BY SEMIRA BERHE
Climate change is presently widely recognized as a global phenomenon with wide impacts. These environmental changes are their own consequence; it reduce the life supporting capacity of planet earth, heat waves storms flooding land degradation prevent societies from attaining basic needs, creates food shortage , drought, migration and its own influence on health hazard such as malaria, infectious disease, economic losses and climate related disaster.
The other part of the climate change impact the food and nutrition security affect the food availability access diet quality, nutrition at household level impact on health and also it impacts the health sector such as malnutrition from drought induced water quality food security and it influence women’s health especially during pregnancy and breast feeding, infectious disease have more serious consequence on maternal fetal and health or maternal malnutrition.
Women’s are traditionally care takers of the community. They have essential role in management of natural resource in their living area. So they have traditional and contemporary knowledge of natural world around them. Managing, operating most of the households and agricultural activities are done by women.
Environment is widely defined to encompass our surroundings including nature, natural resource and the socio-economic and physical infrastructure created by human beings. Environment and women have strong connection with each other. As a result a woman in her day to day life carries almost the whole burdens of the society and the family.
The influence of climate change differ on women and men natural, physical, social and financial.
As the Women’s involvement and their contribution in the community and their connectivity to the nature sadly they are inactive and disengaged in the discussion and deliberations on the mitigation of this phenomenon. They are the first victims.
When the environment becomes unsustainable women’s lives are most affected and disrupted particularly in Africa. This is because women in Africa play a fundamental role in providing the basic necessities such as food and water. In Sub-Saharan Africa where elderly women are often traditional midwives, forests are the source of medicinal herbs for newborn babies and their mothers.
Women have poor access to training, extension service and technology necessary for effective adaptation to the impacts of climate change with cultural and institutional factors serving as blockade to adaptation.
Social norms and traditional gender roles, among other barriers, limit women from participating in this segment or other activities that enhance their knowledge scale , especially their care giving undermine women’s capacity to reallocate time to work on family spot (home) diversified crop or livestock production. Accessing and utilizing weather and climate information service leads to induces women’s capacity to respond and to cope with climate is the other shocks.
The Research recorded in 2012 by world bank stated that; rising temperature and changes in rainfall patterns may contribute to increase malaria transmission in Sub-Saharan African countries like Nigeria, DR Congo, Uganda, Mozambique, Angola, and Burkina Faso 85 percent global malaria burden are in 35 countries that compromise the regions west Africa, central Africa, east and south Africa malaria infectious during pregnancy resulted in 819 thousand children with low birth weight. Studies show that climate change induced economic crisis causes increase on labor demand for female heads. Consequently girls’ dropout from school to support their mothers.
The African union of head state adopted the protocol to the African charter in 2003 on humans and on the rights of women in Africa which makes the issue “women’s shall have the right to live in a healthy and sustainable environment” The AU also adopted in 2009 in Addis Ababa. The African union commission Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture on the African Women’s Decade 2010-2020 on the policy brief on African women and environment.
The policy describe the difficulties to the women’s and brief recommendation policy on African women and environment policies, plans, laws, capacity building and economic empowerment.
Gender has to be considerate in the sustainable and ecological sound development plan programs; that enables women to participate actively in decision making, planning and empowering women to make a decision on environmental issues and the laws should provide for women to access and own land. Women should be encouraged, supported and promoted to be more organized in their communities so that they would complement the activities of government.
Women need to be educated in natural resource and environmental management that enables them to control the interest of human health and natural resource sustainability. Health educators should develop and implement more programs on creating awareness to the women about the chemicals they use in their homes and cosmetics, and also the women have to develop knowledge about the danger of improper use of agro chemicals.
Economic empowerment of women is taken as the critical factor in the eradication of poverty. And providing labor saving and income generating devices for women, funding as credit and support services and providing financial and technical assistance to communities, to adapt to climate change build up their resilience are part of the plans picked by the AUC African women’s decade 2010-2020 policy brief on African women and environment.
The Ethiopian March 8/2023
