Include women and young girls in fight against climate change

As climate change mitigation awareness grows in Africa, gender specialists are pushing for women to be included in leadership roles to make environmentally friendly choices, as climate change has worsened existing gender inequalities.

According to gender experts, the negative effects of climate change have the greatest impact on women and young girls because they face the harsh realities of climate change when they are either displaced from their homes and must fetch water or firewood daily.

Last year, climate change caused the African continent to face catastrophic weather such as destructive flooding experienced in South Africa and wildfires in Algeria, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported.

These climate disasters have worsened gender inequality in Africa in many ways, confirmed Ms Lydia Zigomo, Regional Director of the United Nations Population Fund for East and Southern Africa.

“The fact that when a major climatic event occurs, it usually translates into a humanitarian crisis. The humanitarian catastrophe in Africa has taken a new form. We have experienced hurricanes, flooding, droughts, and earthquakes, all of which are having negative climatic effects on the ground,” Ms Zigomo explained.

She said one of the negative effects of climate change is causing population displacements.

“So many people are on the move as a result. They can’t stay where they were living because the conditions there make it unattainable for them to remain in those locations. Often their houses have been destroyed, all the services are not there, maybe their livestock and other forms of livelihoods have been adversely affected.”

Furthermore, Ms Zigomo said the majority of persons on the move in Sub-Saharan Africa are women, girls, and young people in general.

“As a result, the majority of displaced people or affected communities are women and girls. Therefore you begin to see that they are the more vulnerable to the impacts of what is happening in terms of climatic disasters.”

Although Africa accounts for only 3.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 23 percent in China, 19 percent in the United States, and 13 percent in the European Union, Ms Zigomo indicated that Africa carried the heavy brunt of climate change.

“Poor African countries are facing more of the climatic impacts of change and in those poor countries, more of those people affected directly by those climatic events who are most vulnerable are particularly women and young people and when they’re on the move, they’re not provided with the necessary sexual reproductive health services,” Ms Zigomo said.

Weighing in on the matter, Dr Jeannette Bayisenge, Rwanda’s Minister of Gender and Family Promotion, acknowledged the implications of climate change on gender, saying, “The nexus between climate change and gender is very close and remarkable considering the role that women play in their everyday lives.”

“When you look at our communities where the majority of women are involved in agriculture, you can immediately see how climate change is affecting their subsistence work trying to put food on the table. Climate change affects gender, the environment, and policy development. It is critical that we include women in leadership decisions about climate mitigation,” Dr Bayisenge added.

President and Chief Executive Officer of Women Deliver, Dr Maliha Khan, acknowledged gender inequalities caused by societal structures and climate change including gender-based violence were on the rise in Sub-Saharan Africa and would be addressed at this year’s conference in Rwanda.

“Women Deliver is a leading global advocacy organisation that promotes gender equality and the health rights of girls and women in all their intersection identities. Issues like gender-based violence and maternal deaths and morbidity has particularly hit Sub-Saharan Africa,” said Dr Khan.

In 2020-2021, a gender analysis of climate change to aid in the systematic mainstreaming of gender in climate change, was conducted in Zimbabwe and it served as the foundation for the development of the country’s Climate Change Gender Action Plan.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) assisted the Zimbabwean government in developing this plan in collaboration with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equity (UNWomen), the Ministry of Women Affairs Community, Small and Medium Enterprise Development, and the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism, and Hospitality Industry.

UNDP also helped to develop the Gender and Climate Change Training Manual, which is a practical guidance and training tool for incorporating gender equality into climate change interventions.

“Mainstreaming gender in Climate Change plays a huge role in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) because of its inclusive nature and is one of the key enablers to steer Zimbabwe towards the Vision 2030 trajectory of being a prosperous and empowered upper middle-income society for its citizens by 2030,” Minister of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development, Sithembiso Nyoni, told CoP25 delegates at the Sharm el-Sheikh Climate Change Conference in Egypt in November last year.

Minister Nyoni said the Climate Change Gender Action Plan was created to advance women’s full, equal, and meaningful engagement in climate change, as well as to promote gender-responsive climate policy and provide actionable recommendations to support a more comprehensive, inclusive, and equitable approach to climate change.

For young climate change activists like 12-year-old Licypriya Kangujam, increased awareness is needed to highlight the effects of climate change and solutions to mitigate against them.

“In Africa, there are a lot of climate disasters, a lot of environmental disasters such as heat waves and droughts happening at the same time,” she said.

Kangujam who founded the Child Movement and Climate Activist, said young people can play a big role in raising awareness.

“It is very clear that the countries that are being impacted in this way by these climatic events are not the primary emitters of carbon emissions, which are the causes of the climatic changes we see. So, we must raise more awareness, so young people play a big role in this. We must keep fighting for climate justice, climate finance, and climate education. We will all continue to fight for the safe climate and the safe future,” she said.