Author: Lian Choong
2 minute read
Often social solutions, such as gender equality, can be overlooked in response to climate change, with the focus mainly on technological and scientific solutions. But a combination of both are essential to solving climate change.
Zuza Epicenter, Mozambique. Photo Credit: Ivan Barros
Originally published by The Hunger Project Australia.
We know that climate change has caused levels of people living in chronic hunger to rise since 2015.
Women are likely to feel the effects of climate change and reduced supply even more profoundly than their male counterparts as social conditions force them to accept less diminishing resources. As the primary providers of food and water, especially during the dry season when men leave to work in urban areas, rural women will be forced to walk further to collect supplies for their families as water becomes less accessible.
UN agencies estimate that 80% of people displaced globally due to climate change are women. They have been forced to move due to inhospitable conditions, lack of resources, or conflict resulting from water and food shortages.
Often we can overlook social solutions, such as gender equality, in response to climate change and focus mainly on technological and scientific solutions, such as electric cars. A combination of addressing and utilising both are essential to solving climate change.
Project Drawdown, a global research project which identifies and assesses solutions to climate change, has identified three solutions that stem from improving the rights and wellbeing of women and girls. According to Project Drawdown, addressing the following factors simultaneously has the potential to reduce greenhouse gases pollution by over 100 gigatonnes by 2050. This is equivalent to what the world has produced over the last three years.
Family planning.
Education.
Agriculture.
Women in agriculture face a variety of obstacles and constraints that their male counterparts do not, such as lack of access to training, machinery, and new technology. In developing countries, women in agriculture commonly lack the economic resources and income to invest in agricultural technologies and the knowledge to improve their practices. Providing women in developing countries with greater access to resources and land could produce greater crop and livestock yields, producing more food from the land and reducing pressure for deforestation.
With the proper adaptive techniques, communities can learn to adjust to the new realities of their environments while working to lessen the impact of climate change. Rural populations already have a low environmental impact as compared to urban ones, and small changes can go a long way in adjusting to new conditions. Women in Ethiopian villages, for example, invest in more durable homes, utilising The Hunger Project’s Epicentre credit savings programs to build structures that can protect their families against both natural and man-made changes.
Now more than ever, it is important that we all continue to empower women around the world. Will you empower women in the developing world and invest in a sustainable solution to climate change?
