28/11/2019

Women In Climate Change Hotspots Face Greater Burdens When Under Environmental Stress

ABC Science - Suzannah Lyons

Environmental stress can hamper women's ability to adapt in climate change hotspots, like Bangladesh. (Getty Images: Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/Barcroft Media)
Key points
  • After about 100 people made a two-hour hike up a volcano, children installed a memorial plaque to the glacier
  • The plaque, which notes the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, warns "we know what is happening and what needs to be done"
  • Iceland's PM says climate change will be a priority when Nordic leaders meet in Reykjavik on Tuesday
Climate change has a negative impact on women's ability to make meaningful decisions in their lives, according to new research looking at climate change hotspots in Africa and Asia.
Even when household structures, social norms and legal frameworks support women's agency, environmental stress and its repercussions can still increase the burdens they face compared to men.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change on Tuesday, analysed 25 case studies from African and Asian climate change hotspots to identify factors that affect women and their ability to adapt.
The researchers wanted to move away from basic climate change and gender analyses that present women as victims, said social scientist and lead author of the paper Nitya Rao of the University of East Anglia.
"What we see in our fieldwork is that women are not sitting there doing nothing. Actually they're quite active in trying to do a lot of things in order to adapt," Professor Rao said.
However, Professor Rao and her co-authors found that unless social supports like childcare, health services or minimum wage conditions were in place, it was very hard for women to actually adopt climate change solutions.
This is due to the disproportionate disadvantages women already face, and the extra burdens environmental stress can bring, particularly in societies that mostly rely on agriculture.
These can include gendered labour division, limited access to land, limited access to credit and the reproductive burden women carry, both in bearing and looking after children, Professor Rao said.
Adding to that, women are often left to manage their households alone if their male partners need to migrate to look for work.
"When you double the work of a woman and … she's not able to do any more work, that's a good reason for not taking up climate-resilient rice for instance," Professor Rao said.
  11,000 scientists declare 'climate emergency'
The study addresses a really important gap in our understanding of the gender dimensions of vulnerability to climate change, said human geographer Fiona Miller of Macquarie University, who wasn't involved in the research.
"They might have more responsibility to manage money, but they don't necessarily have more power to make decisions concerning that money," Dr Miller said.
In a positive case study from Nepal, women were able to improve their agency by forming a cooperative.
However, low-caste women were excluded from that cooperative.
"I think one of the wider findings of the work is that yes, we need to focus on gender equity, but we also need to …. focus on those women who are especially marginalised due to caste or class or ethnicity," Dr Miller said.

So, does that mean climate change is sexist?
When men migrate to larger towns for work, more tasks at home fall to women. (Supplied: Nitya Rao)
The research really highlights the social impact of climate change, said Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie.
"What it's saying is that the people who are most vulnerable will suffer the most, and the most quickly," she said.
  How does climate change affect our health?
And yet, while organisations like Plan International and Marie Stopes International have position papers on gender and climate change, there isn't as much awareness of it in the broader public sphere.
"I think that the social dimensions of climate change haven't been adequately discussed," Ms McKenzie said.
"We're still moving beyond understanding climate as an environmental issue, to understanding it's a human issue [with a] whole range of direct human costs."
These can be the immediate risks facing people in the middle of a natural disaster for example, or the longer-term impacts that adapting to climate change can have on people's health and the resilience of their communities.
While climate change itself is not sexist, the nature of gender and power relations means climate stress can exacerbate problems that are already there.
"Whenever there is something occurring that is damaging to our society, it tends to hurt women, people of colour more," she said.
Ms McKenzie believes there isn't enough discussion about who is paying the price and who is profiting from climate impacts.
"I think there's a sexism element there too, because the people who are profiting the most would tend to be powerful men in Western countries."

Is this research relevant to Australia?
Emergency response organisations need to be sensitive to how women and men respond to things like fires in different ways. (Getty Images: Brett Hemmings)
While the research focused on climate change hotspots in Africa and Asia, Professor Rao said it also has relevance for other parts of the world.
"[In] labour markets across the world we know there is a gender wage gap," she said.
And that includes Australia.
Talking about how climate change affects women's ability to feed their families is something we can relate to, said geographer Celia McMichael of the University of Melbourne, who wasn't involved in the work.
"When you read of other people trying to cope with climate variability, I think it's something we can increasingly empathise with because that is not removed from our lives in Australia [any more]," Dr McMichael said.
"Yeah, we can turn on the AC but we still are dealing with bushfires and things."
One of the findings the paper identifies is that public institutions are really important in terms of supporting households and communities to respond to environmental stresses, said Dr Miller, and we need to have gender equity within those response organisations.
"If you're thinking about the fires that we're dealing with now across Australia, and particularly in New South Wales, we do tend to see an overrepresentation of men in emergency response organisations," she said.
"If we're thinking about issues around evacuation, for example, men and women may respond to that challenge in quite different ways.
"If you have emergency response agencies that are sensitive to those gendered issues … then you can give advice and support so that people can make appropriate decisions."
Ms McKenzie said the importance of educating women and girls has already been shown to be an important climate change solution by organisations such as Project Drawdown.
"I think that these solutions that involve women and girls and education, maternal health etc. are really important," she said.
"Not just for resilience, but also in getting down emissions in the first instance."

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(AU) The Most Important Issue Facing Australia? New Survey Sees Huge Spike In Concern Over Climate Change

The Conversation - 

Nearly half of Australians aged 18-24 view climate change as the biggest problem facing Australia in new national survey. James Ross/AAP
While most Australians still view the economy as the most important issue facing the country, a new survey released today shows climate change is rapidly becoming a major concern, as well.
Now in its 12th year, the Scanlon Foundation survey is the largest- and longest-running poll tracking public opinion on social cohesion, immigration, population and other issues in Australia. The 2019 survey was administered by telephone and the internet in July-August to a representative sample of 3,500 respondents.
The largest change in the survey from 2018 to 2019 came with the open-ended question: “What do you think is the most important problem facing Australia today?”
Both years, the economy ranked as No. 1. But this year, climate change jumped to a clear second with the equal-largest increase from one year to the next, up from 10% to 19% in our telephone-administered survey and from 5% to 17% in the self-completed online survey.
Responses to the most important problem facing Australia in telephone-interview survey. Author provided
As would be expected, there were major variances in the responses depending on demographics.
Nearly half (43%) of those aged 18-24 viewed climate change as the biggest problem facing Australia, compared to 12% of those aged 35-44 and just 8% of those over the age of 75.
The responses also varied by state – 20% of Victoria residents and 18% of NSW residents said climate change was the biggest problem, compared to 8% in Western Australia.
And there was a stark difference depending on political affiliation, with 54% of Greens voters saying climate change was the most important issue, compared to 21% of Labor, 7% of Coalition and just 3% of One Nation voters.

 Less worry about immigration numbers
Last year, immigration was a major political issue in Australia. Several polls, variously worded and with different approaches to sampling, found majority support for a reduction in the numbers of immigrants permitted into Australia each year.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said his government was listening to the public’s concerns and responded with changes, including a reduction in the annual immigration target.
This year, however, there is evidence of a decline in public concern.
The percentage of people who agreed the immigration intake was too high in the annual Lowy Institute poll fell from 54% in 2018 to 47% in 2019.
And in our poll, the proportion of those who agreed with a reduction in the number of immigrants fell marginally from 43% in 2018 to 41% in 2019 in our interviewer-administered survey and from 44% to 41% in the self-completed version.
Responses to the question about the number of immigrants in Australia in telephone survey. Author provided
Endorsement of the value of immigration
There is continuing endorsement of the value of immigration by a substantial majority of Australians.
In the self-completed version of this year’s survey, 76% agree that immigration is good for the economy, 78% agree that immigration “improves Australia by bringing new ideas and cultures” and 80% agree that multiculturalism has been good for Australia.
Since 2015, the survey has tested public support for immigration restrictions on the grounds of race, ethnicity or religion, which have been advocated by minor right-wing and populist parties. The consistent finding is that a large majority – 70% to 80% of Australians – do not support such policies.

But concerns remain over the impact of immigration
While public opinion is generally positive with regard to immigration today, many are concerned about the impact of rising immigrant numbers on their daily lives.
Seventy percent of respondents said they were concerned about “overcrowding”, 60% by the impact of immigration on housing prices and 58% by the impact on the environment.
A new question in 2019 asked for responses to the proposition that “too many immigrants are not adopting Australian values”. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (67%) agreed with the statement.

Policy towards asylum seekers
In 2018 and 2019, a new question asked respondents “are you personally concerned that Australia is too harsh in its treatment of asylum seekers and refugees?”
Opinion was found to be almost evenly divided. In 2019, 49% said they were “a great deal” or “somewhat” concerned, 50% “only slightly” or “not at all” concerned.
Here, too, there were major variances in viewpoints depending on demographics.
For instance, 87% of Greens voters and 61% of Labor voters were “a great deal” or “somewhat” concerned, compared to just 30% of Coalition voters and 16% of One Nation.
A similar split could also be seen with age, with 70% of those aged 18-24 “a great deal” or “somewhat” concerned, compared to just 39% of those aged 55-64. And with location: 55% of Victoria residents were “a great deal” or “somewhat” concerned, compared to 37% of those in Western Australia.

Social cohesion still relatively stable
On the much broader question of social cohesion, our survey continues to find a large measure of stability in Australia.
One indication is provided by the Scanlon Monash Index (SMI), which aggregates responses to 18 questions and measures attitudes in five areas of social cohesion: belonging, worth, social justice, political participation and acceptance of diversity.
Over the course of our 12 national surveys, the SMI registered the highest level of volatility during 2009-2013, the period of the Rudd and Gillard governments, when it declined by more than 10%. It has been largely stable since 2014.
On the individual factors that comprise the SMI, however, there have been some significant changes. When it comes to sense of belonging, for instance, just 63% said they felt this to a “great extent” in 2019, compared to 77% in 2007.
And on the acceptance of diversity, 19% of respondents said they had experienced discrimination on the basis of race, ethnic origin or religion, which was significantly higher than the 9%-10% from 2007 to 2009.

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(AU) It's The Climate, Not Immigration, That Keeps Australians Awake At Night

The Guardian - David Marr

The Scanlon Foundation’s annual report on social cohesion finds a country still largely welcoming of migrants, although 40% hold negative feelings towards Muslims
Only 6% of Australians say immigration is the biggest issue facing the country, while 19% nominate climate change. Photograph: James Ross/AAP

Something happened in 2017. Australia is second only to Canada in welcoming immigration on a large scale. Our faith in the benefits of accepting newcomers of all faiths and races is rock solid. But a couple of years ago we began to grow impatient about the government’s management of the immigration program, impatient in particular about overcrowding in our cities.
This is the verdict of the Scanlon Foundation’s 2019 Mapping Social Cohesion report, published on Tuesday. The mission of the foundation for the past decade or so has been to measure how this migrant nation hangs together. In that time an extraordinary 50,000 of us have been polled to track the hopes and fears that sweep Australia – and not just about immigration.
The author of the reports, Prof Andrew Markus of Monash University, finds most Australians now share “an underlying concern about the government not properly managing the situation – the impact on overcrowding, house prices, environment”.
Markus is one of this country’s leading authorities on the politics of race and this is the 12th report he has written for the Scanlon Foundation. His findings are a civilised rejoinder to those who skew politics to the far right in this country that their racist constituency does not speak for the nation.
But in 2019 Markus fears impatience with government management might imperil majority support for Australia’s immigration program. “This has not yet occurred, but the potential is evident.”
We are not Europe. Asked every year to name the most important problem facing their countries, Europeans have lately nominated immigration. “It’s sort of cooled down a bit now,” says Markus, “but even to the present day when people are asked what’s the main issue for the EU, they still nominate controlling population movement and immigration.”
Concern about the climate crisis is surging. Photograph: Steven Saphore/AAP
Markus has never seen such a sudden surge. The last was after the the Lindt cafe siege, when for a few years about 10% nominated national security and terrorism as the great problem facing the nation. “But this year climate change went not to 10, it went to 19,” says Markus. “And that’s so far ahead of the third issue. There’s a lot of daylight there.”
The importance of the shift is underlined by the discovery that climate sceptics have all but lost traction. In 2011, when 11% of us said climate change was our biggest worry, another 6% nominated overreaction to those fears as the great problem facing Australia. The following year, the sceptics outnumbered the climate worriers almost two to one.
Not any more. Against the 19% nomination for climate change in 2019, the sceptics could muster, at best, a contrary 1%. Markus sees this shift as an acute challenge to Canberra. “Morrison has got an opportunity to actually rebuild some capital in effective government,” he says. “But he’s got this issue of climate change. If he doesn’t deal with that, which is emerging as a major issue, that could very seriously damage this government.”
What do you think is the most important problem facing Australia today?
Showing the % who selected the issue as ‘most important problem’, by year of survey
*Indicates change between 2018 and 2019 statistically significant
Guardian graphic Source: Scanlon Foundation
Steady as she goes
Markus began his work at the end of the Howard era and the arrival of Kevin Rudd. In those years of hope and renewal, the Scanlon survey showed nearly half of us believed government did the right thing for the Australian people almost always or most of the time.
But with Rudd’s collapse in 2010 went a good measure of trust in government. It has never recovered. In the weeks before Malcolm Turnbull’s downfall, the Scanlon survey of 2018 revealed only 29% believed in the good intentions of Canberra. After the re-election of the Morrison government this year, the figure is essentially unchanged at 30%.
It’s a long slide, but Marcus disputes claims in other surveys that Australia is experiencing a catastrophic loss of faith in democracy. “There are some people out there who do surveys with small samples,” he says. “And with small samples from one year to the next you will get variability. And that produces headlines.
“But we’ve got I think the most rigorous way of surveying. We actually do it in two different modes – by telephone and by self-administration – and what that is showing is much more a picture of ‘steady as she goes’ rather than dramatic decline.”
The education line cuts across the immigration debate like a mighty trench
They shift a little, and the shifts have lately been gloomy, but year in and year out the steady findings of the Scanlon surveys define Australia:
  • 90% of us have a sense of belonging to this place.
  • 87% are proud of the Australian way of life.
  • 85% agree multiculturalism has been good for Australia.
  • 84% report having a happy 2019.
  • 80% welcome resettlement in Australia of refugees assessed abroad.
  • 79% oppose selecting immigrants by race.
  • 73% believe Australia is a land of economic opportunity where, in the long run, hard work brings a better life.
  • 71% believe globalisation is good for the country.
  • 68% believe accepting immigrants from many different countries makes Australia stronger.
  • 62% are optimistic about Australia’s future.
Then there’s the darker side:
  • 61% of Australians disapprove of asylum seekers making their way here by boat.
  • 47% of us have little or no concern about the treatment we mete out to asylum seekers in PNG and Nauru.
  • 40% in 2019 admit negative or very negative feelings towards Muslims.
The level of hostility to Muslims was masked until a couple of years ago, when the Scanlon Foundation began parallel tracking its research. Telephone interviews over the years showed 21% to 25% of us hostile to Islam. But these figures essentially double when surveys are completed in private and online.
The gap between the two sets of results shows us to be a polite people. We hesitate to admit personal unhappiness or gloom for the future of the country. We clearly don’t enjoy confessing to strangers that we’re in financial trouble. A little of our optimism about the impact of mass immigration evaporates online. We’re even shy of confessing to strangers that we don’t much like Christians – only 4% would own up to that on the telephone in 2019, but 14% said so clearly online.
Markus argues that while our sunny picture of the country darkens a little when we answer in private, those Australians most hostile to race speak loud and clear however they are surveyed.
“The views of the hardcore negative types are pretty constant irrespective of the surveys,” says Markus. “And often it’s around 10% of the population. Now it would be a worry if self-completion surveys then showed it wasn’t 10% but it was 20% to 25%. But it’s actually pretty constant.”
So who are the most hostile to immigration?
Easy answer: One Nation voters. The 2019 report shows One Nation voters are profoundly pessimistic about Australia’s future; loath globalisation; don’t give a rats about the environment; are scathing about the motives of government; dismiss multiculturalism; are fiercely hostile to Muslims; couldn’t care less how harshly we treat asylum seekers; and are the only group in the survey – young and old, rich and poor, city and country – where most still hanker for the old White Australia policy of selecting migrants by race and religion.

What divides us?
How important here is the city/country divide?Not at all on the importance of climate change. Wherever we live in cities or the bush, we agree that after the economy, the climate is the single biggest problem facing Australia today. But on immigration, the gap between city and country widens significantly.
The 2019 survey found that outside the capital cities there was an 8% drop in support for multiculturalism; a 4% rise in those wanting immigrants selected by race and religion; a 6% fall in those concerned about the treatment of refugees; and, though the bush is where migrants don’t settle and governments are desperate to send them, a nine-point jump to 49% of those who believe Australia’s immigration intake is too large.
The fundamentals are sound, even as about one in 10 of us continue to rage against this new Australia of many faiths and many cultures
But this is not the most dramatic divide revealed in the Scanlon surveys over the years. The education line cuts across the immigration debate like a mighty trench:
  • Only 27% of university graduates say Australia takes too many immigrants, but for those who never finished high school the figure is 70%.
  • Nearly 90% of graduates applaud multiculturalism but only 61% of those who never finished school.
  • Among graduates, 58% worry we treat refugees too harshly, but their fears are shared by only 32% of who never finished school.
  • While a rump of 14% of graduates still wish immigrants could be chosen by race, support for the old White Australia position more than doubles to 35% who never finished school.
Western Australia emerges from the survey as a fascinating puzzle: wildly optimistic about the future of the nation, peculiarly trusting in government, little perturbed by climate change and not particularly worried about the size of the immigration intake. But of all mainlanders, West Australians are most keen to select immigrants by race and are, by a long shot, the most hard-hearted about Australia’s treatment of refugees.
Nothing Canberra has done to its prisoners in PNG and Nauru in the past couple of years has budged the national 50:50 split between the indifferent and the sympathisers. Markus says: “It’s pretty rock solid.”
But when these figures are broken down by political alignment, Markus sees signs of movement.
ALP Senator Kristina Keneally during a September rally in support of a Tamil asylum seeker family. Markus says refugee policy is ‘huge problem for Labor’. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP
Thirty per cent of the Liberal constituency say Australia is being too harsh, compared with 87% of Greens. The 2019 figure for refugee sympathisers in Labor ranks is 61%.“It is a huge problem for Labor,” says Markus “because the government with its constituency can keep doing what it’s been doing, but it really wedges Labor.”
Are Christians notably more compassionate? Certainly not Anglicans. In 2019 only 39% of them could muster some sympathy for the asylum seekers Australia is putting through the mill out in the Pacific. Markus doesn’t blame their God. He says gently: “Conservative old Australia.”
Though not quite so bleak, the figures for the other faiths put paid to the notion that the churches are mighty reservoirs of sympathy for refugees. On the subject of the Pacific solution, Catholics come in slightly under the national split, with only 46% of them reporting some or a great deal of concern for what Australia is doing to refugees.
That’s typical. On issues such as the size of the immigration intake, support for multiculturalism, a hankering for the right to pick migrants by race and confidence that immigrants improve our society by introducing new ideas and cultures, the churches don’t put the attitudes of the rest of the community to shame. At best they merely mirror them.
Markus ran some figures for Guardian Australia which show that on nearly all questions asked in the survey – including concern for climate change – the progressive horse to back is those who nominate No Religion.
Overall, Markus is a grim optimist. Reports of discrimination are too high, but not for the moment growing higher. The fundamentals are sound, even as about one in 10 of us continue to rage against this new Australia of many faiths and many cultures. It’s in the government’s hands whether we continue to support what is in world terms very high support for large scale immigration.
Markus is at pains to emphasise that multiculturalism backed by almost all of us is a two-way street. “They’re saying we recognise that diversity is good, that diversity has made us a better country. You get very high levels endorsing the notion that immigration improves society by bringing new ideas and cultures.
“But on the other hand, it’s two-way because the expectation is that immigrants will, over time, be more like us. It’s not an endorsement of pluralism. It’s an endorsement of a two-way change and obviously in that change the immigrants are changing more than the host society.”
But we’re all changing? “Yes. We’re moving. But they’re moving more.”

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