Climate change and Gender Equality in Developing Countries

REPORT BY NILAB

Introduction

Damaging effects of climate change can be felt in the short-term through natural hazards, such as landslides, floods, and hurricanes, and in the long-term through gradual degradation of the environment. The adverse effects of these events are already felt in many areas, including in relation to, inter alia, agriculture and food security; biodiversity and ecosystems; water resources; human health; human settlements and migration patterns; and energy, transport, and industry.

In many of these contexts, women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than men, mainly because they constitute the majority of the world's poor and their livelihoods are more dependent on natural resources that are threatened by climate change. In addition, they face social, economic, and political barriers that limit their ability to adapt. Women and men in rural areas of developing countries are particularly vulnerable, where they depend heavily on local natural resources for their livelihoods. Those responsible for securing water, food, and fuel for cooking and heating face the greatest challenges (Duncan, 2006; Rylander et al., 2013). Secondly, when coupled with unequal access to resources and decision-making processes, limited mobility puts rural women in a position where they are disproportionately affected by climate change. Hence, it is important to identify gender-sensitive strategies for responding to environmental and humanitarian crises caused by climate change.

Climate change has serious impacts on four dimensions of food security: Nutritious food availability, accessibility, utilisation, and the overall stability of food systems. Women farmers currently account for 45 to 80 percent of all food production in developing countries by region. About two-thirds of the female labour force in developing countries, and more than 90 percent in many African countries, are engaged in agricultural work. In the context of climate change, traditional food sources are becoming increasingly unpredictable and scarce. Women face the loss of crops, often their only source of food and income. Related food price increases cause food to be more inaccessible to poor people, especially women and girls whose health has been identified as deteriorating more than that of men in times of food shortages (Alston, 2014; Walby, 2005). Furthermore, women are often excluded from the decision-making process regarding access and use of land resources crucial for their livelihoods. For these reasons, it is important that the rights of rural women are guaranteed surrounding food security, non-discriminatory access to resources and equal participation in decision-making processes.

In rural areas of Africa and Asia, women and men are highly dependent on biomass, such as timber, agricultural crops, waste, and forest resources for their energy and livelihoods. However, in the face of climate change, the ability of women and men to maintain them is essential. Resources are dwindling. It is important to note that the decline in biodiversity not only impacts the material well-being and livelihoods of people; it also hampers access to security, resilience, social relationships, health, and freedom of choice and action (Näre & Akhtar, 2014).

People in developing nations who are disproportionately impoverished bear the brunt of biodiversity reduction. For artisanal fishermen and communities that depend on seafood, for instance, falling fish numbers have serious ramifications. Additionally, wood, the most popular solid fuel, is now farther from where people live in many regions of the world due to deforestation. In most poor communities in developing nations, women and girls are in charge of gathering traditional fuels, a physically taxing activity that can take anywhere between 2 and 20 hours or more each week. Women consequently have less time to take care of household duties, earn money, participate in politics or other public activities, learn to read or pick up new skills, or just relax (Smith et al., 2006). The cycle of disempowerment is exacerbated when girls are frequently kept home from school to assist with gathering fuel. Women and girls also become more susceptible to danger as a result of environmental deterioration, causing them to travel further for supplies (Borràs, 2019; Hanson, 2010; Momsen, 2017).

• Climate-change induced impacts to women's health, gender equality, and other factors

Increased morbidity and mortality brought on by heat waves, floods, storms, fires, and droughts are only a few possible climate change scenarios in terms of health. Furthermore, environmental risks brought on by climate change increase the likelihood of developing major diseases. There is a wealth of data connecting the evolution and dispersal of infectious illnesses to climate and weather. This is in addition to the reference above regarding climate change’s effects on women's health due to water shortages and water pollution. This results in a higher prevalence of infectious illnesses including cholera, malaria, and dengue fever because the risk seasons are extended, and disease vectors are distributed across a broader geographic area.

Floods may also increase the prevalence of water-related illnesses, particularly water and vector-borne diseases, which annually impact millions of low-income individuals. Floods are growing in frequency and in tandem with climate change. Additionally, a rise in illness incidence will likely make it harder for women to take care of their sick family members and neighbours. Malaria, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, and diarrhoea are some of these illnesses.

Climate change is therefore amajor global health concern that has quickly risen to the top of the global health agenda (Duncan, 2006; Levy & Patts, 2015). Its negative consequences on the ecology of Earth include increased natural disasters, vector-borne illnesses, poor air quality, and wildly varying climatic conditions, all of which have an adverse influence on human health (Duncan, 2006; Rylander et al., 2013). Numerous studies have shown the link between climate change and health, stressing poverty, food insecurity, isolation from other people and places, and deteriorating social norms as major variables that increase the adverse effects of climate change. A major danger to world health is climate change, which is supported by the ongoing problem of gender inequality. To learn more about the connection between climate change and women's health, a scoping assessment was done. The majority of the studies that were considered had research designs that were mostly qualitative and were published after 2010. In order to better understand how women are affected by climate change, women's health consequences, susceptibility factors, and adaptation options, four main topics were identified.

• Changes in human settlements and migratory patterns: gender equality

By accelerating environmental deterioration, climate change adds a new layer of complication to the domains of human habitation and transportation. Over the coming decades, the slow process of environmental degradation is anticipated to increase both domestic and international migratory movements. A growing number of people are being displaced as a result of extreme coastal weather events, coastline erosion, coastal floods, droughts, and agricultural damage as a result of increased human movement. For instance, Cyclone Nargis, which devastated the Irrawaddy Delta region of Myanmar in May 2008 and forced 800,000 people to flee their homes, had a significant impact on 2.4 million people.

There is widespread agreement in both research (Chindarkar, 2012; Djoudi & Brockhaus, 2011; Hunter & David, 2009) and policy that the effects of climate change are influenced by the gendered reality of human civilizations (Laczko & Aghazarm, 2009; UN, 2013). The scientific community policymakers, as well as the general public and the media, have all called attention to one of the many effects of climate change on human mobility and migration. The centrality of gender in mobility studies has long been contested; arguments have progressed between analysing how mobility affects gender and how gender affects mobility. The focus has been mostly on women as the major subject of study when it comes to climate change and migration, using instances from the Global South to support this claim (Arora-Jonsson, 2011). Climate, gender, and migration are frequently linked together to make the case that women are more exposed to the negative effects of migration, since they are less able to migrate in the first place owing to material inequalities.

Furthermore, there is still a lack of knowledge of how gender concerns emerge and are reshaped in migration policy and practice. The conceptualization of disparities and, as a result, what and who is targeted in interventions, depend on how gender is assumed in migration and climate change policy. According to the aforementioned ideas, gender, mobility, and climate change are conceptually relational, situated, and dynamic in character, as opposed to being static causes of vulnerabilities that have discursive and material effects. Understanding the interactions between the three (climate, gender, and mobility) in a context that is free of static definitions and draws ideas from modern feminist political ecology may prove to be difficult.

In order to comprehend how the vulnerability is generated and reshaped both literally and discursively, it is helpful to conceptualise the link between climate, gender, and migration. In this study, vulnerability is seen as a dynamic state that has historically been developed over time, placing certain people at a larger risk than others (Taylor, 2014). It is contextually created and repeated throughout time among social groups as a result of their active involvement with their environment, not as a result of climate change or catastrophic occurrences (Adger, 1999; O'Brien, 2007). In combination with other social, economic, and political forces functioning at various scales, climate change, gender, and migration affect vulnerability. These three processes' effects only appear when certain environmental conditions are met. The exercise of power plays a crucial role in determining the processes' relative importance. For example, the way in which gender, migration, and climate change are conceptualised in policies and their relationship to one another will affect how vulnerabilities are identified and corresponding responses are developed.

The gendered effects of climate change have long been acknowledged (Dankelman, 2010; Denton, 2010; Djoudi & Brockhaus, 2011). Although it is impossible to determine the magnitude of the impact, international policies acknowledge that mass migration is an unavoidable result of how climate change affects livelihoods (Boas et al., 2019). The decision to migrate is thought to be heavily influenced by gender. As a result, those gender inequities that are not typically amplified via institutions, gender analysis and mainstreaming, particularly in climate change adaptation, have become acknowledged (Nelson & Stathers, 2009; Terry, 2009). However, as was previously indicated, there is little research connecting climate change, gender, and mobility. This is not to imply that criteria like race, ethnicity, money, house ownership, education, age, and gender are not acknowledged as drivers of sensitivity to climate risk, and might cause an increase in migration or a decrease in migration depending on the location.

Conclusion

Climate change is typically viewed in migration studies as accelerating other variables that lead to migration. In other words, it is not regarded as a new factor that directly influences migration, but rather as one that amplifies already existing ones. In order to comprehend how this variable is changing as a result of the effects of climate change, gender is made to be "a specific situation" that calls for a special lens. According to the scoping assessment, women's health is more vulnerable to risks from climate change, particularly in urban areas. This research fundamentally implies that sociological, cultural, and economic issues are causing women to be more vulnerable. Meanwhile, women's health is at higher risk due to the vulnerability to climate change, especially in low and middle‐income countries.

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