Extreme weather hits women hard
Article content
Women in the developing world often live in extreme poverty, and many are engaged in subsistence farming. And that means climate change and extreme weather patterns are making life much harder for the world's most vulnerable farmers.
Although vulnerable women face societal barriers to accessing the resources that would help them adapt to climate change, their plight is too often ignored by both the media and government. It's time the world learned the truth about women and climate change.
Citing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, CARE Canada's Pierre Kadet predicts that as the planet gets hotter, the frequency of extreme weather events, including droughts and floods, will increase. And he contends that these events will have "devastating impacts on rain-fed agricultural systems, through reduced productivity and production, degradation of natural resources that represent the base of poor women farmers' livelihoods."
Subsistence farming
"Changing rainfall patterns and rising temperatures are reducing agricultural yields and affecting food security in some of the already most vulnerable countries," agreed UNICEF Canada's Eleanor Hevey. "On top of that, the natural disasters themselves are destroying crops, killing livestock and forcing people to leave their homes and their land."
"With less food available, and less food being grown, the price of food will continue to go up, making it difficult to access for the world's poorest," continued Hevey, who serves as UNICEF Canada's international policy specialist. "That leads to dire situations, like we're seeing right now in Eastern and South Africa, where UNICEF is trying to reach more than one million children with treatment for severe acute malnutrition."
What impact does erratic weather caused by climate change have on agriculture in the developing world? "In developing countries, rain-fed agriculture accounts for more than 80 per cent of agricultural systems, including livestock," said Kadet, CARE Canada's senior manager on food security and climate change.
"Climate change can affect agriculture in different ways, such as, but not limited to: heat stress on plants, changes in soil moisture and temperature, less water available for crop production, loss of soil fertility (erosion of top soil), changes in the height of water tables, etc.," Kadet said in an email. "Therefore, any change in rainfall patterns, be it drought or a flood, has a direct effect on agricultural production."
According to the CARE Canada expert, "by 2020, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 per cent." And this could have devastating consequences for women farmers in developing countries, knowing that agriculture is their main source of income and food for small holder farmers," he said.
Sub-Saharan Africa
"These trends are happening in many southern countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change," said Brittany Lambert, senior policy adviser for Oxfam Canada. And she thinks that is one of the hardest hit regions, "just because it has the highest levels of poverty."
Lambert contends that Sub-Saharan Africa's geography makes it more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including desertification. "I think the Horn of Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa are particularly affected," she said in a telephone interview.
"If the global temperatures continue to rise, food production in Sub-Saharan Africa will continue to be severely affected," UNICEF's Hevey wrote in an email. "A worsening drought is currently ravaging Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe -- the worst in 50 years in some cases."
Food insecurity already plagues more than 20 per cent of the populations of Eritrea, Lesotho, Somalia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, Hevey noted. And it's estimated that it will take about two years for communities affected by the El Nino weather phenomenon to recover.
"The tragic part," continued Hevey, "is that the countries most affected by climate change, and also the least responsible for it, are often the least equipped to deal with it." And that means that "women and their families dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods and for food will be the most vulnerable."
Gender inequality
"Women farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean produce 80 per cent of basic foodstuffs, yet women control far fewer productive assets than men," Kadet said. "Women own less than two per cent of land, receive less than 10 per cent of agricultural credit, and are often ignored by agricultural research and extension services."
Given the disadvantages that women farmers face, it is not surprising that they are not coping very well with climate change. For example, their agricultural plots are more vulnerable to climate change than those of male farmers, Oxfam Canada's Lambert said.
"That's because they are less likely to own their land, because of property rights and inheritance rights," Lambert explained. "So when you don't own the land, you can't invest in it the same way [that a man would]."
Women farmers simply don't have the necessary resources to adapt to climate change. As a result, agricultural yields produced by women farmers tend to be lower than those of their male counterparts, and this is bad news for those societies.
Women must work longer days to compensate for declining food production, Lambert said. Meanwhile, they must also continue to perform all of the household labour. For example, women are responsible for collecting wood to burn as well as water for cooking, drinking and cleaning. However, as their climate gets hotter and desertification worsens, wood and water are becoming scare, forcing them to walk longer distances in search of these precious resources.
"In many countries, women are spending two to six hours of their day walking to find these things, in addition to all the time they are trying to invest to grow food on their land and doing all their household work," Lambert stated. And she contends that this contributes to inequality and poverty.
"One of the biggest things that we think is holding women back from economic equality is a lack of time to pursue an education to engage in paid work, to get involved in their communities and therefore have laws and policies that are more representative of their needs," Lambert asserted.
Poor women
How are gender-based inequalities in the developing world exacerbated by the impacts of climate change? According to Lambert, climate change does not necessarily hurt all women. But it is having a big impact on the poorest women, widening already the already significant gap between rich and poor women.
"It means they can't plant their crops, and they have a harder time growing their crops to maturation or knowing what the selling prices of those crops might be," Kadet said of the impact that climate change is having on women farmers. "Women rely on traditional knowledge to get them through the planting cycle, but when the weather is erratic, they can't fall back on this and they are left to guess when the rains may come."
As weather patterns become more erratic, many families send their men into population centres to take paying jobs to supplement farm incomes. "This leaves women on the family farm now taking on the men's job of farm management plus their own work," Kadet said.
"Because of gender inequalities in knowledge and decision-making, this means that women are often ill-equipped to run that family farm," Kadet stated. "They have to make a steep learning curve to understand how to manage the farm, but they don't have good sources of knowledge from which to learn because, again, everyone is relying on traditional knowledge that doesn't work in this time of erratic weather patterns."
What impact is erratic weather caused by climate change having on children? "The effects of climate change pose one of the greatest threats to the world's most vulnerable children and their communities," UNICEF Canada's Hevey said. "Changing agricultural yields can bring an increased risk of malnutrition, along with greater chance of disease and death."
In addition, she stated that "children and their families in remote rural areas, who have limited mobility and little options for subsistence beyond the environment around them, are among the most vulnerable." And the impoverishment of families and migration brought about by the effects of climate change supposedly "leave children exposed to dangers of exploitation, violence and abuse."
Last to eat
Lambert points out that Ethiopia is in the midst of "a large-scale food crisis," which was caused, in large part, by the El Nino effect, which in turn was likely intensified by climate change.
As food becomes scarce, women must work harder to feed their families. "When food is scare, it obviously takes a toll on them," Lambert said. "Women are also often the ones who are last to eat." And the situation is especially dire for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.
Follow Geoffrey P. Johnston on Twitter.
