Federal Minister for Climate Change Mushahid Ullah Khan said on Sunday that women who constitute the majority of the world’s poor are among the most vulnerable to the detrimental impacts of climate change, particularly in developing countries including Pakistan. Yet, they are also vital to solutions to the impacts.
He expressed these views in his statement issued from Islamabad on Sunday in context of the “International Women’s Day 2015”. The women’s day is celebrated on March 8 every year. This year the Day is being marked under the theme “Empowering Women – Empowering Humanity: Picture It!” which envisions a world where each woman and girl can exercise her choices, such as participating in politics, getting an education, having an income, and living in societies free from violence and discrimination.
The first International Women’s Day was held in 1911. Thousands of events take place to celebrate the economic, political and social achievements of women throughout the world. Mushahid Ullah says that the Day calls us all for encouraging effective action for advancing and recognising women for unprecedented value of their role, which is vital to achieve socio-economic development goals in both developing and developed countries.
Talking about gender dimensions in the context of impacts of climate change, the minister said climate change would affect women and men differently due to their different roles with regard to water use. Mushahid Ullah further said that women generally assume primary responsibility for collecting water for drinking, cooking, washing, hygiene and raising small livestock. On the other hand, men use water for irrigation or livestock farming and for industries. These divergent roles mean that women and men often have divergent needs and priorities as far as water use is concerned. This knowledge is quite significant in the context of climate change.
“For instance, in drought-prone areas affected by desertification the time consumed by water collection will increase as women will have to travel greater distances to find water. But this is the time that could be spent in school, earning an income or participating in public/economic life. Walking long distances to fetch water can expose women to different health issues and harassment or sexual assault,” he said.
The minister observed that women tend to be under-represented in the decision-making on climate change at all levels in the country. This severely limits their ability to contribute and implement mitigation and adaptation initiatives for fighting negative effects of the rapidly changing weather patterns.
“Women are predominantly responsible for, food production, household water supply and fuelwood collection for heating and cooking. We cannot, however, afford to keep them (women) off the processes of planning and policy and decision making meant for tackling devastating impacts of climate change on different sectors of economy, particularly agriculture, water and health,” he warned.
The minister stressed upon the count’s planners, policy and decision makers to ensure that women are equally part of these very processes so that women’s say is adequately reflected in the planning and decision-making processes aimed for building countries climate resilience through mitigation and adaptation plans in all socio-economic sectors.
He also called upon women and gender experts to ensure that they were well informed about the gendered dimensions of climate sensitive sectors, particularly the existing inequalities between men and women and how climate change can exacerbate these inequalities.
The minister observed that being important natural resource users, women have gained knowledge and developed coping strategies over the years that give them naturally a practical understanding of innovation and skills to adapt to the extreme weather events as well as to contribute to the solution.
