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Women suffer more from climate impacts, so it's important to ensure planning for gender equality turns into action
By Soumya Karlamangla
Women are set to suffer the most from the effects of climate change, numerous studies show. They die disproportionately in disasters, struggle to care for the sick as mosquito-borne diseases like malaria spread and carry much of the burden of finding increasingly scarce water and firewood.
The question is: How could we prevent this?
A paper released by BRIDGE, a research program within the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), recommends putting gender at the core of climate negotiations, rather than including it as an afterthought, and improving the involvement of women in decision-making processes.
“Climate change policies, funding mechanisms and programmes are often misunderstood as gender-neutral - taking into account both men and women - whereas in fact they are often based on a male-biased perspective. This means that gender risks and opportunities that are implicit in every policy or programme on climate change are often ignored,” the report says.
These guidelines couldn’t be more appropriate than at the moment. This week the second meeting of the committee in charge of designing the Green Climate Fund ended in Tokyo. The fund, the biggest climate finance fund to date, was created through the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and aims to distribute $100 billion per year to developing countries by 2020.
Manfred Konukiewitz, who represented Germany at the meeting, said members are looking for “transformational change” in the setup of the fund, including more involvement by and for women.
But while groups and organizations identify gender equality as one of their goals for climate finance, those aims are rarely translated into action, the IDS study finds.
“In environmental and particularly climate change project and programme cycles, there is often a disconnect between a relatively strong gender analysis at the beginning of the cycle, at the design and appraisal stages, and a weaker integration of gender at the implementation, monitoring and evaluation stages,” the report notes.
Plenty of data backs up climate change’s potentially heightened impact on women. Women are often in charge of finding scarce food and water, and caring for the young, elderly and sick, which can take away time from other chores, including farming, and result in girls being withdrawn from school.
Studies show women are up to 14 times more likely than men to die from natural disasters, in some cases because they stay behind to help the young or elderly who cannot flee flooding, cyclones or other extreme weather.
“There are particular social norms and social expectations around the roles of women in society which means that the impacts of climate change will impact heavily on (them),” said David Dodman, an expert on climate change impacts in urban environments at the International Institute for Environment and Development.
According to the IDS paper, donors need to remember a couple of important things: Nothing is gender-neutral, and addressing gender inequalities means improving conditions not just for women for other vulnerable groups, including sometimes men and boys.
The authors recommend that donor agencies try to get climate experts and gender experts talking and help them overcome differences in technical language, and make sure gender equality remains a priority all the way through programs to the implementation, monitoring and evaluation stages.
“Gender equality is one of the guiding principles that should be incorporated into a consideration of each project,” said Liane Schalatek, a researcher who focuses on climate finance as well as gender equality.
If not, the results “will be detrimental to women and men,” Schalatek said.
Soumya Karlamangla is an AlertNet Climate intern.
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