Gender and Climate Change: An Introduction

Irene Dankelman, Irene Dankelman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136540264
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences biologiques
• Subtopic: Écologie

Although climate change affects everybody it is not gender neutral. It has significant social impacts and magnifies existing inequalities such as the disparity between women and men in their vulnerability and ability to cope with this global phenomenon.

This new textbook, edited by one of the authors of the seminal Women and the Environment in the Third World: Alliance for the Future (1988) which first exposed the links between environmental degradation and unequal impacts on women, provides a comprehensive introduction to gender aspects of climate change. Over 35 authors have contributed to the book.

It starts with a short history of the thinking and practice around gender and sustainable development over the past decades. Next it provides a theoretical framework for analyzing climate change manifestations and policies from the perspective of gender and human security. Drawing on new research, the actual and potential effects of climate change on gender equality and women's vulnerabilities are examined, both in rural and urban contexts. This is illustrated with a rich range of case studies from all over the world and valuable lessons are drawn from these real experiences. Too often women are primarily seen as victims of climate change, and their positive roles as agents of change and contributors to livelihood strategies are neglected. The book disputes this characterization and provides many examples of how women around the world organize and build resilience and adapt to climate change and the role they are playing in climate change mitigation. The final section looks at how far gender mainstreaming in climate mitigation and adaptation has advanced, the policy frameworks in place and how we can move from policy to effective action.

Accompanied by a wide range of references and key resources, this book provides students and professionals with an essential, comprehensive introduction to the gender aspects of climate change.

1

Introduction: Exploring Gender, Environment and Climate Change

Irene Dankelman

This chapter is an introduction to the challenging nexus of gender and climate change. It will describe the main developments in practice and thinking around these themes, with an emphasis on developments within the past 25 years. It will also explain the main concepts and key definitions, and give some guidance on the structure of the book.

Introduction

Gender and Climate Change: An Introduction offers an analysis of the interface between the changing physical environment and human society, with a particular focus on gender aspects of climate change. More than 20 years ago, in 1988, the first textbook on women and environment was published (Dankelman and Davidson, 1988). Since that time, almost every aspect of the women–environment nexus has undergone important changes. One of the most pressing environmental challenges is currently climate change, exacerbating all the environmental issues of the late 1980s: water, energy, land use and biodiversity conservation. At the same time, human factors have undergone major changes and the relationships between women and men worldwide manifest themselves as diverse and dynamic gender characteristics. Changes in the world’s climatic conditions, the way these are formed, and how people are affected, cope with and adapt to these, have important and challenging gender dimensions. This book aims to introduce these dimensions and interactions, and intends to build a broad understanding of gender aspects of climatic change. First it addresses students and professionals active in areas such as environment, climate change, social justice and sustainable development. Secondly it intends to inform a broader, interested public.

As global environmental change, and in particular climate change, is a major challenge for our societies today and impacts all our efforts to build a more just and sustainable society, the book underlines the need for a gender-specific approach in climate change policies, actions, study and research. Based on a wide range of experiences on the ground, it will argue that men and women alike are important as agents of change and as distinct counter-forces to cope with and adapt to processes of global and local environmental change, and to mitigate these. These societal roles and functions need recognition as well as mainstreaming of a gender perspective in climate change policies, mechanisms and actions.

Acknowledgements

This book is developed with the inputs of a wide range of experts from all over the world. Particular thanks go to those who cooperated in and contributed to the diverse chapters in this publication: Lorena Aguilar, Eleanor Blomstrom, Willy Jansen, Gerd Johnsson-Latham, Prabha Khosla, Ansa Masaud, Cate Owren and Tracy Raczek. They have brought their profound knowledge and expertise in specific areas of gender equality and climate change to the forefront. The editor is also particularly thankful to the many professionals who, through their testimonies and case studies, have given visibility to the realities on the ground, where women and men live their lives, experience climate change impacts and take action: Emma Archer, Bernhard Barth, Sabine Bock, Ruth Bond, Bharati Chaturvedi, Emily Cleevely, Thais Corral, Tracy Cull, Gero Fedtke, Sascha Gabizon, Shana Griffin, Rachel Harris, Janet Kabeberi-Macharia, Rehana Bibi Khilji, Yianna Lambrou, Koos Neefjes, Biju Negi, Sibyl Nelson, Valerie Nelson, Omoyemen Odigie-Emmanuel, Vijay Kumar Pandey, Dana Ginn Parades, Ann Rojas-Cheatham, Aparna Shah, Eveline Shen, Ashbindu Singh, Reetu Sogani, Jenny Svensson, Marcela Tovar-Restrepo and Katherine Vincent. It is through the leadership of all these contributors that we can be inspired, and it is for this reason that their short biographies are also included in the book.

Exploring the issues:
A bird’s-eye view through history

The interface between ecological and social processes is not only maintained through natural processes, products and impacts of the environment on human beings, but also by the endeavours of humans themselves. Since the existence of humankind, people have interacted with the physical environment in direct or indirect ways. In hunter-gatherer societies this interaction was based on the principle of the harvesting of natural products. These communities must have developed a deep understanding of the characteristics of ecosystems and their resources. In the early settled agricultural societies, humans started to cultivate the land and other resources in order to gain enough food and other produce from the reshaped environment, and started building up stocks, originally for their own use, and later for local (and even international) markets. Experiences, beliefs and visions resulted in specific management practices of the physical environment.

The notion that human interventions and overuse of natural resources – often forests – could result in a disturbance of natural cycles and in human misery already existed in Greek and Roman times. Plato (430–373 BC) warned in his Kritias that the deforestation of the mountains around Athens would result in loss of the water-storage capacity of the environment and would finally end with erosion and flooding. This would result in the further degradation of the once fertile agricultural lands of Attica, and the drying up of water sources. The Roman historians Strabo (64/63 BC–23 AD) and Plinius (23–79 AD) also questioned the unlimited deforestation for mining, shipbuilding and construction work, and its consequences for water retention and land management. This awareness of limited goods finally resulted in the notion of sustainable development, as developed by the German mining engineer Von Carlowitz in 1713 in his Sylvicultura Oeconomica on sustainable forest use (van Zon, 2002).

This perspective did not only emerge in the Western world. A well-known early example of people’s awareness of the limitations of natural capacities and the need to safeguard these for human well-being is that of the Bishnoi community in Rajasthan, India. The Bishnoi are known as environmental conservationists and managers in the Thar desert. In 1730 the Maharaja Abhay Singh of Jodhpur, after inviting local men to a party, ordered his soldiers to fell trees in a Bishnoi village and bring back wood for the construction of a new palace. But when Amrita Devi from that village came to know about those plans she organized the villagers and they went to protect the trees with their own bodies. In the Khejadli Massacre, Amrita Devi, along with 362 other local villagers, died while protecting the khejri trees (Prosopis cineraria). As soon as the Maharaja learned about the massacre, he ordered the stoppage of the tree-felling (Mukhopadhyay, 2008) (see also Chapter 9).

Overuse of natural resources and also pollution are as old as human history. Increasing human populations, particularly in early urban settlements, opened the door to more pollution and disease. During the Middle Ages, diseases such as cholera and typhoid fever broke out all across Europe and were directly related to unsanitary conditions and human and animal waste. By the mid-1800s, people began to understand that unsanitary conditions and water contamination adversely affected human health. This ‘new’ awareness prompted major cities to take measures to control waste and garbage (Goubert, 1989).

With the advancing industrial development in the 19th century, human interventions in the physical environment intensified, with increasing demands for wood, coal, minerals, crops and other natural products. In the Western world, signs of overuse in agriculture, forestry and mining, as well as pollution of water and air, became more and more visible. Some scholars warned that the natural environment was not infinite, and that use of natural resources should be guided by some form of wise use, or sustainability (van Zon, 2002). However, it was not until the late 19th century – with the establishment of nature conservation organizations – and the mid-20th century – with the release of publications such as the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962), the report Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet by Barbara Ward and René Dubos (1972) and The Limits to Growth: A Report to the Club of Rome (Meadows et al, 1972) that the awareness of the need for environmental management and nature conservation became a more common good and was perceived as a global responsibility. Since that time, the study of the interactions between the human and physical environments started to develop, and became an object of environmental sciences.

People’s interaction with the natural environment is as old as humankind itself, but it has changed over time. Women and men have played diverse roles in this interface. The gender-specific roles, rights and responsibilities of people in their physical environment were first highlighted by scholars such as Ester Boserup (1970, 1989) – on agriculture – and organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), with regard to agriculture and forestry, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on biodiversity conservation.

In her essay ‘Is Female to Male as Nature to Culture?’ the feminist anthropologist Sherry Ortner (1974) analyses the secondary status of women in society as a universal phenomenon, based on the pan-cultural assumption that women are closer to nature than men, with men seen as occupying the higher ground of culture. Women occupy the intermediary space between nature and culture. While rejecting biological determinism, Ortner bases her assumptions on women’s physiology and social roles, as well as their psyche. Critics argue, however, that Ortner’s arguments further strengthen the dichotomy between men and women, and that cultural diversity does not allow for any universal pronunciations. Later in her essay ‘Gender Hegemonies’ (1990) Ortner acknowledges that her critics were more right than she initially admitted. She developed a more complex picture of dominance, seeing societies in which women have strong roles. However, Ortner’s focus on women’s subordination in society does not question the societal attitude to nature itself (as being of a lower value than culture), as did Carolyn Merchant.

In her book The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (1980) science historian Carolyn Merchant argues that there is a major parallel between the degradation of nature and the oppression of women. One of the major causes, she argues, lies in men’s changing valuation of nature during the Enlightenment, when they began seeing nature as something to be used, explored and exploited. Similarly women were perceived as having inferior and serving positions in communities and households. This notion of the parallel between women’s and nature’s positions in society is further explored by later eco-feminist thinkers. Critics warn, however, of over-simplification of such relationships, and against the dangers of comparing the female body with mother nature (Braidotti et al, 1993). However, the realities in which many women and men live show more and more clearly the specific differential roles, rights and responsibilities of men and women in managing and maintaining the physical environment. Based on such observations since the mid-1980s the specific nexus between gender, environment and sustainable development has been explored by scholars, activists and development workers (CSE, 1985; Rocheleau, 1985; van Wijk-Sijbesma, 1985; Agarwal, 1986; Cecelski, 1986; Dankelman and Davidson, 1988; Shiva, 1988; ICIMOD, 1988; Monimart, 1989). Many of these studies show that women’s positions and roles have been seriously neglected, not only in the practice of the environmental conservation and sustainable management of resources, but also in the more scientific foundations of such activities in environmental science and studies. At policy level, the need to mainstream gender in the environmental sector and in sustainable development efforts has been recognized during the past 15–20 years, although often reluctantly. This recognition is still not internalized in many institutions and needs intense external advocacy work in order to result in gender-sensitive policies and practices of dominant organizations and institutions. This is especially the case with regard to gender and climate change, as will be described in the following chapters.

Many of the existing studies and research on gender and environment focus on specific sectors, elements and cases, such as gender roles in food production, in water management and in energy use at global, national or local level. Deep analyses and analytical frameworks to understand the nexus gender–climate change–sustainable development at meta-level are still limited. Similarly, a genuine debate on the relevance of that nexus for climate change science and practice is almost absent. This book shows that in arenas that deal with climate change and sustainable development, there is still too limited reference made to the gender dimensions. On the other hand, many examples show that if women participate in climate change action, planning and decision-making, they contribute valuable knowledge, experiences and perspectives, and they can take on important leadership roles. Some of these cases are analysed in this book. It shows that a far more fundamental understanding, policy development and practice on gender–climate change and sustainable development is needed.

In the meantime, as for example the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) and the Fourth Assessment Reports of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) show, the environment changes at an unprecedented rate due to human interventions. These changes have major impacts on both human livelihoods and human lives. There is an urgent need to understand these changes and their impacts from a gender perspective, and to draw lessons from that understanding. This book hopes to contribute to that notion by offering students, scholars and policy-makers a basic body of knowledge on gender dimensions of climate change.

Concepts and definitions:
From climate and climate change

Main concepts that are used in this book are defined here. The book talks about the physical environment or the eco-sphere: the air, water, land, flora and fauna, in their respective ecosystems. In order to distinguish the non-human and the human spheres of life, the human society is described as the socio-sphere. Focus of the book will be formed by the differential processes in the interface between the socio-sphere and eco-sphere, with an emphasis on climatic changes and gender issues, and there it enters the domain of human ecology.

Weather conditions have a major impact on plant growth, animal life and human well-being. ‘Climate’ in a narrow sense is usually defined as the ‘average’ weather. More rigorously, it stands for the statistical description in terms of mean and variability of relevant variables over a period of time, ranging from months to thousands or millions of years, but with as classical period of time 30 years (World Meteorolo...