Pacific.Scoop
By Suzanne Hoeksema in New York

Women’s voices remain highly underrepresented in the climate change debate, say international civil society leaders attending events taking place around the United Nations Climate Summit this week.

The summit was attended by 146 national delegations, of which only seven were headed by women.

On the eve of the meet, the head of Oxfam in Britain, Barbara Stocking, noted that “once again, women find themselves left out of the negotiations on issues that affect them most”.

Oxfam is one of the main contributors of the “tck tck tck” campaign to “stop the clock on the climate change”.

Climate Week, September 20-26, was launched Sunday by a “human countdown” in New York’s Central Park. Over a thousand volunteers came together to call on world leaders attending Tuesday’s UN Climate Summit to take swift action to curb greenhouse gases.

The crowd of New Yorkers, dressed in green sweaters and blue ponchos, formed a human sculpture “the shape of the earth trapped inside of an hourglass with the earth dissolving like sand”.

Among the climate activists here are four women from the “frontlines of climate change”: Uganda, Cook Islands, Biloxi (Mississippi, US) and the Carteret Islands (Papua New Guinea), whose lives have been directly affected by flood, drought, hurricanes and rising sea levels.

So why do we need a focus on women in the climate change debate? And what can women’s organisations do for climate change mitigation?

Deeply affected
Stocking argued that women are most deeply affected by climate change.

“They are the ones responsible for the most basic needs: fetching the water, feeding the family and till the soil and clean the dirt. They work with water in a very direct way,” she said.

In a statement, Finnish President Tarja Halonen said that “climate change hits most seriously the poorest regions and the weakest groups of people. Since about 70 percent of the world’s poor are women, they will suffer most.”

Sharon Hanshaw, director of Coastal Women for Change in the city of Biloxi, Mississippi in the southern US and a mother of three daughters, added that “women have a different perspective on the future. They think of their children’s future, their children’s children’s future and the community’s survival.”

In a compelling story on the effects of globalisation and climate change on the lives on the Inuit people, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a Canadian Inuit herself and holding the international chair for the Inuit Circumpolar Council, connects climate change to human rights.

“We Inuit live do not only live on the ice and snow, but we are dependent on ice and snow for transportation and mobility and therefore safety and food security,” she explained.

“We can recall the hungry polar bear in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, but have we come to know the arctic wildlife better than its people?” she wondered.

The Inuit had to overcome many challenges in the past decades due to globalisation and forced assimilation by states. Displacement, abuse by authorities and widespread alcoholism have affected the “spirit of the Inuit”, says Watt-Cloutier.

Sustaining traditions
Despite these changes, the Inuit have held onto their traditions, culture, land and ice to sustain and support themselves, which provided a certain predictability.

“Not so today. Things are changing so quickly that the only thing that we are reaching for is to get us back on that solid ground – or should I say ice,” Watt-Cloutier noted.

Ice and snow form the foundation of Inuit children’s education. “The land teaches our children the character skills required to survive, such as patience, judgement, modesty, reflectivity and courage,” she said.

The same sense of urgency was brought to the audience by another community activist, Contance Okollet, from a village in northeast Uganda that has faced both unexpected droughts and destructive rains over the past three years.

Okollet was appalled by the increasing unpredictability of the weather.

In times of flood, such as in 2007, “We would suffer from cholera, malaria, diarrhoea and food insecurity.” Children were not able to get to school or did not feel well enough to attend, she said.

In times of drought, “We were hungry and dependent on aid, which is humiliating.” This was something the women of Osukura Subcounty had not experienced before, Okollet said.

She came all the way to New York to share her story and “make a big tick for Copenhagen”, Okollet said, referring to the major UN-sponsored climate conference taking place in the Danish city in December.

Rising waters
In Papua New Guinea, more specifically the Carteret Islands, that were once six and now seven since one island has broken into two smaller ones because of the rising waters, Ursula Rakova says she now paddles her canoe in what used to be her garden.

“But we do not want to be called refugees. We are a proud people,” Rakova says.

She formed a local NGO called Sailing the Waves on Our Own that has raised funds for relocation and the construction of new houses.

The government of Bougainville has not been of any help, nor have the visits by 17 international media groups to the islands the past three years, she complained.

Rakova said she is here to speak with her “three sisters with one voice to address our common fate”.

Linking gender to climate change is something relatively new, said Ulamila Kurai Wragg, a journalist from the Cook Islands.

Wragg emphasised the importance of women’s leadership in climate change adaption and mitigation because of their “long-term vision and deep involvement in civil society movements”.

Climate change once was just an environmental concern. Now, scientists, economists and diplomats all have a stake in climate change.

But the four climate “sisters” from all corners of the world showed that the debate still lacks a human face: the involvement of the people who are most affected by climate change themselves.

As one of the few female heads of state attending the summit, Halonen from Finland said that helping women to survive in their everyday lives promotes the overall goal of sustainable development.

“We need to ensure full and active participation of women in the making and in the implementation of the new deal,” she said.

Source: Inter Press Service – 6456 Pacific Media Watch
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