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The Global Gender and Climate Change Alliance (GGCA), which was founded by UNEP, UNDP, WEDO and IUCN, held its first Africa Gender and Climate Change Training of Trainers workshop in Addis Ababa from 15 to 17 October 2009. A team from UNEP under the leadership of Dr. Janet Kabeberi-Macharia, the Senior Gender Advisor, organised the training. The end of the training was timed to coincide with the beginning of the meeting of African negotiators in the ongoing global climate change negotiations building up to the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP-15) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) slated for December 2009 in Copenhagen.
This strategic positioning made it possible to set aside 18 October for briefing and sensitisation of the negotiators on gender implications and considerations in the climate change negotiations. Her Excellency Ms. Rejoice Mabudafhasi, South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Environment and Water Affairs and one of the founders of GGCA, attended and steered the briefing/orientation session on climate change and gender for African negotiators.
The Training of Trainers workshop brought together 16 men and 32 women from 20 African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zimbabwe), the Philippines, USA and Jamaica. The participants have been drawn from Civil Society, academic institutions and government agencies all working on climate change related matters.
Training of trainers (TOT) on gender mainstreaming
The objective of the workshop was to form a group of regional trainers with skills to carry out training to improve capacity to understand and transmit the dimensions of gender and climate change, as well as comprehend the international mandates, conventions and legal framework and its implication for promotion of gender and climate change debates.
The guest speakers at the opening session were Dr. Coumba Mar Gadio, the UNDP Senior Gender Practice Leader and Dr. Strike Mkandla, the UNEP Representative to AU, ECA and Ethiopia. Dr. Gadio stressed the role of gender in climate change has significantly increased in the past few years. She also emphasized that climate change is now also a development issue and must be treated as such especially in reducing poverty. She pointed that UNDP aims to foster gender empowerment and development together with the climate issue since the poor play the smallest role in accumulation of green house gases. Strike Mkandla highlighted how “climate change impacts will be differently distributed among different regions, age categories, classes, income groups, occupations and genders”. He said the role of gender in climate change has been underplayed or glossed over. For instance women spend more time looking for water, managing the household, and tending to crops, than doing other income generating activities and are therefore particularly vulnerable to changes in availability of and access to natural resources in many countries. He proposed that the way forward for Africa is to plan and develop gender sensitive strategies at the regional and national level; develop strong partnerships between NGOs, UN and government partners; and to collect data, gender analyses and monitoring mechanisms with gender sensitive indicators and tools.
Overview of Gender Issues and Climate Change
Rose Mwebaza gave a presentation highlighting the gender issues in relation to climate change. Gender inequalities create unbalanced effects of climate change and as a result, in most cases, women face larger negative impacts than men. However, she emphasized that women are “powerful agents of change” and possess unique knowledge and skills and should not be viewed merely as victims. She also said, as human beings, we need to take responsibility for perpetuating the social discriminations between men and women and work towards achieving gender equality. Rose Mwebaza also discussed women’s ownership of land. In some African countries, women are still unable to own land, she said. As a result they are not able to take part in carbon trade. She encouraged the trainers to find out what the land policies in their respective countries were as well as whether women were able to get credit to develop the land they used.
Linking Gender and Climate Change
Due to the disproportionate impact of climate change on women and men, it also affects the well being of women differently than for men. In periods of drought and water stress, women have to walk longer distances to find water for their family which may also lead to rapes since they present easier targets on their long journey. Since women and girls are the primary collectors of water in most Africa societies, they have less of an opportunity to engage in income generating activities and the girls may have to forego education due to the increased workload. Therefore, it is essential to pay attention to the different needs of men and women and enhance the capacity of women to manage the risks posed by climate change to reduce their vulnerability while increasing their opportunities for development. The trainers held a discussion proposing actions that can be taken to ensure this. These include:
* Improve access to resources such as information, skills, education and knowledge. * Improve disaster preparedness and management, for instance, by encouraging women to have initiative however small. * Advocating government and local policy makers to create gender sensitive climate change policies to help households stabilize consumption by;
- Collecting as much factual information e.g. case studies to ensure that policy makers see the effects of climate change.
- Training judges, parliamentarians and others on gender and climate change issues, sustainable development, and the sustainable use of the environment.
- Including individuals at grassroots level when making climate change policies.
- Better integration between the judiciary, legislature, community leaders to improve the effectiveness of the policies.
* Consider other social networks other than policy makers that can play a role in influencing society decisions, for instance, religion plays a large role in most African societies, therefore religious leaders can be called upon to raise awareness on climate change issues.
Gender and Gender mainstreaming
In many African societies, there are still large gaps that exist today. Some statistics that highlight these gaps include: approximately 70% of those who live on less than one dollar each day are women; women own only 1% of the world’s property; 75% of the world’s 876 million illiterate adults are women. This creates more inequalities between men and women and points to the need to integrate gender concerns into planning and implementation of climate change policies. Gender mainstreaming in climate change strategies at regional, national and global levels ensures that the different roles of both men and women are taken into account and add a “human face to the climate agenda.” Therefore, women and men will benefit equally from the development process.
Obstacles to gender mainstreaming in Africa include cultural, religious and societal roles imposed on men and women in society. Some of these include women being regarded as domestic caretakers responsible for cleaning the household, fetching water, growing food for the family while men are the breadwinners of the household. As a result, there are gender-differentiated needs and priorities that gender sensitive policies need to address. Trainers were encouraged to advocate for and eradicate any discriminatory practices and encourage their policy makers to ensure women have access to information, technologies and that they take part in the decision making process.
Gender Mainstreaming in Adaptation Efforts
In the last few years, it has become apparent that mitigation on its own will not be sufficient to combat climate change. As a result, adaptation is now a priority especially for developing countries due to the differentiated impacts of climate change. Therefore, gender mainstreaming is essential in adaptation effects to improve the effect of climate change policies. The effectiveness of the adaptation strategies will be enhanced by; * Taking into account the levels of vulnerability of women and men. * Present subsistence and adaptation gender strategies. * Disaster risk reduction management to take action on causes and lessen impacts. * Importance of local knowledge for social and economic development.
International law instruments and gender mainstreaming
In the past three decades numerous international instruments have been generated to ensure gender equality and non-discrimination against women and adoption of measures related to sustainable development. Rose Mwebaza pointed out the nexus of climate change human rights, such as the right to water, food, health and life. The human rights obligations have potential to inform and influence international policy making by making sure the states fulfil their obligation under internal law to protect people against climate change impacts. Ms. Mwebaza cited numerous international legal instruments that mandate the incorporation of the gender perspective which also apply to the existing climate change framework. She highlighted how most international protocols have options that allow for the women /people to seek legal action against their country or another country for violation of human/women rights. Therefore instances of instances discrimination, equal access, equal participation in decision-making, and violation of Human Rights should not be allowed to continue.
Gender sensitive strategies for mitigation actions
There are certain areas in which mitigation actions are proposed or undertaken, where women have proven over the years (and in some cases centuries) to be crucial players, such as in conservation of forests and reforestation, management of local resources, consumption, and energy. Women also play a large role in ensuring clean energy sources and technologies as they are largely responsible for ensuring energy supply and security at the household level. In the area of carbon storage and sequestration, it is essential to highlight women’s role in forestry since they are usually responsible for collecting firewood. Sustainable consumption is another highly gender sensitive issue as women make most of the consumer decisions in the household.
Gender mainstreaming in climate change financing mechanisms
It was noted that women’s economic and financial resources are more greatly endangered by climate change than men’s. Climate change financing does not take into account the effect of climate change on women’s economic security; it should focus on promoting investments in micro projects and national carbon taxes that may yield greater benefits to women. The voices, concerns and priorities f women cannot continue to be marginal in the existing national and international frameworks for climate change and related activities. Mitigation financing should complement greenhouse gas abatement with projects that enhance women’s livelihoods and rights. Private sector climate change financing should account for and mitigate the negative impacts of market actions on women’s resources such as land.
Women also play a role in adapting to and mitigating climate change through practices such as soil and water conservation through the crop rotation and building embankments to avoid floods. In the case of risk management, gender sensitive community training has proved effective in the adaptation efforts such as women monitoring early warning flood systems in hurricane scenarios. Consequently, gender sensitive national planning has been implemented at the national level with African Least Developed Countries required to create a National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) according to the UN Framework convention on climate change (UNFCC). The NAPA describes the country’s priorities and strategies in relation to climate change. Therefore, it is essential to include the gender perspective in data gathering, access to finance and technology in order to make the NAPA effective and representative of impacts of climate change on gender.
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Report by Victoria Butegwa and Justine Kobusingye – UNEP Addis Ababa Highlights Vol.6 No.11 November 2009 |
