Climate change, women and a just future

Akgün Ilhan¹

Climate change is the biggest problem humanity has ever faced. A global social order that is destructive rather than creative is chiefly responsible for this. We need a change. This change is coming, it's on its way. The pioneers of this change are young women most severely affected by climate change. Young women, climate justice activists from all over the world, such as Greta Thunberg, Licypriya Kangujam, Vanessa Nakate, Howey Ou and Xiye Bastida, are calling out to the world: Our house is on fire! Climate justice right now!

How is the climate changing?

Our earth has warmed by 1 °C since the Industrial Revolution, because we have used fossil fuels in almost all human activities, from industrial production to transportation and heating. Greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, ozone, nitrous oxide etc.) emitted into our atmosphere as a result of the use of fossil fuels reduce the reflection of light energy and cause some of it to return to the earth instead of going back into space. This is where the 1 °C difference comes from. A warming of 1 °C may not be too much for a glass of water. However, this is a significant increase for our entire planet. As a matter of fact, global warming disrupts the earth with extreme climatic events (droughts, floods, heat waves, cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, storms, etc.). As a result of melting of the glaciers as well as thermal expansion in the sea the sea level is rising and we are already losing our limited lands. In other words, while the world population increases, our living resources are depleted and contaminated.

Even worse, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase in this way, the temperature of the earth will exceed the 1.5 °C limit between 2030 and 2052 as stated in the Special Report Global Warming of 1.5 °C prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the basis of more than six thousand scientific studies. Exceeding this limit could put an end to humankind. Limiting global warming to 1.5 ° C means reducing many of its negative effects on our planet. For this, it is necessary to reduce global emissions by 45 percent in 2030 compared to 2010 and reach net zero emissions in 2050. In other words, rapid and comprehensive transformations in agriculture, energy, industry and cities are essential. At least 80 percent of the coal reserves, 30 percent of the oil and half of the natural gas should be left in the soil.

Who is most affected by climate change?

Although climate change affects everyone and every living being in a negative way, some are more affected than others. Climate change means an increase in the already existing injustice. The biggest share of this injustice falls on women and girls. Because women are already suffering from injustice and inequality, they are exposed to the negative effects of climate change more severely than men. More women are displaced, forced to migrate and become impoverished due to extreme climate events such as floods and droughts. Climate refugee women expect tougher living conditions than men.

Women of the world struggling with poverty are at the bottom of the pyramid of social hierarchy due to restrictive factors such as deprivation of property rights, inability to benefit from education and health rights and lack of income. Therefore, women will become the group most affected group by the negative effects of climate change.

As stated in the World Food and Agriculture Organization's report entitled Women in Agriculture, published in 2011, women farmers who cannot access technology, have less produce and agricultural land. Therefore they have less income and will be more negatively affected by climate change than men. According to the report on Adaptation to Climate Change and Gender published by the German Development Institute (DIE, Bonn) in 2009, women produce 60 to 80 percent of food in developing countries, but they own only 10 percent of all agricultural land.

In sub-Saharan Africa, it is primarily the duty of girls to carry water from wells and fountains that are kilometers away from their homes. Access to clean water is a big issue in developing countries where there is no running water facilities. In Mauritania, Somalia, Tunisia and Yemen, the job of bringing home water can take more than an hour per day, according to data from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2016. According to a study covering 24 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, bringing water home is down to 3.36 million children and 13.54 million adult women. In Malawi, an African country, according to the United Nations, women carrying water to the house spend an average of 54 minutes on this job, while men only spend 6 minutes. In Guinea and the United Republic of Tanzania, women also lose their 20 minutes to water transport, twice as much as men.

Women and girls pay the price of thirst, hunger and poverty with lost time and missing opportunities. They spend a significant part of their lives on finding and transporting water, which deprives them of the most basic education rights. And, of course, uneducated girls lag behind boys in the struggle for survival and becoming independent individuals. What is more, during routine water transport trips that last for many hours these kids may be subjected to harassment and rape in unsafe environments.

Drought due to climate change also brings about food shortage. When food is scarce, in many poor countries less food is provided to girls than boys. As a result of malnutrition of girls, their immunity to various diseases decreases and their probability of getting sick increases. In addition, the fact that young women cannot access sufficient clean water, although they need more water for personal hygiene during their menstruation, brings along various diseases.

Due to the gender roles assigned to them, women often take up domestic work alone. Especially in disasters caused by extreme climate events, they have to give invisible labor without economic gain to take care of the sick and elderly family members. Oppressed by the burden of domestic care, women are deprived of earning money outside. This makes them vulnerable individuals with no economic security compared to men.

These problems are not only experienced in poor and developing countries. Poor women in developed countries are also more vulnerable to disasters than poor men. According to the studies conducted in the United States of America after hurricanes and typhoons, the time women spend on domestic work (child, patient, elderly care, etc.) that does not generate monetary income increases.

This situation limits women's economic gain. In such cases, violence against women also increases. When women work outside home, they earn less than men, even though they do the same job. If e.g. a man earns 1 dollar, a woman doing the same job gets -- on the average - 78 cents. When women of ethnic groups are considered in this comparison, it turns out that for every dollar of a man, black women doing the same job earn 64 cents and South American women only 56 cents.

Climate justice and gender equality

As can be seen, climate change makes an already unfair socio-economic social order even harsher for women. Fair sharing of the effects of climate change and fair solutions must be created. There has been a global struggle against this injustice for years. Important decisions were taken for gender and climate justice within the scope of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Crisis. In addition, the Green Climate Fund supports gender-responsive climate action programs and projects. And of course, under the leadership of women, an intensive struggle against the devastating effects of climate change, for climate justice and social injustice is being experienced on the local scale from the Narmada Movement in India to the resistance against hydroelectric power plants, HEPPs planned to be built in the Black Sea region in Turkey.

So what to do?

In Turkey, the 1.5 °C increase in temperature is already a reality. We live in one of the regions where global climate change is experienced most severely. We will continue to suffer floods and drought as the temperatures increases. There is no time to waste in developing and implementing climate-responsive energy, water, food and urbanization policies. To build a fairer world together and leave a clean planet to future generations, it is necessary to act now. It is necessary to put pressure on governments and local administrations so that they fulfill these duties properly.

You, the young women, above anyone else, will be the ones who trigger, maintain, advocate and control this social change. You will unite with other women in your family, school, work, neighbourhood and city and design the future together. Drop by drop, you will join each other, create waves, extinguish the fires of despair. By combining the strength of being both a woman and young, you will prove to everyone that there is no unstoppable disaster and no unrealizable dream.

Our house is on fire! Let us women realize climate justice, right now, before our house is reduced to a pile of ash!