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ENVIRONMENT: Women Demand Voice in Climate Debate

Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 20 2007 (IPS) - Calls for increased participation of women in policy-making decisions are on the rise as world leaders prepare to attend an international meeting on climate change to be held at U.N. headquarters next week.

Most governments have largely failed to consider the gender aspects of climate change, women leaders representing numerous civil society groups told reporters at a news conference Thursday.

"This business as usual is not acceptable," said Rebecca Pearl of the Women&#39s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), "because women are suffering more than men in all the calamities."

In an attempt to influence the outcome of the meeting called by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Pearl&#39s group has organised a similar event, billed as "the first ever global gathering of high-level government, U.N. and civil society organisations" on the problem of climate change.

The roundtable talks scheduled for Friday are to be led by former Irish president Mary Robinson and ex-Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. Both are highly admired by the international community for their relentless efforts to advance the global agenda on human rights and the environment.

"The purpose of the roundtable is to ensure that the impacts of climate change on women and their roles in curbing it are reflected in the outcome of the secretary-general&#39s event," said June Zeitlin, executive director of WEDO, an international network of hundreds of women&#39s groups worldwide that works closely with the world body.

"It is part of our campaign to ensure that national and global response to climate change consider women&#39s perspectives and concerns," she added in a statement.

Numerous studies show that when natural disasters and weather changes take place, they affect men and women differently because, in most cases, their roles and responsibilities are based on inequalities.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which consists of more than 1,000 leading scientists, the impact of climate change "will fall disproportionately upon developing countries and the poor persons within all countries."

"But who are the poorest among those poor persons?" asked Ulla Strom, the Swedish envoy to the U.N., at the news conference. "The women."

It would be wrong to assume that women in poor countries are the only ones who are disproportionately affected by swift environmental changes, said Zeitlin.

"This is even true in industrialised countries," she added. "In the U.S., Hurricane Katrina entrenched poor African American women, already the most impoverished group in the nation, in deeper levels of poverty."

A study by researchers at the London School of Economics last year analysing disasters in 141 countries provided evidence that gender differences in deaths from natural disasters are directly linked to women&#39s economic and social rights. In other words, gender inequalities are magnified in disaster situations.

In Zeitlin&#39s view, poor women living in developing countries face even greater obstacles. And despite numerous international agreements calling for equal participation of women, they remain excluded from decision-making in many countries.

"The participation of women is almost absent," said the World Conservation Union&#39s Lorena Aguilar, who has published several books on gender and environment and public policy involving equality issues.

Citing a recent U.N. survey of environmental ministries, Pearl said that there are only four or five countries engaged in climate change activities that incorporate gender perspectives and concerns.

In December, the U.N. will hold a summit on climate change in Bali, Indonesia. According to U.N. officials, the reason the secretary-general has convened Monday&#39s summit is to build momentum for a successful outcome at Bali, with a more comprehensive agreement on deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions beyond the year 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol treaty expires.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) requires member countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels.

Last month, the U.N. held another international meeting on climate change in Vienna, which failed to produce any concrete agreement as many of the world&#39s most industrialised countries shied away from fixing strict guidelines for greenhouse gases cuts.

At the meeting, a draft text dropped a demand that developed nations should be "guided" by a need for deep cuts in greenhouse gases of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 in the long-term efforts to combat global warming.

Many developing countries, such as India and China, want industrial countries to use the stringent 25-40 percent range to guide future negotiations, leading to less dependence on fossil fuels, which are considered largely responsible for global warming.

Many environmental groups criticised the Vienna meeting for its failure to produce tangible results and called it a "disaster for humanity&#39s future".

For their part, women activists see the ongoing negotiations on climate change as more narrowly focused negotiations on emission reductions, rather than social concerns and community well-being.

"Ban Ki-moon should send a strong message that gender equality is to be integrated in Bali," representatives of WEDO, the Council of Women World Leaders and Heinricthe h Boll Foundation said in a joint declaration.

"Women&#39s knowledge and contribution has been critical to the survival of entire communities in disaster situation," they said, urging governments to implement all international agreements relating gender equality and climate change.