Climate justice has been the central focus of the civil society meetings at the Klimaforum this week in Copenhagen. Discussions in the halls and protests on the street have focused on the unfairness of greenhouse gas emissions that have been overwhelmingly generated in the countries of the North but whose impacts will be experienced most severely in the South.
That inequality plays out within countries too, as well as within households. In many cases, it will be women who face the harshest impacts of wild swings of droughts and flooding, ever shrinking growing seasons and competition for diminishing resources. At a session on women and climate change, Ekenma Julia from the University of Nigeria described studies in several local communities showing that women are already more aware of climate change than men. Some 61 percent were aware of recent climate change, compared to 34 percent of men. Those women tended to earn incomes selling poultry or vegetables or other jobs that were dependent on nature in some way. They were also more likely than men to already be doing what they could to cope with these changes, such as building rainwater catchment systems to confront increasing droughts. Nigerian women’s groups and their allies were demanding that rich countries drastically lower their emissions and that gender issues be mainstreamed into climate talks.
The World March of Women held a meeting to talk about how to refocus some of their work on the impacts of climate change and women's demands. Women from Brazil, the Philippines, Peru and the UK talked about how climate change is aggravating existing inequality. They are considering how to shift some of their campaign efforts to take this new challenge into account.
In some ways, climate change seems like a new lens to focus on existing problems of gender inequality, food security and livelihoods. The difference is that weather extremes and shifts in resources could mean that those problems become much worse. The tepid responses in the official negotiations aren’t nearly enough. We need more of the sense of urgency, righteous indignation and calls to action taking place in the Klimaforum.
