Climate Change: Limiting Choices for Women
in Semi-Arid Regions
A Bundelkhand Perspective

 

Gender Inequality in the Context of Climate Change

The socio-economic status and gender inequalities of different regions have a crucial impact on regional climate risks and vulnerabilities. Climate change limits the choices of the human population and does not only affect the agriculture sector, but also damages energy, food security, human health and infrastructure and may even widen economic disparity throughout the world.

Intensive research on the effect of climate changes on women have established the fact that women in severe climatic conditions are the worst affected - being the marginalised strata of the society - without much livelihoods options. Climate change thus adversely affects the existing pattern of vulnerabilities.

Rural women in the developing countries form a major labour force in the agricultural sector. They are the primary producers of food. The agriculture sector is badly inflicted with extreme weather situations, like severe draught and uncertain rainfall. The unpredictable climatic conditions result in the impoverishment of the labour class, especially women, who play a major role in supporting households and communities.

Almost 70% of the world’s poor are women who are also the most exposed to climate change vulnerabilities due to their gender-specific roles and responsibilities. Their problems are further compounded by lack of education and information and limited mobility. Since it is the women who use and manage natural resources differently from men and the degradation of natural resources affects them differently, women’s disadvantages may increase with the change in or loss of natural resources associated with climate change.

Bundelkhand: A Region Facing Severe Water Crisis

Bundelkhand is situated in Central India, comprising six districts of Madhya Pradesh (Datia, Tikamgarh, Panna, Damaoh, Chhatarpur and Sagar) and seven districts of Uttar Pradesh (Jhansi, Jalaun, Hamirpur, Lalitpur, Banda, Chitrakut and Mahoba). This region has been ravaged by severe draught for past many years, leading to mass migration, starvation deaths, suicides and even mortgaging of women (EPW, 2010). Historically, Bundelkhand was known to have a drought in 16 years in the 18th and the 19th centuries. This has increased three times from 1968 to 1992. The situation is further aggravated with the past four years that have been witnessing continuous drought.

The prevailing drought conditions have destroyed the entire economy of the region, resulting in massive migration to the cities. The primary economic activity of the Bundelkhand region is agriculture and continuous failure of rainfall has meant that the agricultural land can neither provide work for landless labourers, nor can it provide food.

Mapping the Gender Impact of Climate Change in Bundelkhand

The women population in Bundelkhand and other semi-arid regions of India are primarily engaged in agriculture. However, intermittent draughts have dried up the water sources, forcing the rural women and young girls to walk ever longer distances for water.

In Bundelkhand, women have fewer economic resources, social benefits and political powers that further restrict their capacity to respond in situations of environmental risk. Other aggravating factors are the scant dissemination of emergency information among women and the fact that many women and girls can neither read nor write, a situation that is worse in monolingual indigenous populations. The inequalities among both the genders are deepened by the impacts of climate change and limiting the adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Women, Health and Climate Change

Bundelkhand is also inflicted by a high rate of child mortality, extreme climatic conditions being one of the reasons. Going by the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the nutritional status of children in Bundelkhand is very poor and 57% of all children less than four years of age are under weight and under nourished. Water-borne diseases and other illnesses caused by poor sanitation such as diarrhea and respiratory infections are the main causes of mortality in young children.

Very few facilities are available to the population and health care is virtually non-existent. Water-related illnesses such as chronic diarrhea and malaria are particularly prevalent and affect a large percentage of the population. Infant and maternal mortality is high and the use of family planning measures is yet to be widely adopted in remote areas.

Gender discrimination in the allocation of resources, including those relating to nutrition and medicines, further puts girls at greater risk than boys. Women and girls also face barriers to accessing healthcare services due to a lack of economic assets to pay for healthcare, as well as cultural restrictions on their mobility, which may prohibit them from travelling to seek healthcare. In the Bundelkhand region, the ratio to the population and number of Primary Health Centres is very low. The aged are at the highest risk from climate change-related health impacts like heat stress and malnutrition. Elderly women are likely to be particularly vulnerable, especially in Bundelkhand.

Women, Agriculture and Climate Change

Although rural women and men play complementary roles in guaranteeing food security, women tend to play a greater role in natural resource management and ensuring nutrition. In Bundelkhand, women often grow, process and manage natural resources and are responsible for raising small livestock, managing vegetable gardens and collecting fuel and water. Women provide a higher percentage of labour in agriculture and are responsible for food production. Men, in contrast, are generally responsible for cash cropping and larger livestock. Women’s involvement in an agricultural capacity is most common in regions likely to be most adversely affected by the impacts of climate change, particularly in semi-arid regions of India. In these contexts, responsibility for adaptation is likely to fall on their shoulders – including finding alternative ways to feed their family.

Women, Water and Climate Change

As is the case in many other regions of developing countries, women in Bundelkhand also assume the primary responsibility for collecting water for drinking, cooking, washing, hygiene and raising small livestock, while men use water for irrigation or livestock farming.

Climate change may also lead to increasing frequency and intensity of floods and deteriorating water quality. This is likely to have a particularly harsh effect on women and girls because of their distinct roles in relation to water use and their specific vulnerabilities in drought-affected regions.

According to the Samra Committee Report, 70% of tanks and ponds have dried up during the period 2003-08 due to the prevailing drought conditions. This has caused severe drinking water shortage in the region, forcing the women to walk miles in search of drinking water. Young girls are forced to skip schools to look for water (WEDO 2003).

According to Sharda Devi, President, Samagra Jal Vikash Samiti of Pipra Village, women are the water providers for their families in Bundelkhand. Water crisis has always affected the women first because of their well-defined gender roles.

Gendered Impacts of Climate Change on Wage Labour

Women’s access to economic resources in terms of income and property ownership – including land – is unequal, particularly in developing countries. A gender gap in earnings persists across almost all employment categories, including informal wage employment and self-employment (International Labour Organisation 2007). Women comprise a majority of those working in the informal employment sector, which is often the worst hit by climate change, for example, agriculture. It is increasing the already unequal access to resources and diminishing their capabilities to cope with unexpected events/disasters or adapt to change.

In the Bundelkhand region, the involvement of women in work that has a non-economic return is very high. If we look at the agricultural workforce, women constitute a majority of agricultural labour in the field. However, their decision in adopting climate-friendly technologies is limited. In livestock and fodder management, women spend more time than their male counterparts. In Bundelkhand, availability of fodder is decreasing, adding to the crisis in livestock management. Women are thus forced to walk even longer distances to collect fodder for their cattle.

Adaptation Measures, a Gender Perspective

It is important that the community adapts to the climate change or else survival becomes increasingly difficult. At the household level, the ability to adapt to changes in the climate depends on control over land, money, credit and tools; low dependency ratios; good health and personal mobility; household entitlements and food security; secure housing in safe locations and freedom from violence.

As such, women are often less able to adapt to climate change than men, since they represent the majority of low-income earners. In Bundelkhand, the women generally have less education than the men and are thus less likely to be reached by extension agents and they are often denied the rights to property and land, which makes it difficult for them to access credit and agricultural extension services. Bundelkhand is primarily an agro-based community where men are the decision makers in technology adoption and seed types. As a result, new agricultural technologies – including the replacement of plant types and animal breeds with new varieties intended for higher drought or heat tolerance – are rarely available to women farmers.

Adaptation Strategies

Despite their limited capacity to getting used to the existing and predicted impacts of climate change, many women are now adapting to the changing climate and are clear about their needs and priorities. A recent participatory research project by ActionAid and Institute of Development Studies clearly shows that women in rural communities in the Ganges basin in India, Bangladesh and Nepal are adapting their practices to secure their livelihoods, in the face of erratic climate changes. The women who took part in the research described various adaptation strategies, like changing cultivation to flood- and drought-resistant crops, or to crops that can be harvested before the flood season, or varieties of rice that will grow high enough to remain above the water when the floods come (ibid).

Climate Change Adaptation Needs and Priorities for Women in Bundelkhand regions

Women from Bundelkhand need information on low energy consuming measures, or even climate friendly technologies, drought-resistant crop varieties and agricultural practices. They basically need skills and knowledge training to learn about the proper use of manure, pesticides and irrigation. The priority will be to:

• Better access to climate change information and related knowledge and skills
• Alternate livelihood options:
¨ Through knowledge and resources for crop diversification and adaptive agricultural practices
¨ Through access to irrigation
¨ Through locally available training

Gender-sensitive priorities and processes need to be mainstreamed at all levels of negotiations and decision-making around climate change mitigation and adaptation. It is of utmost importance for all the governments to ensure that gender concerns are reflected in policies and related programming under the climate change arena.

Among development and environmental NGOs and organisations, there is a need to develop a common understanding on the linkages between climate change and gender, using the language that climate change specialists and policy makers can understand.
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Nibedita Phukan
nphukan@devalt.org

References
Study on Bundelkhand by Dr Yogesh Kumar and Rakesh Nath Tiwari (Supported by Planning Commission) 2001
Drought by Design: The Man-made Calamity in Bundelkhand, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XLV No 5, January 30,2010
http://nraa.gov.in/Drought%20 Mitigation%20Strategy%20for%20 Bundelkhand.pdf
Resource Guide on Gender and Climate Change, UNDP, 2009



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