Equalogy

Archive for September, 2009

Masum Momaya is doing a four part series answering the question “How are women impacted by climate change?”  All four articles will be psoted on AWID, but I’ll also be posting them in their entirety here.  On to part one:

Commentary on and analysis of climated change is often gender-blind. Yet, women, due to their productive and reproductive roles in families and communities, often bear the brunt of its impact. In particular, women are affected by climate changes related to water, soil, food and disease outbreaks.

The is the first article in a four-part series which explores the gendered impacts of climate change. Stay tuned in the coming months for part two, which details how women are responding to climate change “on the ground;” part three, which explores how women are organizing in preparation for the December 2009 United Nations Conference on Climate Change; and part four, which discusses how the outcomes of the conference might impact women’s rights.

By Masum Momaya

Climate Change refers to changes in the climate over time, including regional or global temperature changes and the increased prevalence of extreme weather conditions. Resulting effects and evidence of climate change include melting glaciers and permafrost; elevated water levels in oceans; forest fires; fatal heat waves, prolonged droughts; water shortages; desertification; soil erosion; erratic rain fall; and severe cyclones, hurricanes and floods. [1]

According to the vast majority of scientists, climate change is the result of human activity – including the clearing of tropical forests for wood, rubber and other products and the copious burning of fossil fuels (i.e. oil, coal and natural gas) to drive cars, generate electricity, and operate homes and businesses. Released emissions from burning fossil fuels act like a blanket, trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere and altering weather patterns around the world. {2]

Women are particularly affected by climate change because they generally do not have secure, affordable access to and control over land, water, livestock and trees; thus, they are forced to make do with limited resources and alternatives when their subsistence needs and livelihoods are threatened. Elderly women, disabled women, women widows and indigenous women often face the most acute challenges related to climate change whilst having fewer resources to compensate for and adjust to changes.

Water

Climate change has wreaked havoc on water supplies around the globe. Some places in the world, including much of the African continent, are experiencing more frequent and prolonged droughts and water shortages. Lowered water levels lead to soil erosion, desertification, and when combined with pervasive hot temperatures, result in heat waves, forest fires and deaths from dehydration and heat stroke. Other places in the world have seen massive increases in the frequency and severity of cyclones, hurricanes, floods, typhoons and tsunamis. In such places, the water table is rising, rainfall is overabundant, and atmospheric conditions result in frequent natural disasters. In both instances, women cope with the changes in water.

As the primary collectors of water in the Global South, women and girls now have to walk or travel farther to obtain water and employ more intensive means to collect and store water. In some cases, girls are likely to not attend school to complete these tasks or perform other chores while their mothers get water or engage in other income-generating activities when existing water-dependent tasks such as farming are threatened. Moreover, in some places, it is dangerous for women and girls to travel far to get water – they are raped and abducted as they walk long distances through conflict-ridden territory, sometimes unaccompanied. [3]

In places where water is scarce and difficult to obtain, some governments have turned to the private sector to manage the filtering and distribution of water. More often than not, this has compromised access and affordability of water as many companies seek to turn a profit – often bottling and selling the water to those in the Global North who can pay more for it. When faced with high costs of water, women, who generally balance the allocation of household resources to meet basis needs, are often forced to make difficult choices and trade-offs between food, water, medicines, health care and school fees. [4]

In places like Asia and the Caribbean, women have been faced with either death or difficult rebuilding of lives and homes in the face of severe cyclones, hurricanes, floods and tsunamis. A study of extreme weather between 1981-2002 found that natural disasters kill more women than men or kill women at an earlier age than men. For example, women vastly outnumbered men in tsunami deaths in 2004 and annually, women outnumber men in cyclone deaths in Bangladesh. [5]

Many women are also widowed and made refugees in such extreme weather events, left to generate income, provide for their children and rebuild homes on their own. In camps and temporary housing settlements, women are also vulnerable to gender-based violence. [6] Moreover, changes in ocean temperatures and pollutants in oceans, affect women directly and indirectly. Fisherwomen around the world are seeing changes in the quantity and health of fish available, threatening livelihoods in fishing communities populated by women. [7] Additionally, the gradual warming of the ocean is causing coral bleaching. The loss of coral reefs damages the tourism industry, in which women comprise 46% of the workforce. [8]

Soil & Food

In addition to the impact of climate change on water, permanent temperature changes have reduced the number and biodiversity of available plants, including for medicinal purposes. [9] As a large percentage of the world’s farmers, food gatherers and healers, women are often dependent on local ecosystems for health and livelihoods. Rural women alone are responsible for half of the world’s food production and produce between 60-80% of the food in the Global South. [10]

Temperature changes have limited the kind and diversity of crops farmers, the majority of whom are women, are able to grow, especially to accommodate climate variability itself. [11] For example, atmospheric brown clouds due to increased aerosol and greenhouse gas concentrations are reducing rice harvests worldwide, and rice is a staple food providing the majority of calories in the Global South. [12] This impacts not only nutrition of local families and communities but also income-generating prospects as farmers have fewer choices about what to grow, when and how. Also, since long-run arability of land is dependent on crop diversity and crop rotation, this threatens farmers’ long-term prospects for generating income using the same land and farming techniques.

Moreover, when food is scarce and/or expensive, women and girls are more vulnerable to malnutrition and starvation. [13] For instance, an UNDP study found that rainfall shortages in India resulted in periods of low food consumption, rising food prices and starvation-related deaths of girls. [14] Similarly, during the bread crisis in Egypt between 2007-2008, women and girls compensated for the shortages of bread by working more for paid income outside the home, eating less and spending more time preparing less expensive food from scratch. [15]

Disease

Climate variability also contributes to disease outbreaks in which women are most affected. Temperature changes, lack of clean and adequate water and sanitation infrastructure and lack of adequate, nutritious food can result in the rapid multiplication and spread of disease-carrying insects and pathogens and viral strains. For example, rising temperatures in the East African highlands played a critical role in malaria epidemics. [16] And, in Bangladesh, which experiences severe floods and typhoons, climate change accounted for an estimated 70% variation in recent cholera incidence. [17]

When faced with epidemics, women more often have less access to medical services than men and their workloads increase when they have to spend more time caring for the sick. Also, women and children form the majority (70%) of the world’s poor, and poor households affected by disease have fewer resources to adapt. [18]

Overall, a review of climate changes related to water, soil, food and disease outbreaks shows that women are uniquely impacted. Discussions and policy proposals at the upcoming United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen must consider this unique impact and the perspectives, expertise and “on the ground” experience women bring to this issue.

Johan Hari of The Independent/UK has reported an amazing story this week about a woman who set out to save trees in Africa.

She was born on the floor of a mud hut with no water or electricity in the middle of rural Kenya, in the place where human beings took their first steps. There was no money but there was at least lush green rainforest and cool, clear drinking water. But Maathai watched as the life-preserving landscape of her childhood was hacked down. The forests were felled, the soils dried up, and the rivers died, so a corrupt and distant clique could profit. She started a movement to begin to make the land green again – and in the process she went to prison, nearly died, toppled a dictator, transformed how African women saw themselves, and won a Nobel Prize.

Her name is Wangari Maathai, and she considers herself a “daughter of the soil”.  Humbled be humans needs for trees, she returned to Africa after coming to the U.S. for college.  She was the first woman ever to get a PhD in East or Central Africa.  She convinced international aid organizations to pay some woman from the National Council of Women of Kenya to plant trees.  As Hari says, planting trees turned to planting ideas, and her own husband began to see her Maathai as a threat.

The very public divorce from her husband did not deter her from protesting and soon other men began to see her as a threat also.

But the initial reaction to her protests was frightening. She began to receive anonymous phone calls telling her should shut up or face death. Moi called her a “madwoman,” and announced: “According to African traditions, women should respect their men! She has crossed the line!” When she carried on, she was charged with treason – a crime which carried the death penalty – and was slammed away in prison. She had arthritis, and she says: “In that cold, wet cell my joints ached so much I thought I would die.” But she would not apologise, or give in. “What other people see as fearlessness is really persistence. Because I am focused on the solution, I don’t see the danger. If you only look at the solution, you can defy anyone and appear strong and fearless.”

She went on to get national recognition and has left Africa to spread her knowledge

The rainforests can be killed from two directions – by the saws of men like Moi, or the warming gases of people like us. That is why she has left the land she loves, armed with the Nobel Peace Prize she won in 2004, and travelled so far: to try to persuade us to let the forests live. “There are moments in history when humans have to raise their consciousness and see the world anew. This is one of those moments. We are being called to assist the earth in healing her wounds, and in the process we can heal our own. We can revive our sense of belonging to a larger community of life. We can see who we really are.”

I strongly suggest reading the rest of this amazing woman’s life here

Via Feministing:

New research (PDF) from the London School of Economics (LSE) says that, when it comes to fighting climate change, investing in contraception is five times more effective than technologies such as wind and solar power.

Meeting basic family planning needs along the lines suggested would save 34 gigatonnes (billion tonnes) of CO2 between now and 2050 – equivalent to nearly six times the annual emissions of the US and almost 60 times the UK’s annual total.

In response to the report, some enviro-bloggers have called for “breaking the taboo” on linking population policy with environmental policy. Writes Lydia DePillis at TNR,

[I]t’s simply about reducing the number of footprints as well as their size, through increasing access to reproductive choice–a key element of the development agenda, and something the Obama administration itself endorsed eight months ago, by scrapping the gag rule on family planning. Too bad it looks like that’s totally off-limits in the American environmental discourse.

Now, I do understand that rapid population growth can exacerbate the impact of climate change. And I’m all for meeting global family planning needs. But linking these goals is problematic. I know the LSE report contains a prominent caveat that this is about non-coercive family planning, but using fears about climate change as a way to expand contraceptive use is eerily reminiscent of “population control” policies, some of which were coercive and all of which were rooted in the idea that certain people should be having fewer babies. (For some examples of the historically problematic use of “population control,” check out this report from Hampshire College.) I wonder whether liberals who are favorably linking to the LSE research are aware of how close its rhetoric is to racist talking points about population. Some taboos exist for a reason.

Of course, the LSE report is carefully worded and clearly aware of this history. But it still doesn’t sit right with me. I mean, the study was commissioned by a group called the Optimum Population Trust. Apparently “optimum population” is the new way of saying “population control.” And it seems that Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, is one of the group’s patrons. In the late 1960s, Ehrlich’s book set off a panic that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation in the coming decades — and spurred the U.S. to create its first global family-planning policies, which were not super feminist. (Read Michelle Goldberg’s book for more on this.)

As Claire, guest-blogging at Feministe recently, asked, “Has science ever actually defined the number of people the world and it’s resources can support, or is this fear of a “population bomb” about something else, more to do with which babies are being born than how many are being born?” (Emphasis mine.) Which is why I reject the “population control” frame altogether. Put another way, by Adam Werbach in a 2005 article about population and immigration,

In the population-control frame, the number of people and their placement on the planet is the root problem that needs to be solved. But is that really the problem? Family planning has succeeded only where economic security has been improved for women, including access to food and shelter, health care, and education. With this as background, the real population problem may be the treatment of women on the planet.

We all understand that empowering women to determine their own reproductive fates leads to other benefits — economic, societal, and yes, environmental. But given the history of population policy, to me the only acceptable international family planning policy is one that is motivated by increasing the empowerment and choices for women. Full stop. When we try to intervene in women’s reproductive lives for any other reason, the potential for abuse is just too high.

For more, check out this report from Hampshire College, Rethinking the Link: A Critical Review of Population-Environment Programs (PDF). It looks at this question on a more local scale.

I first heard about Majora Carter on Earth Day in 2006.  She came to speak at my school and her presentation on Sustainable South Bronx was memorizing.  She’s always been on the forefront of the green movement, helping out those who need it most.  Raised in the Bronx, she later returned to turn her community around with campaigns like “green the ghetto”.  GritTV has interviewed her to kick off Climate Action Week, an event with the goal of influencing leaders at the United Nations to take the climate change seriously when they meet in December at Copenhagen.

I’ll let this video do the rest of the talking:

Climate change has forced The Massai – a tribe in Kajiado, Kenya – to compete with animals over the water supply.  The tribe is struggling against the new seasonal weather patterns although they have been residents of the land for centuries.  Their quest for water takes the men into the capital, Nairobi.

As traditional cattle herders, the Maasai have found themselves leaving their homes for months at a time in search of pastures and water for their animals. In most cases this means vulnerable women, children and the elderly are left behind to fend for themselves in the villages.

Ebby Nanzala Wamatsi who wrote the article on The Massai for the Women News Network says in some cases women walk over 10 kilometers to fetch water and still there is a chance that they will return empty handed.   However, with the help of the United Nations Environment Programme, women are also taking action to change their situation.

The project is being spearheaded by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Regional Land Management Unit of the World Agro-forestry Centre. The organisations are providing equipment and training for the women.

To date, over 200 tanks have been constructed under the initiative. The women are also involved in digging mini reservoirs or ‘earth-pans’ to collect run-off water from sloping land. This in turn is used for irrigation purposes to water their crop and vegetable fields.

The women of Kajiado have also begun a tree-planting project to encourage the Maasai to adopt a more settled communal way of life as arable farmers. It makes it compulsory for every household to plant at least a hundred trees.

“It’s time to determine our own destiny. I am anticipating cooler weather. We are fed up with scorching temperatures and spending entire days searching for water,” says Luise Mwoiko, chair of the Mataanobo Women’s Group.

The women’s initiative cooperates to construct water tanks from one homestead to another. And they are proud of their work, as Mwoiko makes clear. “We never bother our men to climb up the tanks and make the final touches. We do it ourselves,” says Mwoiko as she adds that the women’s husbands assist financially in the projects.

Another member, Jerusha Lasoi, said their projects will ensure that the Maasai will no longer require food aid from outside their community. Pointing to her secure reservoir of water, a milk cow and thriving business in vegetable sales, Lasoi felt confident in their future.

I was inspired by a few creative responses to climate change that I saw this week and decided to share two of them with you.  First, a poem about the proposed mining of Liverpool Plains in South Wales and then a demonstration that took place outside the United Nations calling for a reduction in carbon emissions.

Susan Hawthorne wrote and posted this poem in her blog that she is writing from India where she is attending a conference on climate change.  Here it is, via the Feminist Peace Network:

armour dp225

she dreams of making armour for the earth
a helmet to prevent the drillers from beginning
a breastplate so they cannot cut open her heart
greaves to stop the underground lines
breaking through to the water table

it confounds her that anyone would want
to mine Liverpool Plains
to make the earth a corpse to strip
back the muscle layer by layer
to let light in under all that rich deep earth
to groom her for profit burn coal embers
in the asthmatic air the heat increasing
to burn away everything for the emptiness
of waterdrained lungdrained flatlands

Let them eat coal not food.

Here is the demonstration, reported by the ITN News:

California has changed its laws on graywater, making it more accesible and feasible for people to use.  Graywater, in case you haven’t heard the term yet, refers to the wastewater used when doing things around the house such as bathing, washing dishes or laundry.  Many have set up a system that takes that water straight to the their plants, but with more lenient regulations and a lower price tag, more people can implement this sustainable practice in their home.

From the San Fransisco Chronicle:

By some estimates there are already 1.7 million graywater systems at work in California – the vast majority without permits. Nationwide, there are about 8 million, according to Art Ludwig, a Santa Barbara environmental designer and leader in the graywater field.

Ludwig believes that number will only grow as more states grapple with the reality of water shortages, the problems posed by industrial agriculture and the shift toward what he describes as a more direct connection with the land and other precious resources.

“When you’re in a city and your water comes from the Sierra or wherever, you don’t necessarily care what you’re pouring down the drain,” Ludwig said. “But when you’re doing graywater and watering your citrus tree, you care.”

Check out the testimonials from households already using the system and more pictures here

Since I posted a short rant about Angry Green Girl yesterday, I figured today it would be a good idea to show a woman and her daughter who are vlogging about urban sustainable living the right way!  They are called the Garden Girls and feature Patti Moreno and her daughter and their backyard garden in Boston.

From her YouTube channel:

Working tirelessly to promote her ideas on the benefits and joys of urban gardening, Patti has also taken her message to the masses in a variety of ways. She is a contributing editor to Fine Gardenings GROW magazine, a columnist for Organic Gardening Magazine, a contributor for Farmers Almanac, and the host of their series Farmers Almanac TV. In addition, she has her own retail product line that was named Best Retail Product at both the 2008 Independent Garden Center Show in Chicago and the 2009 New England Grows Show.

The Garden Girls cover everything from how to set up a simple compost bin, to picking blueberries and making raised beds for an urban garden.  Check them out on YouTube for more great videos!

The concept of Angry Green Girl, a supposedly “hot, green and shameless” blogger/vlogger is offensive to both sexes.  First, she’s playing on the concept that men are fat, lazy slobs and will listen to anything if a hot girl takes her clothes off.  Also, her tips aren’t even that good.  Take the recent video on water she made.  The first thing she does is drink the water out of a PLASTIC WATER COOLER.  The video may have been a tad more affective if she went for the tap:

Besides not being green, it’s also offensive to women.  On the “who we are” page, Angry Green Girl says her blond intern thought “recycling newspaper meant reading it over and over again.”  Really? A blond joke? At least strive for a bit more creativity.  The “News” section may be the only useful thing to look at on her website.  While it does have some good information, it’s not enough to make me visit Angry Green Girl ever again.

Education has already proved to be one of the main reasons communities survive and prosper.  Somalia, facing one of its biggest humanitarian crisis in 18 years, is struggling to get its women into colleges.  Whether it’s because they are forced to stay home after getting married or don’t have enough money to pay for tuition, women are getting an unequal chance at going to college.  However, as part of the U.N.’s millennium development goals, the UNDP has set up the Somali Women’s Scholarship Fund, and almost 200 women are taking advantage of it.  WeNews correspondent Lensay Abadula recently covered the issue and you can read more about it here.  Below is a video from UNDP-USA. You can check out their website to learn more about the fund and how to donate.