters today in Nepal because of restrictive socio-cultural roles and rules such as the sole responsibility of taking care of the children and the elderly, restrictive clothing that hinders rapid movement or a lack in survival skills like running, swimming and climbing trees which are usually discouraged from an early age. As evidenced by the aftermath of the earthquake, girls and women in displacement camps are also more likely to be trafficked or sexually assaulted during such vulnerable periods.
Between the farm and household chores, climate change is also responsible for the increase in the amount of time women spend doing unpaid or underpaid work. The UNEP has characterized 64% of the total women of South Asia to be ‘non-active or non-reported’ which means that these women do work that is unpaid and that eventually goes unreported. In Nepal, according to CBS in 2011, among the total number of paid workers only 31% comprise of females while the rest of 69% are males. Climate change is likely to exacerbate these differences even further. The pay differences between men and women, especially while working in the fields, is also striking and is further likely to sink a woman more into poverty.
However, as stories like those from Kavre demonstrate, the relationship between climate change and women is no longer just that of victim and victor: the dynamics are shifting rapidly as women are learning to cope and survive the effects of global warming. What’s more, Nepalis women are not only adept at adapting, but according to studies vulnerable women like these are also more likely to be actively involved in the mitigative aspects of climate change.
Climate change experts endorse extensive involvement of women in decision making in the house-hold level, policy making on a national level and more participation in the international platform for climate justice because according to the UNDP, women are likely to show more concerns for the environment, support pro-environment policies and vote for pro-environment leaders. Women have a higher tendency to be involved on such mitigative capacities because they have a strong body of understanding, knowledge and expertise when it comes to natural resources and have more to lose than any other population which leads to a greater commitment in the area.
Rural women have been proven more adept at mobilizing local villagers and understanding the approaches that is required at the grass-root level. One of the more successful programs in Nepal, the Community Forestry Program, has shown similar results time and again. According to Binita Pandey, an Assistant Forest Officer at District Forest Office, “The increase in participation of women in community forestry has been marked by a remarkable growth in efficient management of resources. As women are primary users of forest resources they understand the need to conserve and sustainably utilize such assets which makes their involvement essential.”
She, however, points out that without better education and a more supportive social and legal structure that emphasizes on gender equity, it would be impossible to unlock all that women have to offer. Statistics provided by the USAID support this theory: if women farmers are provided the same opportunities as their male counterparts in Nepal, their yields have been projected to increase by 20-30%.
The role of women in adaptation, disaster reduction and mitigation is often acknowledged by the GoN however it is usually a perfunctory gesture without any outcomes to show for it. The National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA) – which outlines short-term adaptation strategies of Nepal – while acknowledging gender specific vulnerabilities in the beginning, does not make any reference to gender or women in any of its nine prioritized projects. In a report published by the IIED, Gita Khadka, who was the gender consultant during the formulation of NAPA, describes gender as “one of the least prioritized areas of NAPA” and the authors of the paper describe efforts to mainstream gender as ‘weak’ and ‘tokenistic’ in Nepal. The Local Adaptation Program of Action, conversely, which was developed in accordance with the Local Self Governance Act was formulated through the bottoms-up approach and is deemed to have stronger provisions regarding gender mainstreaming.
It is clear that gender focus and considerations are non-negotiable if climate change is to be addressed effectively. The GoN is now formulating the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) which outlines long term adaptation strategies of Nepal. If the government wants to address all aspects of climate change effectively, the NAP will have to be a more gender inclusive document than the NAPA is. It must prioritize on gender mainstreaming extensively to find real solutions – both in regards to climate change and gender equity – for us, in the future.

sneha.pandey@hotmail.com