“In no other place in the world are so many people being affected in so short a time by climate change,” says researcher Christian
Nellemann.
He refers to the region of the Hindu Kush-Himalaya, a 3,500 km long mountain range covering eight countries from Afghanistan in the west to Burma in the east. Hundreds of millions of people there are being forced to adapt to a new reality: climate change. Unpredictable rain patterns cause both extreme drought and extreme floods. The glaciers are melting and form dangerous lakes of melt water high in the mountains, which threaten the population, the infrastructure and the tillage. Time is running out.
During the climate change conference held in Cancun in December 2010, the Norwegian Minister for the Environment and International Development, Erik Solheim, announced that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will fund research into the Himalayas with 75 million Norwegian crowns. The five-year project “Himalayan Climate Change Impact and Adaptation Assessment" (HICIA), aims at producing information on how the climate will change in the Himalayas, what the consequences of this will be and how the countries in the region can best adapt to the consequences of warmer climate causing snow and ice to melt. One of the requirements of the Ministry is that gender is an aspect of the situation to be explored in detail.
Exposure, resources and opportunities
The programme is a follow-up of a pilot project carried out in 2007–2009. Senior expert Christian Nellemann at UNEP GRID-Arendal was responsible for a focus on gender which formed part of the pilot project and he is now one of the three project managers of the follow-up programme.
“The impact of climate change on women has two aspects. Women are in a subordinate position and have less influence over resources. This means that women are more exposed to catastrophes such as floods and draughts. But climate change also offers, at least in theory, opportunities for contributing to an increased gender equality and an improvement of the situation of women. Theoretically, it can be claimed that women in the countryside have a chance to gain more control as men migrate periodically in order to work in towns. Gradually climate change over time can provide women with opportunities, but this requires particular investments in women,” Christian Nellemann points out.
The results from the pilot project showed that a continued gender perspective is important. Not just because women are more vulnerable, but also because of the special situation of women in the mountain regions when it comes to food security and food production. In the farming industry of the Himalayas, women do 50–80 per cent of all the work.
“Women are central to climate adaptation since they carry such a large responsibility here,” says Christian Nellemann.
The programme is ambitious, not least since it comprises activities at so many different levels; from national to international policy, to practical work in the villages.
“The extensive scope is a new aspect of the programme. And this is needed since there isn’t time for anything else. Time is running so short. We don’t have the time to wait for aresearch programme,” says Christian Nellemann, who hopes that the results will facilitate political decision-making and generate development aid funding.
The pitfalls of development aid discourse
The connection to development aid is not unproblematic. Seema Arora-Jonsson, assistent professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, studies gender, environment and development. She notes how the gender perspective on climate change is characterised by the ways in which women have been talked about within aid and development politics.
“Using this rhetoric, there is a risk that women are being reduced to the status of victims. Meanwhile there is a widespread discourse which characterises women as hard workers, those who actually do most of the work in the countryside. The conclusion in that case is that more money is made available for them, which means a heavier workload and more responsibility for development and climate. But this doesn’t always benefit the women. Researchers have called this ‘the feminisation of responsibility’.”
In her article Virtue and vulnerability: Discourses on women, gender and climate change, Seema Arora-Jonsson argues that two themes dominate the limited literature on gender and climate change: women as vulnerable and women as virtuous in relation to the environment. Women in the South are affected more than men in the area, while men in the North cause more pollution than women, who are more environmentally aware. Gender is important, but it must be seen in its context, she claims.
 |
”If the discourse of gender is reduced to one only of vulnerability or virtue, one doesn’t see what actually happens in specific contexts. One can’t see the openings and opportunities for change, or how patterns of inequality can be broken by changing behaviours. This is a problem at policy level. Vulnerability and virtue are popular topics to catch the interest of politicians; then bags of money are given, people feel that gender has been dealt with and then nothing more happens,” says Seema Arora-Jonsson.
The literature on gender and climate change has so far mainly been written for the purpose of lobbying for a gender perspective in international politics, Seema Arora-Jonsson writes. And this has undesired consequences. Data, statistics and evidence are often poorly validated and many reports and articles tend to quote each other. This also creates and strengthens dichotomies such as North-South, Vulnerable-Virtuous, Victim-Heroine. Seema Arora argues it is easier to see gender if it is viewed through these lenses. It is more difficult to see gender as a decisive element connected to class, nationality and ethnicity.
She calls for context specific studies and would like to see support for NGOs and women’s groups at a local level.
“Each new project or programme wants to start something new, but what should be done is to find out what already exists and support women and men who already work and organise themselves locally.”
“In the 1990s there was a lot of talk about ‘local management’ within the discourse of aid and development and it was admitted that traditional, top-down managed projects had not been successful. But in the climate issue ordinary people have disappeared from the discourse. Local management is not a priority. And this is partly due to new interests having entered the scene, private interests concerning, for example, carbon credits etc.,” says Seema Arora-Jonsson.
Local management and micro loans
However, local management is exactly what HICIA aims to focus on. In the report from the pilot project, it is noted that historically a global, large-scale or sector-based perspective has mainly been applied pertaining to climate adaptation. There is a gap in the research on local adaptation processes and a need for studies based on knowledge from local adaptation practices. And in this women are important. At a grassroots level there are many women’s groups working in climate adaptation.
One of the big questions is how best to support the work of women and improve their situation.
“This is a central issue in our programme,” Christian Nellemann explains. “How do we channel initiatives for women so that they can make the most of their living conditions? Providing micro financing can be one way. But we must also be realistic and realise that we cannot form a programme which fits all women in all life situations.”
Handling power is difficult
Seema Arora-Jonsson thinks that power imbalances often fall off the agenda when discussing climate change; both generally and from a gender perspective. Insisting on the vulnerability of women makes power imbalances invisible, since it is assumed that we already know what the problem is: women’s vulnerability.
“This also denies women as actors and strengthens the differences between women and men as given and unchangeable. Women are indeed vulnerable in many situations. But generalising says little about how social power structures function in different contexts, or how vulnerability is produced for other groups. Powerlessness can also make men vulnerable to climate change, but in different ways. The numbers of male farmers who have committed suicide in India over the last few years gives an indication of the stress caused by a lack of food for men who are expected to provide for their families.”
It is also difficult to address the issue of power in the international debate.
“Everybody focuses on the economical instruments, such as financing, the Clean Development Mechanism and carbon trading – the cornerstone of the Kyoto Protocol. Issues concerning power, North-South, small island states etc., can't be agreed upon. But money, that’s a thing you can agree upon; financial instruments can be formed,” says Seema Arora-Jonsson.
“But that’s not where the revolution that the climate crisis calls for is to be found. That is found in addressing the difficult issues that nobody wants to concern themselves with,” she concludes.
