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Thursday, 25 March 2010

It is true that with the resources we now have, we could feed, clothe and educate every one of the nearly seven billion people living on this planet.  And it is patently obvious that we are not doing so, argues Winthrop Professor Carmen Lawrence in her International Women's Day 2010 address at The University of Western Australia.

As I was checking the UN site for the precise wording of this year's theme for International Women's Day (which it turns out is "Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all"), I was confronted by my own - much younger - face. It was a video clip which included an image me speaking, 15 years ago, at the UN Conference on the Status of Women in Beijing.

After the initial shock, I recalled the gathering with some pleasure; it seemed like a watershed and the good will was palpable, as was the determination to succeed in developing a practical plan which committed governments to specific actions rather than collating lofty aspirations which would never be realised in practice. The result of months - even years - of preparation and a week-long meeting, was a statement of agreed underlying principles and a public register of government commitments which became the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action to reduce inequality.

The declaration seems now, perhaps, unremarkable, but was, at the time, very hard fought. The forces of resistance (mainly conservative, clerical and male) were evident in every meeting where women's reproductive rights were discussed and some of the alliances on display were truly mind-blowing. In the end, there were unhappy compromises, as there always will be in large international gatherings, but we judged we could live with and build on the results.

Amongst other things the meeting reaffirmed the UN commitment to the " full implementation of the human rights" of women and girls "as an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of all human rights and fundamental freedoms"; and explicitly recognised "the right of all women to control all aspects of their health, in particular their own fertility" as basic to their empowerment. We also asserted optimistically that "peace is attainable and is inextricably linked with the advancement of women, who are a fundamental force for leadership, conflict resolution and the promotion of lasting peace at all levels".

While progress has been made on many of these fronts, it has to be acknowledged, that even with the more recent commitment to the Millennium Development Goals we are, as a planet, still a long way from realising these ambitions.

One of the key objectives we set in Beijing in 1995 was the eradication of poverty according to the principles of "sustained economic growth, social development, environmental protection and social justice" and the full and equal participation of women and men as agents and beneficiaries of "people-centred sustainable development".

Although we thought we understood the import of those words on "environmental protection" and "sustainable development", I don't think that many at that meeting truly understood just what challenges we would come to face in ensuing decades in reconciling the contradiction between " hanging on to a habitable planet and the expansionary demands of the global market. "[1]. I'll return to that problem later.

The planet remains divided into two distinct worlds - the so-called "first" world, characterised by wealth and even material excess for most of its citizens; and the majority "third" world, where people struggle in varying degrees of poverty, deprivation and violence.

Throughout the world, some women have fared well over the last few decades, following sustained campaigns to improve the status of women and with the expanded opportunities provided by growing economic prosperity. Others have fared less well.

There are significant numbers of women in Australia, too, whose circumstances have improved little and who, relatively speaking, have lost ground. Globally, a vast number of the world's women still live in poverty and are still treated as second class citizens. They lack resources and power. While we struggle with the diseases and discontents of affluence, many women around the world are still mired in severe poverty.

Recently revised calculations from the World Bank, using a new poverty line of $1.25 per day, indicate that 1.4 billion people live at or below this level, a number that is greater than previous estimates because their previous approach had "implicitly underestimated the cost of living in most developing countries." It is worth noting that these data do not take account of the recent global food crisis and the rising cost of energy.

While the proportion of people living at this poverty level has declined in developing countries over the past 20 years, progress has been very uneven. And, in case we become complacent, almost half the world - over three billion people - lives on less than $2.50 per day and at least 80 per cent lives on less than $10 a day. What is more, the proportion of people in sub-Saharan Africa living below the poverty lines appears to have increased in recent years.

Women account for a growing proportion of those people who are income poor, comprising the majority of the world's estimated 1.4 billion poor [2] and two-thirds of those who cannot read or write.

Women also make up the majority of the world's unemployed and underemployed, averaging 40 per cent less pay than men at the same jobs. Poverty still wears a female face. Yet women's unpaid labour, if expressed in monetary terms, is estimated to be worth at least 70 per cent more than the official global output (UNDP).

Poverty is not just about inadequate income, but also poor health and nutrition, limited education, and the lack of other elements of wellbeing, including leisure time. It is also predictive of a lack of power to influence economic and political decisions. Women in developing countries bear the brunt of this "capability-based" poverty: I'll spare you today the grim statistics on life expectancy, preventable deaths in pregnancy and childbirth; the lack of full reproductive freedom and sexual choice; the disproportionate experience of violence and sexual violence, especially during armed conflict and the large numbers of women who are refugees.

I have highlighted the global position of women, not to suggest that the push to continue to improve the status of women in Australia should be abandoned, but to remind us of the need to work in our own communities and with the global community to spread the nation's and the globe's wealth more equitably - while recognising that our planet's resources are not infinite.

In the face of a warming planet and the likely effects of climate change, there is an even greater imperative to take action, despite the setbacks in Copenhagen, because climate change unchecked will exacerbate many of these inequalities. A lot of the talk in the lead-up to Copenhagen focused on what countries should do to limit the greenhouse gas emissions and who should take responsibility for addressing current and future climate change.

Obviously, these are critical questions, but in devising solutions for mitigation and adaptation we also need to consider how climate change will affect people - especially the most vulnerable - and how individual behaviour can either assist or undermine the global efforts to address climate change.

With the exception of a few, most people now agree that climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing the human race, although they may not care about it as much as we might expect, given all the attention it has had. No one is immune from its effects (although the poor are likely to suffer most) and we have all contributed to its development (although the wealthy nations are largely responsible for the current state of affairs). The industrialised world has 20 per cent of the world's population, uses 80 per cent of the resources and produces more than 80 per cent of the planet's waste. By continuing to burn fossil fuels and clear forests, we are inevitably worsening the problem.  Recent figures show a fourfold increase in carbon emissions since 2000.

The poor, particularly in developing countries, will face the most damaging effects of a changing climate: they are more likely to live in flood prone areas and to depend on agriculture and fishing for a living, risking hunger and the loss of livelihood when droughts or severe weather events occur. Among the poor, as we know, women are especially at risk.

Climate change threatens to worsen poverty and burden marginalized groups with additional hardships. In Southeast Asia, for example, about 221 million people already live below the $2-a-day poverty line. Many live in coastal areas and in low-lying deltas. Such families are especially at risk because they have little or no access to health or other services which might provide some protection against the changing conditions which are likely to increase the rates of death and illness resulting from extreme heat and cold, infectious diseases and malnutrition.

As sea levels rise, low-lying, densely populated coastal areas and small island states are threatened. It is estimated that our nearest neighbour, Indonesia, for example, stands to lose as many as 2,000 small islands by 2030 as a result of rising seas.

Climate change will not only endanger lives and undermine livelihoods, but, without international action, it is also likely to widen the existing gaps between rich and poor, between women and men. Women-particularly those in poor countries-will be affected differently from men. They are among the most vulnerable to climate change, partly because in many countries they make up the greater part of the agricultural work force and also because they generally have fewer opportunities to earn an income.

Women manage households and care for family members, which often limits their mobility and increases their vulnerability to sudden weather-related natural disasters. Drought and uncertain rainfall mean women have to work harder to secure food, water and energy for their homes. Girls all too often are forced to drop out of school to help their mothers with these tasks. This cycle of deprivation, poverty and inequality inevitably further undermines the resilience needed to deal with climate change.

The UN has reported that deforestation and contamination of water supplies has already increased the time women spend looking for wood or safe, clean water and also increases their exposure to water-borne disease. One study [3]found that women in the state of Gujarat in India now spend four or five hours each day collecting fuel wood, whereas previously they would have done this only every four to five days. The UN also reports that global warming changes affecting weather patterns in the Horn of Africa have already caused crops to fail and people to go hungry.

We know that long-term damage resulting from extreme weather events can have devastating impacts, especially on poor and rural communities. Such communities are often the first exposed to such shocks and have very few resources to respond, as we saw recently in Haiti. Human capacity is stretched to the limit - and beyond. Evidence on the fallout from natural disasters indicates that women are more likely to lose their lives and otherwise fare worse than men in extreme events from heat waves to hurricanes and tsunamis.

And as a recent editorial in special edition of The Lancet [4]devoted to climate change concluded, "The damage done to the environment by modern society is perhaps one of the most inequitable health risks of our time," noting that the "loss of healthy life years as a result of global environmental change-including climate change-is predicted to be 500 times greater in poor African populations than in European populations."

We know that evidence shows that recent climate change is largely the result of human activity; but it is also true that this is a very complex story.

What we have to consider in devising solutions are the very things that many of us take for granted, indeed what defines us: what we consume, where we live; the types of energy we produce and use, the spread of our wealth, our patterns of settlement and the design of our homes, what we eat, and even the extent to which women and men enjoy equal rights and opportunities.

Our growing numbers-approaching seven billion - something that most policy makers and analysts do not want to talk about, make solving the problem even more complicated. As the growth of population, economies and consumption outpace the earth's capacity to adjust, climate change could become much more extreme-and conceivably catastrophic. I, for one, could not look forward, even if I were to live so long, to a planet of nine billion people consuming like we do.

If the world is to avoid dangerous climate change, developed countries must reduce their carbon footprints and resource use if there is to be any room left in the atmosphere - and on the planet - for poor countries to develop economically.

We must also recognise that, along with the growth in the carbon-intensity of human activity, the fact that there are so many more of us - from 300 million 1000 years ago to 6.8 billion today and growing - is also a contributing factor. In the long term we will have to make do using fewer resources, consume less fossil fuel per person and reduce our pollution, but we will also have to rein in the growth in population.

Women can and should play an important role on both fronts.  While it may be that "women live more sustainably than men", according to research into consumption patterns in both rich and poor countries by Sweden's Environment Advisory Council, much of this effect is probably due to their greater poverty. One of the challenges we face in simultaneously cutting CO2 emissions and reducing global poverty is that increased wealth increases CO2 emissions, unless we change our patterns of production and consumption. But slower population growth in both developed and developing countries may help reduce the magnitude of task of bringing global emissions into balance.

Improved access to sexual and reproductive health, including voluntary family planning, is essential for individual welfare but it also accelerates the stabilization of population. It is no accident that 37 of the 41 National Adaptation Programmes of Action that developing countries have submitted to the UN explicitly link climate change and population and identify rapid population growth as a problem that either exacerbates the effects of climate change or hinders the ability of countries to adapt to it.

Larger populations put pressure on supplies of freshwater supplies and accelerate the degradation of cropland, which may in turn exacerbate the impacts of climate change.  Improved family planning has in the past had significant impacts on slowing population growth, and slower population growth in some countries will buy- in some cases, has bought - time for them to prepare adaptation plans for the coming impacts of climate change.

Not least because they are generally more environmentally conscious - and optimistic - women's greater participation in addressing the climate issue is vital. Whether as scientists, community activists, or negotiators, women can improve the world's response to climate change, adding to the diversity of perspectives on how to address the challenge.

Certainly, if we fail to confront this problem seriously, it is women - particularly in poor nations - who will bear much of the brunt of climate change.


1 Soper, K (2008) Special report: Nothing to fear from curbing growth. New Scientist, 16 October, online edition.

2 Ibid

3 Buckingham-Hatfield, S. (2000) Gender and Environment , London : Routledge

4 Costello, A., Abbas, M., Allen, A., Ball, S., Bell, S., Bellamy, R., et al. (2009). Managing the health effects of climate change. Lancet, 373 , 1693-1733.

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