How Climate Change Disproportionately Affects Women

Fairfax - Mehreen Faruqi *

Tackling climate change is crucial for women, writes Mehreen Faruqi. Photo: Brad Newman

In a few weeks' time, world leaders, policy-makers, scientists and lobbyists will converge on Paris for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, and hopefully agree to a universal and binding agreement on climate to serve as the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The outcome of the conference will be crucial for everyone, but especially for the world's women.
As with all complex and wicked problems, gender inequality and climate change are inextricably linked. Like gender inequality, climate change is an issue of deep injustice. Poorer countries such as the Pacific islands, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka already are and will continue to bear much higher burdens of the effects of sea level rise, extreme heat, water scarcity and catastrophic weather events.
This injustice not only exists between nations but also impacts women disproportionately. The gendered impacts of climate change are numerous and are further magnified for women living in poorer countries where, for example, women and girls bear the burden of collecting water and fuel to meet their families' needs. As the United Nations has noted, the impacts of climate change take hold, collecting water and firewood is getting harder and they are having to search further and further to access these essential resources. As a result of these responsibilities, women have less time to earn money, engage in politics or public activities, learn to read or acquire other skills, which further perpetuates the cycle of disempowerment and social injustice.
About 70 per cent of the world's poor are women and gender differences in deaths due to natural disasters correlate with women's social and economic rights. The 1991 the Bangladesh cyclone killed 150,000 people, 90 per cent of whom were women. Women are often not taught survival skills such as swimming or climbing. They have restricted mobility and cultural constraints that decrease their access to escape, shelter and health care. Post-disaster, women are usually at higher risk of being placed in unsafe, overcrowded shelters, which is mainly due to the lack of economic capacity, property or land ownership.
Even in richer countries, many more women than men live in poverty. The number of women in the bottom 10 per cent of income earners in New South Wales is almost double that of men. The increasing severity and frequency of droughts as a result of climate change will contribute to higher prices for food and water, which will disproportionately disadvantage these women even further.
It is somewhat revealing that while climate change is much worse news for women, they are the ones who are more cognisant of environmental change and are more likely to support environmental protection. Yet they also face the historical disadvantage of having limited access to the decision-making process.
Last year, a Climate Institute poll found a growing number of Australians want the nation to lead on finding solutions to climate change and 64 per cent of women want Australia to be a leader. The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage survey entitled "Who Cares About the Environment?" also suggests women are more likely than men to be concerned about environmental problems. On average, women undertake more environmental activities than men.
Women are uniquely positioned to be extremely effective creative agents to influence change, but empowerment, gender equality and equal participation in decision-making are key to unlocking climate change solutions. In Bangladesh, women farmers reported that their profitable chickens were drowning because of frequent flooding. When they were involved in planning for climate change, their solution was to raise ducks.
Addressing climate change will of course not only require global and collective political leadership in Paris, but also national and local leadership in individual countries to get the policy settings right and drive change. For our own part, Australia must invest heavily in renewable energy, phase out coal and bypass the dangerous lure of coal seam gas development. We must also do our fair share of assisting other countries - particularly in our own region - with climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Bringing women to the forefront of political decision-making will help in securing a safe climate future. It is notable that last week Nepal elected its first female president, making it the latest in a long line of South Asian and so-called "third world" countries to elect women leaders. The new Nepalese constitution requires one-third of legislators to be women. Meanwhile, in NSW parliament, I sit in a chamber with only 10 women out of 42 MPs. We should be doing a lot better.
The NSW Government recently objected to my motion calling on the government to "heed the advice and warnings of the world's leading scientists and ramp up efforts to address climate change in our state", and it continually refuses to make the necessary shift towards 100 per cent renewable energy in NSW, which is possible, affordable, and essential.
All governments have a responsibility not only to tackle climate change, but also to involve those who will be most affected by it. This is the 'strong moral imperative' for Australia, not digging up and shipping out more coal. In India, for example, 120,000 people die every year from health complication related to coal. No doubt a heavy burden falls particularly on women. Instead of exporting coal, we should be working with countries around the world to jointly transition to a clean and green renewable energy future.

* Dr Mehreen Faruqi is a Greens MP in the NSW Upper House. She is an engineer, academic, and activist, working for social and environmental justice.