Climate Change and Climate

Mother Earth

Is Climate Change an Issue of Women's Rights?

For the most of the world, climate change is one of the most pressing issues on the radar. It has become increasingly clear that anthropogenic activities are influencing the Earth's precious energy balance for quite some time; since industrialization primarily. While the evidence has been mounting and the science has become increasingly sophisticated, it has also become clear that the impacts of climate change are not going to be equitably distributed throughout the entire world's population -- everyone will feel the impacts of climate change, but some groups will feel them significantly more than others. For example, the third-world countries are expected to feel the deepest impacts through drought and increased water issues, but we are also seeing water problems in advanced nations evident by any of the news related to Flint, MI. This analysis will look specifically at the problem of climate change and how it will impact women's rights from a feminist perspective. While it is clear that no one is completely immune from the effects of climate change, many have argued that women will be more subjected to some of the worst effects that are predicted to result from our negligence to effectively deal with one of humanities greatest challenges.

Climate Change Background

In the last couple of decades, the reporting on the climate change phenomenon has become increasingly alarming as time has passed. as the science has narrowed in on a more accurate picture of what the consequences of anthropogenic warming will entail; a bleak picture emerges that goes far beyond the original predictions as the eminent crisis which is predicted to emerge hits much closer to home -- in the backyards of coast urban dwellers in some of the greatest cities on the planet:

" . . . glaciers in the western Antarctic, undermined by the warmer seas of a hotter world, were collapsing, and their disappearance "now appears to be unstoppable." The melting of these great ice sheets would make seas rise by at least four feet -- ultimately, possibly 12 -- more than enough to flood cities from New York to Tokyo to Mumbai (Mann, 2014)."

Earth's climate has always changed, but the alarming rate at which it is happening has caused concern among the scientific community.

Since the industrial revolution, the fossil fuels bestowed upon the earth millions of years ago have been broken down in mere hours on the cosmic calendar. This is due to the drastically increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused by powering our technological civilization. On record, the amount of CO2 jumped from 280 ppm to around 405 ppm, with an annual increase of three gigatons. As this concentration amplifies, so does the temperature of our planet -- 6 years within the past decade being the hottest in history.For those in the know, climate change is even a scarier prospect given our current representatives have pledged their disagreement with the trends very existence and have dismissed it as a "Chinese hoax".

Climate Change Impacts by Gender

Gender roles are still largely prevalent in nearly all societies on the planet; especially in the developing nations. One example can be provided by the residents of Nwadjahane, a village in southern Mozambique, have already seen some of the changes that are expected to come with global warming. Since the 1980s, droughts and floods have hit the village harder and more frequently than before. But the villagers adapted, forming farming associations that placed collective responsibility on finding potential solutions to climate disasters, such as planting new, drought-resistant species of rice, corn, and cassava (Diep, 2015). In fact, there have been four ways the consequences of climate change differ by gender:

• Farmers with small holdings in Africa will be among those most severely affected by global warming; and most of those farmers happen to be women: Women make up 45% to 80% of the food-producing workforce in developing countries

• Around the world, women and girls are the most likely to be responsible for gathering water and fuel for fires for their families. If climate change makes certain water and wood sources more unreliable, their duties will be greatly increased.

• Climate change is expected to make food shortages more severe and frequent, which will disproportionately be bad news for women and girls, because in times of shortage, their health is more likely to suffer than their male counterparts.

• Global warming is supposed to make disasters such as floods more severe and frequent, and some studies have pointed to the fact that natural disasters in countries where women don't have the same social and economic status as men, are more likely to die in the aftermath of calamities.

Not only will the implications of climate change likely make girls and women's roles exponentially more difficult, but it is also predicted that women will also bear the burden of trying to lead the adaptation efforts. For example, the 2017 Women's March demonstrated the importance of a wide variety of issues that affect women more than originally believed, while women took a stand against pay equality, immigration protection, and LGBT rights; while another, perhaps less focused issue, was the consequence of climate change upon the rights of women (Milne, 2005). Given the fact that the burdens of these rapidly occurring implications will be largely assumed by the feminine gender, climate change can also be considered in relation to the gender issues that will ultimately begin to manifest and become increasingly clear.

Even though climate change is an apprehension for all things living, there is reasonable claim that women are the majority of victims along with those in low-income communities/third world countries; especially in the developing countries, it is fact that basic survival strategies are primarily carried out by women (Nhamo, 2017). As evident in figure 1, women in China have to endure not only their own safety regarding air quality, but must also look after the children in their traditional roles. In addition, natural disasters instigated by climate change, both directly and indirectly, because industries dominated by women to falter (such as tourism and healthcare) causing 60% of overall jobs lost, to be jobs of women (Swai, Mbwambo, & Magayane, 2012). This being the case, women will have to shift their energies into both defensive and offensive positions to be able to counter these difficult and regressive trends. Figure 1 - Women, pollution, & China (Tugend, 2017)

It has been argued that women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as well as less likely to be educated as scientists or represented committees that make decisions about environmental sustainability (Tugend, 2017). To combat these circumstances, some have argued that women should attempt to seek higher degrees in the universities to ensure that the global women's perspective can be better represented as this drama continues to unfold; especially since the discrepancies can be hidden among many perspectives.