Environmental Degradation and Climate Change
Issues:
Climate Change
Biodiversity
Climate Change
Climate change is a major concern for development policy and practice. Yet too often climate change responses do not consider the different impacts of climate change on women and men, and fail to take into account women’s specific knowledge and expertise, and their existing coping strategies. Women have also remained conspicuously absent from decision-making processes on climate change responses at all levels. Furthermore, despite increasing work on gender and climate change, there have been few attempts to tackle the issues collaboratively, in ways that maximise resources and the exchange of knowledge.
“Poor women often have poor access to the information and resources needed to mitigate or adapt to the impacts of climate change. For example, many women play an important role producing food for their own families and for sale in informal markets. Yet when particular crops fail, they are often unable to diversify their livelihoods or find new sources of subsistence… because they are not able to access the land, credit or agricultural technologies they would need to adapt to the changes“
Gender equality must be a central objective of climate change policies for four important reasons: because the diverse perspectives, experiences and knowledge of women and men are vital for effective climate change responses; because both women and men have the right to contribute to decision-making on climate change that affects their lives and livelihoods; because Human Rights are currently not central to the climate change agenda; and because existing work on climate change has focused on women’s vulnerability, rather than on relations of power (Bridge IDS, 2009).
Publications:
UNFPA 2009: State of world population Facing a changing world: Women, population and climat
UN Habitat 2010: Gender equality for smarter cities Challenges and Progress
Women and men have different uses, knowledge, and practices concerning biodiversity. These differing relationships with biodiversity result in gender-differentiated impacts when the abundance and composition of the biodiversity change. Such changes might limit women’s access to, and control over, natural resources (i.e. land, water, cattle and trees) and reduce their possibilities to provide for their families.
However, there is a gap between the fields of gender and biodiversity, partly also due to the very specific professional expertise used in this domain. It is necessary to highlight the gender-differentiated practices and knowledge of women and men in their relations with biodiversity resources, and to recognize that women and men can contribute differently to the conservation of biological diversity. Empowering women to participate as equals in information sharing and generation, education and training, technology transfer, organizational development, financial assistance and policy development enhances biodiversity conservation. Therefore, interventions in the field of biodiversity have to include a gender perspective from the outset.
Links:
GGCA: Global Gender and Climate
Publications:
IUCN, UNDP, GGCA 2009: Training manual on gender and climate change
