Climate change: More than just a word game

changing climate being negotiated in Durban, various NGOs, agencies and research institutes are lobbying to get a word into the negotiating text.
They include groups who are keen on the words “nutrition security”, and others who want to ensure that “women and children” feature in the text each time the word “vulnerable” appears.
“It is not opportunistic. We are pushing for the empowerment of women and the recognition of the words ‘nutrition security’ – by that we are addressing so many issues at the same time,” said Cristina Tirado, director of the Centre for Public Health and Climate Change at the US-based Public Health Institute.
“Protection and promotion of nutrition and health are essential components of climate-resilient and sustainable development,” she added. “Women serve as agents of change. Through their unique roles in the family and child care, agricultural labour, food and nutrition security, health and disaster risk reduction, they can be instrumental in addressing climate change, health and nutrition in an integrated way.”
In the developing world women are almost entirely responsible for growing the food for their households, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Yet only 10 to 20 of every 100 land owners is a woman, says the World Bank’s World Development report 2012, which focused on gender equality and empowerment.
Including such words in the text of the proposed climate change deal can translate into money for programmes related to them, says Jazmin Burgess, a climate change policy and research officer with the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef). Women and children are the most vulnerable segment of any society – children even more so – she maintains.
Unicef and Burgess were involved in a long battle to ensure the word “children” featured in the text on the proposed new Green Climate Fund, set up to provide money for those most vulnerable to a changing climate.
”They include groups who are keen on the words ‘nutrition security’, and others who want to ensure that ‘women and children’ feature in the text each time the word ‘vulnerable’ appears”
Recent research has shown women and children are more likely than men to die from natural hazards. A study of 141 countries found that more women than men die from natural hazards, the World Bank says in their report.
Unicef notes that some of the leading killers of children – malnutrition, cholera, diarrhoea, dengue fever, malaria – are highly sensitive to climate change. Any funds for programming on any of these issues would now ensure that children were targeted, said Burgess.
Tirado has been lobbying for some years for the inclusion of the words “nutrition security” and is among various organisations and forums – the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN), the World Food Programme (WFP) and NGO Action Against Hunger (ACF) – that have written a paper to position women as the catalyst in delivering nutrition security and health in a world becoming more difficult to live in because of climate change.
Tirado hopes the significance given to empowering women in the Durban talks will influence countries to develop especially the aspects addressing nutrition and health issues in their National Adaptation Plans.
Catherine Zanev, from Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction at WFP, said the agency’s experience in emergencies has shown that “in the hands of women, food is far more likely to reach the mouths of needy children. Whenever possible, WFP therefore distributes food and cash to women in emergencies, empowering them to better manage crises.”
By doing this, aid agencies not only ensure their programmes are more effective but also have a long-term impact on improving the status of women, said Harjeet Singh, climate expert at Action Aid International. “So it is a win-win for all.”
The move has worked. Zanev cited the management of communal granaries constructed by WFP in Cameroon’s dry north, left almost entirely in the hands of women.
“After one year of operation of the granaries, the number of hectares cultivated and the level of food production had increased significantly, contributing also to social stability, as it encouraged the male work force to stay in the community. No more emergency operations have been necessary in the region since setting up the community granaries.”
Denise Coitinho Delmuè, executive secretary of the UNSCN said it was “very important that things are done simultaneously to be mutually reinforcing, empowering women for taking a catalytic role in improving nutrition. It therefore requires that from the analysis and design phases of nutrition programming, women take centre stage.”
She cited examples of such programmes from Brazil, which managed to reduce its malnutrition levels by 70 percent in six years. Women’s literacy classes concentrate on nutrition, including information on preparing traditional and indigenous food.
Local school feeding programmes in Brazil buy produce from small scale farmers who are mostly women and mothers of children at the school.
UNICEF’s Burgess says climate change education among school children in parts of Asia has helped to spread awareness in societies with a high population of illiterate adults.
Meanwhile, extreme weather events in the decade ending in 2010 claimed more than 710,000 lives and cost countries and people more than US$2.3 trillion when adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP), says the Long-term Climate Risk Index for 1991-2010.
PPP is a currency exchange rate that compares the actual value of things in countries – for example, a farmer in India can buy more with US$1 than a farmer in the US.
The index, released on the sidelines of the UN climate change talks in Durban and produced by Germanwatch, a North-South watchdog initiative, looked at the impact of extreme weather events from 1991 to 2010, based on data from Munich Re, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies.
Bangladesh, Myanmar and Honduras top the long-term index. However, there is some good news for Bangladesh – everyone’s disaster poster child. More than 80 percent of the deaths in Bangladesh in the last decade occurred in 1991, when over 140 000 people were killed by a cyclone, but not as many have died since.
That subsequent extreme events have not caused as much hardship is an indicator that “it is possible to better prepare for climate risks and prevent larger-scale impacts from disasters”, the authors noted.
The index also looked at 2010 separately and placed Pakistan – affected by severe flooding in that year – at the top, followed by Guatemala and Colombia.
“We have had floods again this year and we are not really prepared for extreme events of the scale we saw in 2010,” said Farrukh Iqbal Khan from Pakistan, a lead negotiator at the Durban talks.
Sven Harmeling, an adaptation expert and author of the index, said the mounting costs of dealing with disasters made a case for the operationalization of the “loss and damage” work programme in Durban.
”We have had floods again this year and we are not really prepared for extreme events of the scale we saw in 2010”
The decision to set up such a programme to understand the financial exposure of countries to the impact of climate change, and explore ways to avoid and reduce loss and damage, was taken at the last round of formal talks in Cancun, Mexico, in 2010.
A report prepared by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat has highlighted what the programme should do, Harmeling said.
It has to identify the gaps in information to assess the different types of risk, loss and damage at various levels, and assess current practices and lessons learnt in doing that. Harmeling said he hoped that a clear work plan would emerge out of Durban to do this.
There are regional efforts underway to help countries prepare better for extreme weather events. The South African Weather Service (SAWS) announced that it was geared to helping Southern African Development Community (Sadc) member countries by providing an early warning system to predict severe and extreme weather events in a collaborative project.
The Severe Weather Forecasting Demonstration Project got much impetus in 2007, when the SAWS was able to give Mozambique five days of lead time to prepare and evacuate people out of harm’s way after its warning of Cyclone Favio.
“We are still working on it but we intend to build the technical capacity of the weather offices in all the countries, besides providing them with essential data,” said Lawrence Dube, manager of the climate section at SAWS.
As happens every year, the first two days of the UN climate change talks were marked by the release of alarming weather data to set the tone of the conference.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) announced on Tuesday (the second day) that global temperatures in 2011 so far are the 10th highest on record; and higher than any previous year in a La Nina event, which has a relatively cooling influence.
WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud said in a statement: “Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere . . . are rapidly approaching levels consistent with a 2 to 2.4 degrees Celsius rise [by the turn of the century] in average global temperatures, which scientists believe could trigger far reaching and irreversible changes in our earth, biosphere and oceans.” – IRIN.