BY DR SHARIFAH MUHAIRAH SHAHABUDIN
THE world is witnessing a climate emergency, disrupting all living beings on earth and its natural environment. The change in climate has seen devastating floods, extreme heat waves, strong storms, and severe droughts.
The rising sea levels are threatening to submerge coastal communities, while extreme heat becomes intolerable to the human body.
Between 2010 and 2020, 15 times more people died from floods, droughts, and storms in very vulnerable regions including parts of Africa, South Asia and Central, and South America, and others.
The impact of climate change is irreversible and the only way to move forward is to accelerate climate action to reduce its effect on the society and its ecosystem.
Threats of climate change have reached a dangerous level as the world experience food insecurity, safe water, health issues, and the loss of livelihoods. The intensity of the current climate is impacting agriculture productivity, production, and supply chain, threatening food security.
The threats are impacting men and women and their locality differently. Women, especially those from poor and marginalized communities, are disproportionately affected by climate change.
In Somalia, farmers had experienced four consecutive failed rainy seasons, a climatic event not seen in 40 years resulting in changes in crop patterns and production. Women are more likely than men to experience food insecurity because they have less access to land, education, information, decision-making, and financial resources.
According to United Nations (2022), moderate or severe food insecurity among adult women increased during the pandemic from 27.5 percent in 2019 to 31.9 percent in 2021, compared to men’s food insecurity increased from 25.7 to 27.6 percent.
Women in food-insecure households experience health issues such as anemia. In 2019, nearly one in three women (571 million) aged 15-49 were anemic.
Water stress has also worsened over the years, taking a toll on people’s health, and lives. Currently, there are more than 733 million people experiencing high and critical water stress because the demand for safe, and usable water surpasses the supply.
Collecting safe water is becoming a real challenge for women and girls as they often walk long distances to collect improved water. In India, a quarter of rural households have no water on-premises, and women and girls devote more than 50 minutes per day to collecting water. The time lost could have been used to perform productive activities.
The United Nations (2022) reported in many developing countries, girls take time off from school to do household chores and collect water. In rural Nepal, it was found that every hour increase in the time spent collecting water, decreases girls’ likelihood of completing primary school by about 17 percentage points.
There are serious health implications of inaccessible water because women require more water for hygiene and sanitation during menstruation, pregnancy, and postpartum recovery. For example, 44 million pregnant women experience an increase in water-born and sanitation-related diseases such as hookworm, which causes maternal anemia and pre-term births, and diarrhea.
Malaysia is no exception to the backlash of climate change. There have been increasing flood events over the years that have caused urban and rural communities’ severe loss of assets, and properties, endangering lives, and livelihoods. The December 2021 flood was one of the country’s worst in the past 50 years.
Women and children are the most affected during floods due to a lack of knowledge of warning systems, and preparedness for the evacuation process. Men have better access to information since they have better social networking and survival skills. The women in the household rely on the men to find the right information to get help and some are vulnerable because of pregnancy.
Even during the recovery period, emergency relief provisions did not have enough supply of personal hygiene and sanitation products.
Moving forward, there is a need to examine the impact of climate change through a gender lens. Gender responsiveness in climate change adaptation and mitigation is important due to the different roles, responsibilities, and decision-making power between men and women. It is imperative to recognise women’s participation and leadership roles and get them involved in the decision-making process.
The government and other relevant agencies need to provide adequate funds and provisions that recognise the specific needs of women. The steps that need to be taken to close the gap can be expedited if there is sex-disaggregated data to differentiate between the impact of climate change on men and women, locality, ethnicity, and age and to address these impacts in programme of action.
Note: The author is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Malaya. She is also a member of the Gender Budget Group, a voluntary group comprised of academicians and various NGO members.
