Showing posts from category gender.
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Migration and Environmental Change, Minority Land Rights and Livelihoods
›Migration and Global Environmental Change: Future Challenges and Opportunities, from the UK Government Office for Science’s Foresight Programme, looks at how environmental change, including climate change, land degradation, and the degradation of coastal and marine ecosystems, over the next 50 years will affect migration trends. The report emphasizes that migration is a complex and multi-causal phenomenon, which makes it difficult to differentiate environmental migrants as a distinct group. Nevertheless, research suggests that global environmental changes will affect the drivers of migration, particularly economic forces, such as rural wages and agricultural productivity.
Though Foresight finds that many will use migration as an adaptation strategy that improves resilience to environmental change, they also point out that some affected individuals may become “trapped” in vulnerable situations, lacking the financial capacity to respond to environmental changes, while others may be able to move but will inadvertently enter more exposed areas, particularly, at risk urban centers. For recommendations, they stress the importance of strategic, long-term urban planning, and recognition within adaptation and development policies that migration can be part of the solution.A study, released on December 5 by Minority Rights Group International, finds that minority communities in Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan face significant challenges around access to and control of critical natural resources. The report, Land, Livelihoods, and Identities: Inter-Community Conflicts in East Africa, shows how rapid population growth, climate change, and globalization are increasing competition for land, water, and forest and mineral resources in territories traditionally occupied by minority groups. These pressures can undermine livelihoods and trigger multiple and overlapping conflicts, especially where ownership has not been formalized in law. The study also notes that women are doubly vulnerable as their access to land and resources is frequently mediated through customary law, which depends on their communities retaining control over traditional territory. Although the report makes national-level legal and policy recommendations, the authors note that some of the most effective resource management and conflict resolution strategies adapt traditional cultural practices to the current circumstances of communities. -
Engaging Faith-Based Organizations on Maternal Health
›“Faith-inspired organizations have many different opportunities [than non-faith-based NGOs]. The point that is often reiterated is that religions are sustainable. They will be there before the NGOs get there and will be there long after,” said Katherine Marshall, executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue at the Wilson Center on November 16. Marshall noted in her opening remarks that maternal health should be an easy issue for all groups, regardless of religious tradition, to stand behind. Yet, in reality, maternal health is a topic that “very swiftly takes you into complex issues, like reproductive health, abortion, and family planning,” she said.
As part of the Advancing Dialogue on Maternal Health series, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Global Health Initiative collaborated with the World Faiths Development Dialogue and Christian Connections for International Health to convene a small technical meeting on November 15 with 30 maternal health and religious experts to discuss case studies involving faith-based organizations in Bangladesh, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Yemen. The country case studies served as a springboard for group discussion and offered a number of recommendations for increasing the capacity of faith-based organizations (FBOs) working on maternal health issues.
Engaging Religious Leaders in Pakistan
“When working with religious leaders to improve maternal health there are some do’s and don’ts,” said Nabeela Ali, chief of party with the Pakistan Initiative for Mothers and Newborns (PAIMAN). Ali described a PAIMAN project that worked with 800 ulamas (religious leaders) to increase awareness about pregnancy and promote positive behavior change among men.
One of the “do’s” highlighted by Ali was the need to build arguments for maternal health based on the Quran and to tailor terminology according to the ulamas preferences. The ulamas who worked with PAIMAN did not want to utilize the word “training,” so instead they called their education programming “consultative meetings.” More than 200,000 men and women were reached during the sermons and the strategy was been picked up by the government as one of the best practices written into in the Karachi Declaration, signed by the secretaries of health and population in 2009.
Despite the successes of the program, Ali warned against having unrealistic expectations for religious leaders interfacing with maternal health. She stressed the importance for having a long-term “program” approach to the issue, as opposed to a short-term “project” framework.
Behavior Change in Yemen
“Religion is a main factor in decisions Yemeni people make about most issues in their lives and religious leaders can play a major role in behavior change,” said Jamila AlSharie a community mobilizer for Pathfinder International.
Eighty-two percent of Yemeni women say the husband decides if they should receive family planning and 22 percent say they do not take contraception because they belief it is against their religion and fertility is the will of God, said AlSharie. Therefore, the adoption of healthy behavior change requires the involvement of key opinion leaders and the alignment of messages set in religious values. Trainings with religious leaders included family planning from an Islamic perspective, risks associated with early pregnancy, nutrition, education, and healthcare as a human right.
Male Participation a Key Strategy
“As a faith-based organization we believe it is a God-given right to safe health care and delivery so we mobilize communities to support pregnant women to address their needs, educate families about referrals and existing services in the community,” said Elidon Bardhi, country director for the Bangladesh arm of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA).
Through female-run community organizations, ADRA educates men and women about the danger signs of labor and when to seek care. For example, many men in Bangladesh hold the belief that women should eat less during pregnancy to ensure a smaller baby is born, thereby making delivery easier, said Bardhi. ADRA addressed such misconceptions through a human rights-based approach and emphasized male participation as a key strategy, ensuring there were seven male participants for every one female.
A Culturally Nuanced Approach in Nigeria
The Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI) is a public-private partnership that identifies and creates strategies for integrating family planning with maternal health. According to Kabir Abduallahi, team leader of NURHI, “family planning” is not as acceptable a term as “safe birth spacing” in Nigeria, so the project highlighted how family planning can help space births and save lives.
Religion and culture play an important role in the behavior of any community. The introduction of a controversial healthcare intervention (such as family planning) in a religiously conservative community requires careful assessment of the environment and careful planning for its introduction, said Abduallahi. Baseline surveys and formative research data helped NURHI understand the social context and refine intervention strategies.
Ten Ways to Increase the Capacity of FBOs
Faith-based organizations’ close links to communities provide them with an opportunity to promote behavior change and address other cultural factors contributing to maternal mortality rates such as early marriage and family planning.
Working in collaboration with FBOs and other stakeholders is critical to promoting demand for maternal and reproductive health services; however, there is limited knowledge about faith-based maternal healthcare and FBOs are often left off the global health agenda. In conclusion, Marshall noted 10 areas the group identified as areas to focus on:- Move projects to programs: Projects are often donor driven and limited in scope and duration. Donors and policymakers should move from project-oriented activities to local, regional, and national-level advocacy programs to build sustainable change.
- Coordinate, coordinate, coordinate: Significant resources are wasted due to a lack of coordination between FBOs and development agencies. A country-level coordinating mechanism should be developed to streamline efforts not only between agencies but also across faiths.
- Context, context, context: A thorough understanding of the local culture and social norms is imperative to successful program implementation.
- Terminology is important: In Pakistan, religious leaders redefined sensitization meetings around family planning and maternal and child health as “consultative meetings” not “trainings.” In Nigeria, the culture prefers “child birth spacing” over “family planning.” In Yemen, it’s “safe age of marriage” instead of “early childhood marriage.”
- Most religious leaders are open and with adequate information can produce behavior and value changes. Utilizing the Quran, Hadith, and Bible can support arguments and emphasize the issue of health and gender equity.
- Relationship building: Winning the trust of religious leaders can be difficult and time-consuming but is necessary for opening doors to patriarchal societies.
- Rights-based approach: A human rights-based approach can be a very powerful agent of change for addressing negative social structures such as violence against women, but it can also create controversy. In Bangladesh, ADRA utilized the approach to educate men about nutrition, dowry and child marriage, and education of women.
- Networks: There is a significant need to create forums that bring together the various FBO and global development communities in order to share knowledge and enhance advocacy messages. Networks are needed to streamline resources and inventory existing research, projects, and faith-based models that work.
- Monitoring and evaluation systems: There is a striking lack of data about the impact and outcomes of FBOs. Increasing the monitoring and evaluation skills of FBO workers can improve evaluation systems and meet the demand for new data.
- There needs to be greater political will for engaging the faith-inspired community.
Event ResourcesPhoto Credit: David Hawxhurst/Wilson Center. -
IRP Editors Cover Rwanda’s Population, Health, and Environment Challenges
›The original version of this article appeared on the International Reporting Project website.
The International Reporting Project (IRP) and 12 senior editors and producers from across the United States traveled to Rwanda this year to learn about issues affecting Rwanda and other countries in Africa and to help them improve their news organizations’ international coverage. Some of the editors focused on Rwanda’s extensive population, health, and environmental challenges:
Nicholas Aster, founder and publisher of San Francisco’s Triple Pundit, covered sustainable development in Kigali, coffee’s empowerment potential, and eco-tourism sites like Volcanoes National Park. Aster also became interested in Rwanda’s efforts to avert disaster by corralling Lake Kivu’s CO2 reserves into a power supply. At the close of his trip, Aster reflected on Rwanda’s sustainability goals in a photo essay.
Tom Paulson, host and reporter for KPLU’s Humanosphere, discovered the positive side of aid and development in Rwanda, including girls’ education initiatives and coffee farming improvements. Moreoever, Paulson documented the Gatekeepers’ trip to Volcanoes National Park, including a visit from a mountain gorilla who became a little too friendly. Paulson has also posted several questions the Gatekeepers asked President Paul Kagame when they met with him, including his policies on restricting free speech, curbing population growth, and preventing another genocide. At the close of the trip, Paulson composed a photo slideshow that shows a growing, vibrant Rwanda, and he also outlined 10 reasons why the complex and sometimes contradictory country can’t be described in a sound-bite.
Sue Horton, op-ed and Sunday Opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times, began chronicling her trip with a survey of Rwanda’s history on genocide, governance, and gorillas. On the road to meet Rwanda’s famed gorillas, Horton noted Rwanda’s strengths and challenges: its ambitious vision for the future encourages a growth in infrastructure and the country has showed impressive gains in healthcare provision and access, but Kigali is relocating residents who don’t fit the image.
The deputy managing editor of Global Post, Andrew Meldrum, also found a note of optimism in witnessing how far Rwanda has come since the genocide, particularly after hearing the testimonies of the genocide’s youngest victims: children born of sexual violence during the genocide. And his Global Post colleague Jon Rosen delves into the country’s population growth and the government’s approach to family planning.
In addition to the Gatekeeper Editor Trips, the IRP offers individual Fellowships to U.S. reporters to travel overseas on five-week reporting trips. In 2009, IRP Fellow Perry Beeman discovered a Rwanda similar to that which the Gatekeepers encountered: a country that has made much progress, but still has many challenges ahead. Beeman, who also was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, created a multimedia series, “Renewal in Rwanda”, for The Des Moines Register; his reporting garnered him an Overseas Press Club citation for Best Reporting in 2010.
Rwandans, Beeman found, are dedicated to conservation. President Kagame is committed to the environment and is driven to develop clean, sustainable power and to convert from subsistence agriculture to a stronger, more diversified economy. But everyone has a hand in this effort, including schoolchildren who report on conservation in song, dance, and dramatic arts. Beeman also examined efforts to preserve the Gishwati Forest, including gorilla and chimpanzee preservation efforts from villagers to businessmen to researchers. Beeman emphasized the importance of immersing oneself in an environment in order to report on it, and he did so by, among other things, tracking wild chimpanzees in the forest.
For more information about IRP’s Fellowships and Gatekeeper Editor trips, visit their website at InternationalReportingProject.org.
Photo Credit: “The Broadsheet in Kyovu, Kigali,” courtesy of flickr user noodlepie (Graham Holliday). -
Ambassador Melanne Verveer, U.S. Department of State
Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues on Durban and the Role of Women in Combating Climate Change
›December 23, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Ambassador Melanne Verveer, appeared on the White House Council on Environmental Quality blog.
Last week I traveled to Durban, South Africa to participate in the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to highlight the critical and largely untapped potential of women to combat climate change. Studies have shown that it is often women who are on the frontlines of, and suffer disproportionately from, the impacts of climate change. This is certainly important. But we must remember that women are also a powerful force for finding solutions to climate change across the board, including in areas such as agriculture, sustainable forest management, and energy access.
Agriculture, which accounts for approximately 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and is a sector that can be particularly sensitive to climate variability and change, is one key area where women can play a major role. A recent FAO report shows that women, in many places, are the main producers of the world’s staple crops, particularly in developing countries and regions likely to be adversely affected by climate change impacts. However, globally, only a small minority of women farmers have access to land tenure. This is a problem for many reasons – including that it limits women’s potential to combat climate change. Studies have shown that women with the right to property are significantly more capable of investing in climate-smart agricultural productivity; we have a lot of work to do to unlock women’s potential in this area.
Women also have untapped potential for increasing energy access, which directly relates to climate change. For example, nearly three billion people globally still rely on traditional cookstoves and open fires to prepare food for their families. In most instances, women are responsible for cooking – not to mention also spending many hours per week collecting fuel, which often puts women at risk of gender based violence. The resulting smoke exposure causes an estimated two million premature deaths annually, with women and young children the most affected. Cookstoves also impact the climate through emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived particles such as black carbon. Engaging women is critical to tackling this problem. As we work to build a global market for clean cookstoves, integrating women into the cookstoves supply chain will help increase clean cookstove adoption rates while also creating new economic development opportunities. And as Secretary Clinton has noted, women create a multiplier effect in local communities because they disproportionately spend more of their earned income on food, healthcare, home improvement, and schooling.
The United States recognizes the power of women’s potential in these areas and many others, and is investing in major initiatives including Feed the Future and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, where women’s role in generating transformative change is front and center.
I went to Durban to highlight the critical role of women in combating climate change. While there, I worked with U.S. negotiators on the Durban texts and participated in public engagement events. Our efforts to build on the gender equality and women’s empowerment language in the Cancun agreements are reflected in several crucial institutional developments, including language on gender balance related to the composition of the board of the new Green Climate Fund, the Standing Committee, and the Adaptation Committee. We also worked to reflect gender considerations in the mission of the Climate Technology Center and Network. USAID Assistant Administrator Eric Postel and I solicited input during a meeting with leading non-governmental organizations working on gender and climate issues, and I hosted a high-level side event at the U.S. Center focused on unlocking women’s potential to combat climate change. The level of enthusiasm among my fellow panelists and the audience at the event was inspirational.
We made progress in Durban, but we can’t stop here. To achieve the future we all seek, we must do more. As the late Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement and ground-breaking advocate on women and the environment said, “We must not tire, we must not give up, we must persist.” The future of not only women, but our planet, depends on it.
Ambassador Melanne Verveer is U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues.
Sources: Food and Agriculture Organization, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, The White House.
Photo Credit: “Melanne S. Verveer,” courtesy of the U.S. Embassy, Kabul. -
Can “Climate-Smart Agriculture” Help Feed Africa’s Growing Population?
›December 13, 2011 // By Brenda ZuluFood production needs to increase 70 percent by 2050 to meet the demands of a growing world population, said former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a keynote address on “climate-smart agriculture” at a COP-17 event hosted by the World Bank and African Union. Annan, who is now chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), said this was a particular concern in Africa, where four out of five citizens are dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods.
One in seven people in the world do not have enough food to eat, Annan said, and climate change is expected to make this challenge more difficult to overcome. Climate-smart agriculture includes a wide variety of techniques that help increase the resilience of communities and protect them from extreme weather events, such as terracing to prevent soil erosion, improving weather forecasting, managing water runoff, and developing irrigation systems.
“Climate change affects us by undermining our resource base through water and soil degradation,” said Prime Minister of Ethiopia Meles Zenawi at the event. “There is need to protect the resources and to rehabilitate green areas of our land.” He said that since 70 percent of Africans are small-scale farmers and that most of the poor in Africa were farmers, there is no better way to fight poverty on the continent than through agriculture.
South African President Jacob Zuma said at the event that given that the UN projects a population of more than nine billion people in the world by 2050, agriculture should be a priority as it is more vulnerable to climate change than any other sector.
“Climate-smart agriculture includes proven practical techniques such as mulching, intercropping, conservation agriculture, integrated crop management and agro forestry, improved grazing, and innovative better weather management,” he said, all of which have the potential to help increase crop yields.
Mary Robinson, chair of the Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health, said there could be no smart agriculture without integrating women’s issues, because climate change affects women disproportionately. “Women make the connection between climate-smart agriculture, food security, and gender,” she said.
“Our ability to feed the growing population under climate variability and change will require new expertise and harmonized efforts,” said Robinson.
Annan agreed, saying African women should be fully involved in early action that can support technical assistance, such as screening agriculture plans to ensure they are “climate smart” as well as integrating climate resilience and mitigation into ongoing poverty-reduction programs and testing new approaches.
But according to Brylyne Chitsunge, a farmer from Pretoria speaking on the panel, things will need to change considerably from the status quo. “The small-scale farmer remains very much marginalized in institutions,” she said. “They exist on paper but they really don’t exist.”
Brenda Zulu is a member of Women’s Edition for Population Reference Bureau and a freelance writer based in Zambia. Her reporting from the COP-17 meeting in Durban (see the “From Durban” series on New Security Beat) is part of a joint effort by the Aspen Institute, Population Action International, and the Wilson Center.
Sources: World Bank, World Food Programme.
Photo Credit: “Cultivated hillsides,” courtesy of flickr user coda (Damien du Toit). -
Climate Change, Uncertainty, and Conflict in the Niger River Basin
›New research on the Niger River Basin finds that the effects of climate change in the region are pervasive and that “latent conflict” between groups – disagreements and disputes over damage to farmland and restricted access to water, but not physical violence – is common.
“You’ve got vulnerable people, vulnerable households, vulnerable communities living within…fragile systems – governance systems [and] environmental systems,” said Phil Vernon, International Alert’s director of programs for Africa and peacebuilding issues, at “Climate Change, Water, and Conflict in the Niger River Basin,” an event hosted by the Wilson Center on November 17. [Video Below]
Together with his colleagues Lulsegged Abebe and Marisa Goulden of the University of Anglia, Vernon examined how communities in Mali, Nigeria, and Niger have been impacted by climate change, how they have adapted to those impacts, and whether these changes spurred conflict.
Competition Over Dwindling Resources
Climate change destabilizes communities by adding uncertainty and stress, Vernon said, and when a community is already vulnerable, the impacts of those uncertainties and stresses are amplified and the potential for conflict is greater. In every community examined in the study, climate-induced vulnerability led to some kind of conflict. More often than not, however, that conflict took the form of disagreements, or “latent conflict,” rather than violent conflict – a reason for optimism in the face of dire predictions that an era of climate wars is upon us.
Throughout the basin, river flows and rainfall have been decreasing since the 1970s, said Goulden, creating tension between two of the major communities living in the basin – farmers and pastoralists. Pastoralists are forced to travel farther to bring their herds to water, while farmers are expanding their cropland to feed growing populations, reducing the pathways available to herders and their livestock.
Unfortunately, poor policy decisions have made tensions worse in some places. In Lokoja, Nigeria, for example, the government began dredging the Niger River in 2009 to improve commercial shipping. Officials said the dredging would reduce flooding, but in 2010, farmers suffered immensely from floods. The government’s false promises increased the farmers’ vulnerability, said Goulden, because, expecting to be protected from flooding, they were not adequately prepared, making the damage worse.
As a result, farmers are now building homes and developing cropland further away from the river, reducing land available to pastoralists and increasing the potential for conflict between the two communities.
Increased Resilience Is a “No-Brainer”
Climate in the Niger River Basin is marked by a high degree of variability – rainfall, river flows, and temperature already fluctuate a great deal and could become even more variable in the future, said Goulden.
That uncertainty has important implications for how people think about responding to climate change, said Abebe. “Development and adaptation policies must be flexible enough to cope with extreme variability both in the wetter and the dry conditions in the Niger River Basin,” he said.
Boosting resilience will be key to ensuring that vulnerable communities have the flexibility they need to respond to future crises, Vernon said.
“If the interaction of stress and vulnerability is the problem…it’s somewhat of a no-brainer that increased resilience is part of the answer,” said Vernon. And decisions on how to increase resilience “should be made at the lowest appropriate level…from high policy down to household and individual decisions.”
Different People, Different Levels of Resilience
Vernon’s emphasis on making decisions at the “lowest appropriate level” reflects the reality that various communities – and individual community members – experience climate change in different ways. Fostering adaptation strategies that take these variations into consideration will be an essential strategy for avoiding climate-driven conflict in the future.
In Mali, the Niger River flooded downstream of the Selingué Dam in 2001 and 2010, and in each case, researchers found divergent responses to the crises.
In the lead-up to the 2001 flood, dam operators had been intentionally keeping reservoir levels high in anticipation of increased demand for hydroelectric power during an upcoming soccer championship match. When heavy rains hit the area, though, the operators were forced to release huge amounts of water over a short period of time, causing massive flooding downstream.
In the flood’s aftermath, downstream farmers were able to successfully sue the power company for their losses, but downstream pastoralists had no comparable option. The pastoralists were therefore more vulnerable to the flood’s long-term impacts.
Responses differed within communities as well, often breaking down along gender lines. In 2010, when floods hit Mali again, men “were trying to help people move away from the flood water, and then afterward with rebuilding of homes,” said Goulden, “whilst women are concerned with finding shelter, cooking, and caring for the sick, elderly, and children.”
No “Massive Risk of Violence” in the Near Future
Policymakers are left with an urgent crisis – climate change – and a solution that is inherently time-intensive: building resilience in vulnerable communities down to the individual level, said Vernon.
“There is a risk of undermining the elements of resilience which exist already in responding too rapidly and too urgently based on the anxieties we have to the problem of climate change and insecurity,” he cautioned.
Fortunately, although the threat of climate change is urgent, Vernon said that the risk of that threat spilling over into violent conflict is still a long way off. “I think policymakers have got to be thinking about where might this lead,” he said, “but at the moment, in terms of this research, there was no evidence that there’s a massive risk of violence happening any time soon.”
Event Resources
Sources: AlertNet, BBC, International Alert.
Photo Credit: “Cattle manure millet field in Niger,” courtesy of flickr user ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute). -
Youth Need More Information on Climate, Population Links
›December 9, 2011 // By Brenda ZuluYouth need more information about climate change, but also on its links to reproductive health and gender, said Esther Agbarakwe, technical advisor for the Africa Youth Initiative on Climate Change. Speaking at the joint Aspen Institute, Population Action International, and Wilson Center side event, “Healthy Women, Healthy Planet,” at the COP-17 climate conference, Agbarakwe pointed out that “there are critical issues, like demography, the number of young people, and young women in this population, that should be discussed.” But, she said, they would likely not be brought up in any official manner at the conference because of fears about “population control.”
In Nigeria, young people, and particularly young girls, are frequently excluded from formal discussions about climate change and sustainable development. Growing up, Agbarakwe said she was aware of environmental change due to pollution in the Niger Delta, but her parents did not talk to her about reproductive health. In her community, many young girls had unplanned pregnancies and boys dropped out of school. It was only through a child rights activists’ club that she learned about how she could protect herself.
“That is why there is need to have young women in this discussion,” she said.
Giving a Voice to the Most Affected
Wendy Mnyandu, a student from Durban’s Zwelibanzi High School attending the side event, noted in an interview that climate changes have affected mothers more because they are dependent on the forest for energy.
“It is important for villagers to adapt to new technologies [such as] cook stoves, where they can use less fuelwood that will not take away the forest,” she said.
At the Wilson Center earlier this year, Agbarakwe explained how insufficient rain has led to longer trips to collect water, increasing women’s vulnerability. A friend of hers was raped while walking to the next village to fetch water after her own community’s well dried up – an ordeal that was not only emotionally and physically traumatizing, but also isolated her from her community and jeopardized her future plans and dreams.
“It is important for more men to talk about this topic,” said Roger-Mark De Souza, vice president of research at Population Action international, who also spoke at the side event. “I am talking on behalf of my mother, my daughters, my wife, and my granddaughters, for their voices are not often heard. I am a father of two young teenage boys and they know how to talk about this. By talking about it, we can see how family planning is very effective,” he said.
Talking About Population to Climate Experts, and Vice Versa
“Just last week I was in Dakar, Senegal, at the International Conference on Family Planning,” said De Souza. “I was talking to specialists and I was getting them interested in climate change.” Similarly, “more and more we find that climate change activists and specialists are appreciating that climate change is important to women and their wellbeing,” he said.
Population Action International (PAI) has mapped agricultural production, water stress, and increased vulnerability to climate change. “We see that there are 26 global hotspots where these issues are critical. What we have also done is look at these hotspots to determine where there is a very high unmet need for family planning,” said De Souza. PAI is using these maps to show the climate change community that a cost-effective investment in family planning could increase resilience in these areas.
De Souza said that in order to build support for programs that address these issues, it is important to look at national adaptation programs of action and their funding needs. “Funding is critical, and these types of interventions produce results – we need to understand where those missed opportunities are and tell that story to our policymakers and our delegations that are here in Durban and to keep with that message when we go back home,” he said.
Empowering Young African Women
Agbarakwe became interested in these issues after meeting former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, who also spoke at the side event. “I had met a Nigerian young man who challenged me that it was difficult for a woman to realize her career dreams because one day she will have to be married and bear children,” said Agbarakwe:When I saw my passion, I was confused and asked questions of Robinson on what she would do if she found herself at the crossroads like me. She told me as a young woman, I will find myself at a crossroad. That is why I am very determined about this issue, and that is what is needed, because when young women are empowered they actually can make decisions.
Robinson, the chair of the Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health, said in an interview that she was heartened to see the number of youth at the side event. In Durban, she spoke with a group of young women who were part of Oxfam’s Project Empower:We met young women and several of them had come from the Eastern Cape [of South Africa]. They had come to Durban to look for work. Instead they found themselves in rural poverty. They had dreams of a better life for themselves, but their daily reality they talked to us about was nobody’s dream. They talked to us about negative impacts of their communities – the violence against women that is very prevalent, the unplanned pregnancies, and the reality of women who even have to use their bodies to gain money.
African women are looking for contraceptives, such as the female condom, where they can be in control, said Robinson; there are about 215 million women in the world who do not want to get pregnant but are not using modern contraception. “If we were to solve that problem, women [would not only] be better mothers, but also be better leaders in their communities,” she said.
The good thing was that they were ready to talk about the problems and did not consider themselves to be victims. They were strong women. They had learned to say ‘no’ and to say ‘respect me.’ They talked about going into some of the clinics and facing encounters with the police and that the police did not respect them. ‘We do not accept that anymore. We know now that we are members of the community who wish to be respected,’ they explained.
Brenda Zulu is a member of Women’s Edition for Population Reference Bureau and a freelance writer based in Zambia. Her reporting from the COP-17 meeting in Durban (see the “From Durban” series on New Security Beat) is part of a joint effort by the Aspen Institute, Population Action International, and the Wilson Center.
Sources: Population Action International, World Health Organization.
Photo Credit: “Viet Nam and Primary Education,” courtesy of flickr user United Nations Photo; video courtesy of Population Action International. -
New UNEP Climate Report Says Women Face “Disproportionately High Risks”
›December 8, 2011 // By Brenda ZuluA new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, Women at the Frontline of Climate Change: Gender Risks and Hopes, released at COP-17, says that women, particularly those living in mountainous regions in developing countries, “face disproportionately high risks to their livelihoods and health from climate change, as well as associated risks such as human trafficking.”
Droughts, floods, and mudslides are affecting a growing number of people worldwide, in part because of climate change, but also because population growth is highest in some of the most vulnerable areas of the world. For example, in the 10 years from 1998-2008, floods affected one billion people in Asia, but only four million people in Europe.
According to UNEP, women often bear the brunt of such disasters: “In parts of Asia and Africa, where the majority of the agricultural workforce are female, the impacts of such disasters have a major impact on women’s income, food security, and health,” as they are responsible for about 65 percent of household food production in Asia and 75 percent in Africa. In addition, they are often more likely than men to lose their lives during natural disasters.
UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said in a press release that “women often play a stronger role than men in the management of ecosystem services and food security. Hence, sustainable adaptation must focus on gender and the role of women if it is to become successful.”
“Women’s voices, responsibilities, and knowledge on the environment and the challenges they face will need to be made a central part of governments’ adaptive responses to a rapidly changing climate,” he added.
Investing in low-carbon, resource-efficient green technologies, water harvesting, and alternatives to firewood could strengthen climate change adaptation and improve women’s livelihoods, says UNEP.
“If Insufficient, Family Planning Funds Should Be Scaled Up”
UNEP spokesperson Nick Nuttall said in an interview that there are wide differences between how people consume natural resources, with North Americans and Europeans consuming far more than someone in a developing country. We should move toward more efficient use of natural resources, make the transition to a low-carbon economy, and scale up renewable energies, which can reduce demand for fossil fuels to meet economic growth and population increases, he said.
Asked whether climate change funds should therefore support family planning, Nuttall said the UN supports the right of couples and women to choose the size of their families and that many UN agencies and NGOs provide that support already.
But, he said, “there are funds available for family planning and, if insufficient, they should be scaled up to meet the demands and requests of developing countries. Given that this is an issue far wider than climate change, these existing funding streams should be where the financial support comes, rather than from a climate fund.”
Brenda Zulu is a member of Women’s Edition for Population Reference Bureau and a freelance writer based in Zambia. Her reporting from the COP-17 meeting in Durban (see the “From Durban” series on New Security Beat) is part of a joint effort by the Aspen Institute, Population Action International, and the Wilson Center.
Sources: UNEP.
Image Credit: “Climate change vulnerability,” courtesy of Riccardo Pravettoni, UNEP/GRID-Arendal.
