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In the run-up to the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Nordic Region in Focus co-hosted a panel discussion on how climate change affects women and men in different ways, and forces them to make changes in their ways of life. Norwegian journalist and author Åsne Seierstad chaired the event.
The Council of Ministers in Copenhagen also inaugurated an exhibition about how men in the north and women in the south are affected by climate change.
Malin Jennings is the founder of the Arctic ICCE (Indigenous Climate Change Ethnographies). For years, she has followed the lives of the small Inuit communities in Greenland. In these societies, the men were hunters while the women took care of the animals, made food from the meat and sewed garments from the hides. But the warmer climate has made hunting more difficult.
"The ice freezes later and is thinner than before," Jennings explains. "The men can't hunt on ice thinner than six centimetres. They've lost the platform from which they hunted walrus, which is an important prey for them.
The ice also melts earlier than before. Altogether, they've lost a month's hunting.
A man can no longer feed his family by hunting alone. The lack of sustainability means that, in one of the villages I visited, only two young men saw any future as a hunter. And neither of them had children yet.
If they were to remain hunters, their wives would have to take paid jobs, at least part-time. So the wives would spend less time practising traditional skills, and would lose them in the end.
"Hunters used to be the pinnacle of society but this is no longer the case. Their skills and expertise have been rendered useless, and this is creating social problems."
When women can no longer sew clothes, they buy expensive clothes from the West, which are not as good in the cold – they can't withstand with several days on the ice. And because they have to buy things instead of making them, they become poorer."
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| Samuel Idivuoma, Swedish Television. Photo: Bosse Parbring |
Saami journalist Samuel Idivuoma has also followed various ethnic groups in the Arctic countries. His six-month journey was broadcast as a series of reports on Swedish television, and will also be shown in Denmark and Norway. He confirms that men are particularly hard hit by climate change in the Arctic.
"Climate change robs Arctic men of their self-esteem. They can't feed their families by hunting. They're no longer proud of themselves.
For many men, self-esteem is bound up with being the strongest and best hunter. When that knowledge is no longer in demand, they lose their sense of pride. In Greenland, men are now living off benefits instead, but they have nothing to do – so they congregate in bars, which leads to alcoholism."
"Men need to be involved in gender-equality work, including the gender aspects of climate change," according to Ulf Rikter-Svendsen, director of Reform, a Norwegian body that deals with gender issues, with a focus on men.
"We need to show the benefits of an equal society. We involve men by showing that inequality means that they lose out too."
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| Ulf Rikter-Svendsen, Reform. Photo: Bosse Parbring |
Ulf Rikter-Svendsen wants to counteract stereotypical images of men. Even though some men do dominate, others are victims of discrimination. He is therefore critical of the cover on NIKK magasin's climate issue, which depicts an angry male car driver.
"These images build up stereotypes of men rather than break them down."
Previously, the focus has been on the impact of climate change on women in the South. Incorporating women's experiences and a gender perspective into international climate negotiations has been a long struggle. Rebecca Pearl is the co-ordinator of the Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA), an umbrella group for 38 NGOs and UN bodies.
She reports that there is growing acceptance of the fact that women are more adversely affected than men by climate change. For example, 90% of those who died in a flood in Bangladesh were women. "In areas where women's human rights are violated, they are also hit harder by climate change," says Pearl. However, she did not just want to talk about women as victims. She thinks women can be seen as agents for change, as they have valuable experience of how to cope with the effects of climate change.
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| Rebecca Pearl, Global Gender and Climate Alliance. Photo: Bosse Parbring |
"A good example is the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya, where women are planting trees, and are paid for their work."
Tree-planting counteracts both climate change and its effects, because the trees absorb carbon.
A gender perspective is now being incorporated into other international agreements on international issues, but it has been conspicuous by its absence in climate negotiations.
"That's why we're here in Copenhagen. We've spent two years working towards achieving change here."
GGCA teaches delegates about the gender perspective, and works with sympathetic governments, including Denmark, Iceland and Finland. In early 2009, there were 42 references to women and gender in the negotiating texts. Now, only a handful remain.
"I hope that there will be at least one reference to gender in the joint vision included in the final document," says Rebecca Pearl.
The Nordic Council of Ministers has a stand in the exhibition hall at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen. NIKK has been represented on the stand for the first two days.
The video from the debate The heat is on was made by the Communications Department at the Nordic Council of Ministers' secretariat in Copenhagen.
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