 Climate Change >Gender Justice

Roshni  January - March 2021

By Smt. Kalyani Raj, MIC-Environment & Climate Change

When we talk about climate change harming our planet, we do not really state the underlying truth of it. The real casualties of climate change will be us - the human race and all the other species that we share this world with.

Climate change is not new – ice ages, floods and other catastrophes have been reshaping our planet for millennia now…but over great periods of time, it’s the human age that has unnaturally expedited this process.

The eventual outcome of this unabated climate change therefore, isn’t the destruction of the planet, it is the extinction of life from it! After all, the earth has survived for billions of years and will survive for billions more – we may not. That’s why we call today’s climate change anthropogenic, or man-made. Which gives rise to the question of who is responsible for it and who suffers the most from it?

While we have acknowledged that everyone has contributed to the crisis at different levels, we are also coming to the slow realisation that in the end, we’re all in the same boat, and we need to work together to avert global disaster.

That said, it has also been well documented that women are the lesser contributors to climate change, but are the greater victims of it - another imbalance that needs to be corrected for our climate efforts to meet with success. Because in reality, climate change is a matter of justice.

Women, as we know particularly in the south Asian countries, face intersecting discrimination and inequality due to patriarchy and socially structured gender roles. In India gender disparity manifests itself in multiple ways – by Race, by culture, in politics, social or economic situations and few more. If we look at some of the gender linked statistics, particularly the parameters of secondary education, maternal health, economic participation, political or even labour force participation, India probably scores much below even neighbouring countries. Crises like climate change or COVID, worsen the situation and widen the gap of existing inequality.

Yet even as we push our governments for climate justice, women around the world are still fighting to endure everything from storms to starvation. While we are advocating gender equality, we are hearing horrific stories of domestic abuse and violence. How can we achieve any equitable society when half the world’s population is struggling to overcome gendered obstacles, just to reach equal footing with her fellow ‘man’?

Reasons for this inequality are multiple - insecure land and tenure rights, obstructed access to natural resource assets, limited access to basic education, lack of access to markets, capital, training, technologies and few more. We cannot forget the

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Roshni  January - March 2021

additional burdens due to their responsibilities both inside and outside the home. These very factors result in limited participation of women in decision making. In fact, when we compare the demands of the women’s organizations during Beijing Conference in 1995 and the key demands of WGC before the Paris Agreement in 2015, they are almost a repeat. It does, therefore, indicate that despite the women’s organizations, gender experts and individuals strongly voicing their opinion about barriers impeding gender inequality for more than two decades, there has hardly been any progress in reduction of the gender gap.

This is happening probably because strategic implementation along with enabling policies and regulatory framework is lacking. Apart from this, I personally feel that there are two main reasons (a) very limited number of women participating in the policy formulation level and (b) lack of strong political will for gender mainstreaming in climate change policies.

What is therefore, the recourse or how can we change the scenario?

Women need to be provided the basic tools to survive in what is still a man’s world. And it has to start from the very beginning. The single factor that can phenomenally change almost everything is her education. Girls and young women need to have mandatory and uninterrupted access to education, no matter the circumstances – be it calamity, poverty or society. This fundamental resolution is the key to building their capacity as knowledgeable experts, who can sit across the table from men in any forum, and participate in the discussions and decisions, as informed representatives of their gender. This will result in more effective policy and inclusive action, by virtue of having considered all gendered perspectives.

If aided by sufficient advocacy work about differential and disproportionate impact of climate change on women, strong political will, sufficient investment, effective research and accurate monitoring measures, this systematic change can beget gender equality and in turn, climate justice, among other things.

Unlike the COVID crisis, we know what causes climate crisis and to some extent, ways to abate it. Let us pledge to do it together.

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