A gender perspective on the climate issue is particularly relevant when looking at the situation in the developing countries. Here, climate change has the direst consequences. According to the UN Climate Panel, close to 250 million inhabitants in Africa will face increased problems with water provision in 2020 because of climate change, and the crop yield will decrease as a result of the exhaustion of agricultural land.
Thus, climate change creates harsher living conditions for the inhabitants of developing countries. This pertains not least to the women, who form a majority of the world’s poor people. However, the women hold a potential, which must be utilised in the struggle against poverty, and the women also play an important role when their countries are to adapt to climate change. Therefore gender equality and the opportunities of women are given top priority in the Danish contribution to combating climate change.
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| Inger Støjberg is Danish Minister for Gender Equality. |
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| Ulla Tørnæs is Danish Minister for Development Cooperation. |
More women than men die in natural disasters. A report from the British organisation Oxfam estimates that the probability for women and children to die in natural disasters is 14 times bigger than that for men. In parts of Aceh in Indonesia more than three quarters of the deceased during the Asian tsunami in 2004 were women and girls. Why is this the case? One of the reasons is that the norms for women’s dress limit their opportunity to move away quickly. In a catastrophe it can also be a fatal problem that women and girls are not taught to run and swim to the same extent as men and boys are.
But it is not only in Asia that gender roles and the lack of gender equality mean more negative consequences for women. In Africa it is often the women who cultivate the crops, fetch water and firewood, and carry the overall responsibility for the daily survival of the family. The consequences of climate change include contaminated wells, flooded or dried out land, ruined houses and spreading diseases. All this means comparatively harder everyday conditions for millions of women in developing countries.
In our development cooperation we therefore make a point of granting support for climate measures in developing countries in addition to the current aid, and assure that climate and gender equality form integrated elements in our efforts to create development and combat poverty. Gender equality will be a central element in the measures pertaining to the adaptation to climate change.
Future measures in the climate field can be very concrete. One example are flood proof wells which are installed just over sea level. In areas with frequent cyclones, this will decrease the possibility of wells being flooded and contaminated. This makes the women’s workload of fetching water easier and means that less people fall ill. The installation of such wells ensures that the solution benefits women.
We must, however, not only look to the concrete workload of women when we try to reduce the effects of climate change. Women must basically be granted equal rights and equal access to financial resources. In other words, women in the whole world must have equal opportunities to influence their own lives. Thus they can gain influence on the ways in which the efforts to reduce climate change can be enhanced.
This article has been published in NIKK magasin 2 2009 © NIKK
