DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 2
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006
Women Matter in the Energy and Climate Change Debate
By Cayetana Carrion, Sustainable Development Coordinator 
When governmental, non-governmental and private sector interests get down to debating energy, climate change, industrial development and air pollution at the 14 th session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-14) from May 1-12, they’ll be able to draw plenty of lessons from the string of devastating natural disasters that erupted in 2005.
The Asian Tsunami of 26 December 2004, which claimed some 300,000 lives, and left around 500,000 people injured and more than a million displaced, was the harbinger of things to come. Beginning in late August an unusually high number of powerful hurricanes in the Atlantic—and subsequent floods, landfalls and mudslides—killed more than 2,000 and displaced hundreds of thousands more in the Caribbean, Central America and the Gulf of Mexico. They included Hurricane Katrina, which slammed into New Orleans causing the deaths of over 1,000 and exposing the ugly underbelly of chronic poverty and racial discrimination in the U.S. as well as it’s weak systems of disaster preparedness, response and mitigation.
In October a violent earthquake in Pakistan, killed more than 30,000 people and left millions homeless and/or in acute need of life-saving assistance. The increasing numbers—and strength—of these natural disasters continues a pattern from the 1990s, when over two billion of the poorest and most vulnerable in both developing and developed countries were affected. (UNFPA, 2005)
The Women’s Major Group for CSD-14, facilitated by WEDO and global partners ENERGIA, IUCN and LIFE and WECF, has put a woman’s face on the energy and climate change debate. They jointly produced, in consultation with women’s organizations throughout the world, the official Women’s Major Group Discussion Paper entitled "Engendering the Energy and Climate Change Agenda". The document underscores how hard it is to design and adopt appropriate preparedness, response and reconstruction measures when policy makers ignore women’s and men’s socially based roles and responsibilities, distinct vulnerabilities, and unequal economic opportunities.
Women disproportionately affected
Both women and men are affected by the dire impacts of “ energy poverty” and climate change but by highlighting t he links between gender and poverty, the Discussion Paper shows how women are particularly at risk. It is generally recognized that the poor are most vulnerable to environmental changes and it is also well known that some 70 percent of the world’s poor are women who are most dependent on local natural resources.
In both developed and developing countries women are primary caregivers, combining care-giving tasks with domestic and income-earning activities. Energy poverty and climate change increase their domestic burdens dramatically, particularly those living in developing countries. In developing nations, lack of energy for household needs and small-scale enterprises force women to walk further to fetch water, collect fuel or find fodder even as their livelihoods and food security are threatened by reduced crop yields and diminished food production.
In traditional societies women are especially vulnerable to natural disasters and climate change since they are not expected to participate in the public sphere, and therefore less likely to receive critical information for emergency preparedness. In such societies women are also less mobile due to strict and gendered codes of social behaviour so have fewer possibilities to escape from affected a reas.
In the aftermath of natural disasters, women are often subjected to rape and other forms of sexual violence, especially in chaotic refugee situations where the social structures and mechanisms necessary to regulate social behaviour, alleviate aggressive attitudes, and protect the most vulnerable individuals, are often absent.
The Women’s Major Group Discussion Paper points to a general recognition that the economic and industrial models prevailing in developed countries are responsible for producing most of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, but the impacts are felt most severely in developing countries. It also notes that in some instances, responsibility for emissions appears related to the gender-specific division of labour, economic power and the different consumption and leisure habits of men and women. For example, emissions connected to mobility have a clear gender component, for generally speaking women travel less by car, use more public transport and fly less frequently than men. Despite this awareness by the international community, little formal analysis has been done to identify responsibility or the role of gender in increasing or curbing CO² emissions.
Women in decision-making
In “Engendering the Energy and Climate Change Agenda” WEDO and its partners make a powerful argument of the need for policy makers to formally recognize women’s critical role in communities, their knowledge about ecosystems and their strategies, experiences and skills for coping with natural disasters and water and energy shortages. These are policy directions that governments, pushed by women’s policy advocates, have long since endorsed on paper—in Agenda 21 (1992), which advanced women’s empowerment and gender equality as essential elements of sustainable development; in the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), which promotes equal access to sustainable and affordable energy technologies and the use of participatory needs assessments to design national energy plans; at CSD-9 (2001) which recommended international cooperation to ensure women’s equal access to energy and their greater involvement in energy policy decision-making.
And yet, at both international and national levels, it remains difficult for women to gain recognition in the field of climate protection and in the design of energy plans. The level of women’s participation in planning and decision-making on climate protection and energy policies remains very low, limiting their capacity to engage in political decisions that directly affect their specific needs and vulnerabilities.
The Discussion Paper underscores the crucial need for women to be recognised as actors of change who have a major role to play in creating sustainable models for energy consumption and production, and in responsible climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. It also demonstrates that energy and climate change programs and policies that have integrated gender have been most successful in adapting to adverse effects. For instance in La Masica, Honduras, the community attributed its successes in conducting prompt evacuation that saved lives when Hurricane Mitch struck in 1998 to a decision to involve women and men equally in disaster preparedness and management activities.
Getting the word out
WEDO distributed the Women’s CSD-14 Discussion Paper at meetings on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and on the Kyoto Protocol held in Montreal, Canada from November 28 through December 9. It was part of a concerted effort by women’s advocates to boost women’s participation and promote gender equality in this process. The UN Framework Convention, the overall policy framework for addressing climate change issues under which the Kyoto Protocol falls, was adopted in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Neither the Framework Convention nor the Protocol include gender perspectives, and neither process recognizes women as a distinct group, although other groups—like environmental organizations, businesses, indigenous peoples and local authorities—do have observer status within the Framework Convention process. In Montreal, however, a “new era” of women’s participation and involvement was opened.
WEDO participated in a new network of women’s organizations interested in pushing the gender and social agendas into the process. In a series of strategy meetings coordinated by LIFE/Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF), the network drafted, issued and presented at the plenary meeting of the UNFCCC conference an attention-grabbing statement, Global Warning: Women Matter!, which carried forward the messages of women who have been involved in previous UNFCCC Conferences, and of the CSD-14 Discussion Paper. LIFE/WECF also organized a workshop to address the considerable gaps in research on gender and climate change and set up a women’s booth where material on the gender aspects of climate change was displayed. In addition they held a climate change talk on “Gender and climate change: why it makes a difference”
These experiences in Montreal, particularly the establishment of a network of expert women dealing with climate change, provided an opportunity to link up with the upcoming CSD-14, and are expected to strengthen the CSD Women’s Major Group’s advocacy efforts at CSD-14 and beyond.