5th June is World Environment Day, a key day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the environment. To mark this occasion, this week’s blog comes from one of Soroptimist International’s Representatives to the UN Environment Programme in Nairobi, Dr Alice Odingo. A Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Nairobi, Alice is an expert on climate change and environmental issues affecting women, as well as poverty eradication and the role of women in ensuring food security.
This blog aims highlight the role of
women in environmental conservation, the challenges women face in the
conservation of these resources, the likely impacts of climate change on women
and their livelihoods, the emerging concerns of hazards and disasters, and
finally what SI can do to address the problem.
The term environment refers to the external
physical, biological and socio-economic conditions influencing the growth and
development of an organisms or group of organisms in an area. Women usually have the responsibility of
managing environmental resources, among them forests, drylands and
water. Women also contribute to the provision
of water, fuel and income needs of their household, thus significantly
contributing to environmental and socio-economic welfare of their families in
relation to food security, livelihoods, family health and disaster
preparedness.
The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) showed a general
global warming of 0.850C (0.65 to 1.06)0C over the period
1880 to 2012 for the global average combined land and sea temperature (IPCC
2013). Climate variability and climate
change will increase vulnerability to hydro-meteorological extremes (those
occurring due to weather and climate) such as prolonged droughts and extensive
floods, thus greatly impacting the poor and their livelihoods.
The frequency and magnitude of many types of
extreme weather and climatic events – such as floods, droughts, tropical cyclones
and wild fires – will increase, while the nature of many other types of disasters
such as landslides, heat waves and disease outbreaks are likely to change in intensity, duration and magnitude. Climate change will lead to increased water stress for many people in
Africa and diminished crop productivity in low latitudes, with a possibility of at least 50 percent decline in rain-fed agriculture, escalating
malnutrition among low-income societies, high mortality and morbidity. We will see more injuries associated with extreme events like droughts, floods, heat-waves,
fires, storms, as well as decreasing yields of fish from most of the world’s
fresh water and coastal fisheries.
The indirect impacts of climate change include changes in costs of goods
and services, water insecurity, increased cost of energy for cooling and
skyrocketing food prices, which would be felt more by low–income groups.
As far as women and men are concerned, climate
change widens the gender inequality gap. This aggravates women’s vulnerability
to climate change due to their social exclusion in developing communities,
inadequate resources, retrogressive culture and lack of mobility. In addition, lack of economic and social rights contribute to
disproportionate losses of lives among women than men during disasters such as
droughts, floods, mudslides/landslides, tsunamis, among other hazards. The situation is worsened by inadequate
representation of women in decision-making processes at the household,
community and policy levels, thus limiting their contribution of indigenous
information, which would be useful in disaster risk reduction.
The 1990s was
declared the International Decade for National Disaster Reduction (IDNDR). As a
follow-up, many governments and international organizations are today promoting risk reduction as the only sustainable solution for reducing the biophysical,
social, and economic impact of disasters. The United Nations has established an
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), to provide a global
platform to assist all communities to become resilient to the effects of
natural disasters and to prioritize protection against hazards to the
management of risk through the integration of risk prevention into sustainable
development.
Despite the predictability
in occurrence of geophysical hazards (earthquakes, volcanic eruption and
avalanche), there has been uncertainty in the prediction of hydro-meteorological
disasters (droughts, floods, cyclones, tornado, hailstorm, tsunamis, lightning,
etc) with increases in their frequencies.
For example, in the 1990s data, more than 90 percent of those killed by
natural disasters were due to hydro-meteorological events, particularly,
droughts, floods and windstorms (UNEP 2012).
According to UNISDR, there is great concern regarding disasters as they
impact tremendously the poor and sustainable development in general.
SI can collaborate with UNISDR and other
like minded institutions/women to support disaster risk reduction (DRR) through
the following:
- Working with
schools to educate children on DRR for posterity - Teaching of
life-skills and ways of disaster risk reduction among communities - Establish Model
schools to help in educating other peers on better DRR methods for climate
change adaptation and mitigation - Establishment of
Rescue centers where women in distress can consult to find help
Earlier this month, Alice attended a high level UN forum on disaster management in Abuja, Nigeria on behalf of SI. Read more.
Read Soroptimist International’s globally agreed position: Where We Stand – Women and Climate Change
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