GENDER AND SOCIAL ASPECTS
OF CLIMATE CHANGE
AT GLOBAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL LEVEL
Gender and Water Alliance
Joke Muylwijk
International Parliamentary Conference on Climate Change,
London, 12-16 July 2010
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Gender and Water Alliance
 International network of water professionals and
gender experts
 1900 members in 120 countries
 30% organisations, 70% individuals
 45% men, 55% women
 Working mainly in knowledge development and
Capacity Building in a demand driven way.
 www.genderandwater.org
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Water
 Including all water uses
 Integrated Water Resource Management
 Water for food, agriculture, irrigation, cattle
 Water for the environment, solid waste
management
 Water for domestic use, drinking, and
sanitation
 Water disasters, scarcity, floods, tsunamis
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Gender and Diversity, Gender +
Men and women; different categories of men and different
categories of women
Socio economic position (class), rich and poor
Age: girls and boys, youth, elderly
Vulnerability: people suffering from illness, HIV-Aids, physically
or mentally challenged, elderly
Rural and urban: far away from where the decisions are made,
slum dwellers
Ethnicity: minorities, indigenous peoples
Race and Religion
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Gender relations are power relations which can change
and do change, like culture
• if people themselves want it to change
• if there is an urgent need felt by all for example:
-- overpopulation or even population explosion
-- epidemic: HIV/Aids
- other demographic changes: for example by war
- disasters caused by a changing climate
There is no gender-neutral development and Climate
Change affects different people in a different way
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Empowerment:
an objective and a concept for analysis
With four interrelated elements:
• Social empowerment
– self image, status, how does the society see you? Is your voice heard?
• Economic empowerment
– same income for same work, and
– right to decide about spending benefits and income
– access to relevant resources
• Political empowerment
- the right to organize one selves and to take part in democratic process,
- influence development efforts, climate committees
• Physical empowerment
- the right to decide about the number of children, spacing in between, and
- the right to proper healthcare, clean water, dignity,
- the ability to resist violence, the right to safety and security
- the right to relief in disaster situations
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Copenhagen:
•nothing about water in final declaration, and
• hardly anything about the diversity of people
• All about technology, nothing about the social context
• Unit applied is a country, but countries are full of
diversity:
• rich countries have lots of poor people
• poor countries have lots of rich people
Results of Climate Change are a.o.:
• Average temperatures rise
• Droughts become longer, dryer, and more frequent
• rains become heavier, rainy seasons shorter or longer,
or turn into torrents
•Decrease in available water, and deteriorating quality
• Crop varieties may get lost in their place of origin: food
insecurity
• Certain animals will get extinct
• Pests will spread to areas where there is no resistence
• and many other problems which we don’t yet foresee.
GENDER ASPECTS
Strong
and d
powerb
ful
resilient
rere
vulnerable
GENDER ASPECTS
Strong
and d
powerb
ful
resilient
rere
vulnerable
Climate Change
1. Mitigation:
Protecting the climate against people:
• The top of the pyramid pollutes water and emits CO2
(GHG)
• Rich people, mainly in the North, use massive energy,
overconsumption, waste production: include footprints in
calculations: Need for awareness raising
• Women and poor people have no access to carbon
exchange markets: Need for inclusiveness
• Who benefits? Who carries the burden?
Climate Change
2. Adaptation:
Protecting the people against the climate
•4 out of 5 victims are women (141 recent catastrophs)
•Empowerment of women and vulnerable groups:
•Their work and knowledge needs to be recognised and used.
Empowerment has four elements: economic, socio-cultural, political and
physical
•Resilience: Resilience relates to people’s inherent flexibility
to respond to changing conditions
• Attitude: Women seem to be more aware of the importance
of the long term
GENDER ASPECTS:
Examples of why would-be victims need to be involved
as part of the solutions:
• Crop varieties get lost: women do seed selection
• Increase of insect pests: women and labourers in the field
know this first in detail
• Where to find water with increasing scarcity, women have
the task to find water every day in most cultures, they know
where water of particular quality can be found
• Hygiene, waste and sanitation is more important for
women, they know the practice
They need to be involved in developing policies and in
implementation
FOOD SECURITY:
• Food crisis – no attention for smallholders, and no
access to irrigation;
•Smallholders are mainly women, especially in Africa.
They provide a large part of food crops to those in rural
areas, without recognition;
• Comprehensive Assessment of water in agriculture:
more irrigation for smallholders, to fill in short spells of
drought
• CC: loss of varieties that are locally developed over the
centuries
Conflicts
 Increase of transboundary water issues by which
indigenous peoples and women suffer most
 Increase of refugees who lack access to most resources
and face sexual and other harressment
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Integrity
 Of billions spent on development of water and
sanitation infrastructure 45% is lost in malpractices
(corruption), estimate of World Bank
 How to avoid that this does not happen to the billions
set aside for climate change activities (mitigation and
adaptation).
 Democracy, participation, good governance,
accountability, transparency, equality need to be
subjects in all capacity building activities
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Conclusions
 The part of the world population who is most responsible
for CC is a different part than those who are suffering from
it
 Neglect of social aspects of energy and water management
and of technology for CC, leads to more environmental
degradation and to more CC and to bad health of one
billion children
 To make the right decisions all knowledge is needed,
especially the local knowledge, not only that of (Northern)
engineers. Involve women in looking for solutions
 Don’t only focus on relief, but aim for empowerment and
equality
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SOLUTIONS and RECOMMENDATIONS:
• Include women and men in mitigation and adaptation
activities
•Make use of local knowledge of women and indigenous
groups
•Don’t assume that when men are informed that this
information will reach their families
• Enable CO2 absorption opportunities to benefit poor
women and men.
• Support all activities that focus on the empowerment of
poor women and men and make them more resilient:
Capacity building.
“Development is the process by which
vulnerabilities are reduced and capacities
increased.”
(Mary Anderson and Peter Woodrow 1988)
Thank you
Please take a brochure Gender, Water
and Climate Change (GWA and GCCN)
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