Climate change is rapidly making the planet inhabitable for humans and other living species, with drought, floods, heatwaves, cyclones, and catastrophic storms destroying lives, homes, and businesses.
According to the World Health Organization, between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause an additional 250,000 climate-related deaths per year from heat stress, malnutrition, malaria, and diarrhea.
It is true that climate change affects everyone but one cannot overlook the fact that the poor and the vulnerable, especially women and girls, grossly bear the impacts and this is for a number of reasons.
Firstly, women depend on natural resources to survive and run their households. Secondly, they are poorer because they earn less and either have insecure jobs or do not have the same opportunities as their male counterparts as is the case in some parts of Africa where economic opportunities are hinged on gender.
To further highlight the disparities in the financial constraints per gender, the World Bank notes that micro, small and medium enterprises, in which many women work, are less able to bear the costs of climate change than larger firms.
To survive, many of these women are subjected to several forms of injustices: sexual assault and coercion, rape, trafficking, child marriage, or other forms of violence against women.
For other women, the negative impacts of the climate crisis leave unforgettable scars, as was the sad case of Fatuma, a young mother of 4 living in a small village in Mwatate, Kenya.
Fatuma is a victim of the climate crisis because the unfortunate incident, which has scarred her for life, is linked to the drought situation in Kenya. Kenya has been experiencing a prolonged drought which is forcing wildlife into villages in search of water.
Unfortunately for Fatuma, she happened to be walking her 4-year-old to school when she encountered a buffalo that was in search of water. The buffalo gored her through her thigh and this led to the rupture of her bladder.
Fatuma’s recovery is hinged on crowd-funding as there isn’t any funding structure on the continent for cases like this neither is there policy backing.
This is one of many cases of women, especially those in poor communities, paying the price for what they contributed little to and being left to suffer the scarring and sometimes, life-threatening effects of climate change and climate change impacts.
It is a good thing that governments and organizations have dedicated more attention to the gendered impacts of climate change. However, beyond visibility and the implementation of long-term, community-oriented gender-focused solutions, we must prioritize taking gender-responsive actions.
