Hello readers,
Welcome to #ClimateJusticeThursday on CleanbuildVoices!
Did you know that climate change affects women and men differently? In fact, there is a growing body of evidence showing that women are generally more vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change than men.
This gender-based disproportionate vulnerability is a result of the socio-cultural and socio-economic structures that inhibit women’s access to information, resources, decision-making processes, information, and so on.
Also, women’s domestic roles often make them disproportionate users of natural resources (water, firewood, etc.), causing them to experience an increased work burden and fall further into poverty as these resources become scarcer as a result of human activities and climatic conditions.
What’s more, the increasing population growth is putting further pressure on resources thereby worsening the situation.
Yet, despite the vulnerabilities experienced by women and girls, they are often excluded from conversations where they can voice their specific needs. The resultant effect of this exclusion is that their extensive knowledge of the environment and their abilities to efficiently conserve resources will remain untapped.
You see, women (especially those in developing communities) are active agents of conservation and restoration of natural resources by virtue of their reliance on these resources due to their primary caregiving responsibilities and livelihood activities. For example, women are primarily responsible for fetching drinkable water in almost three-quarters of households without it.
What better way to drive climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts than involving women since their traditional roles as carers of natural resources can be harnessed for the benefit of humanity and the planet?.
For countries to mitigate climate change, adapt to the increased risks associated with it, and foster resilience, they need to tackle gender inequality for without doing so, all the environmental projects that are in the works will only lead to further disparities and an even wider gap between men and women.
Since we have established that there is a correlation between environment and gender (when gender inequality is high, forest depletion, air pollution, and other measures of environmental degradation are also high) and that social equity is an integral component of effective climate action and has the ability to accelerate women’s adaptive capacity and resilience, how can we achieve it?
According to research, empowering women through access to financial resources, information, education, improved healthcare, representation in government, and different networks of decision making, could help societies adapt more quickly and easily to the impacts of climate change and strengthen the effectiveness of climate change measures.
There are already examples of women across the world who are leading responses to climate change by developing climate solutions like water harvesting and soil conservation initiatives, managing disaster risk reduction and response plans, modifying growing patterns, adopting clean energy and sustainable consumption patterns that reduce the footprint of households and communities, etc.
Imagine what we could achieve if more women were empowered and given equal platforms? The possibilities are indeed limitless.
