Women & Climate Change

PODCAST: Coffee growers feel climate change

Women coffee growers speak to Martha Nyambura about the impact of climate change on their production.

Bangladesh Demands Climate Justice

Mosammet Monwara walks more than three km every alternate day to fetch water for her family of five in a heavy earthen pitcher.

Water stands in the roads of Bwaise after a light morning rainfall. The urban slum

UGANDA: Single Mothers Left Behind in Flooded Swampland

Life in Bwaise – a slum on the outskirts of the capital of Uganda – has never been easy. But increasingly erratic rains over the last three years have brought constant floods to the former swampland. Residents who can afford to are moving out, leaving the poorest – often single mothers and grandmothers – behind.

Campesinas and organisers at the Rural Women Against Climate Change Public Hearing.  Credit: Mariela Jara /IPS

CLIMATE CHANGE-PERU: Rural Women Share Their Trials and Wisdom

"This year the freeze killed my crops, our small livestock died, and now I can't even sleep because I'm worried sick thinking about how to put food on my family's table, since I'm a widow," said Rosaura Huatay, an indigenous farmer in Peru's northern Andes highlands.

Beatriz Vásquez speaks out about the impact of the construction of a dam in the state of Veracruz.  Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Mexican Women Demand Climate Justice

After two weeks without water, the taps finally started running again in the home of Araceli Salazar and her neighbours in the poor, crowded neighbourhood of Iztapalapa on the east side of the Mexican capital.

Gender must be on COP17 agenda: SADC

The head of SADCs gender unit, Magdeline Mathiba-Madibela, says climate change affects women in Southern Africa and their plight must be discussed at COP 17 in Durban later this month. Zukiswa Zimela interviews Mathiba-Madibela in Gaborone and asked her what is needed to protect women against climate change.

Arzu Begum testifies at the climate hearings for women in the deltaic village of Char Nongolia.  Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

CLIMATE CHANGE: Bangladeshi Women on the Brink

Char Nongolia village is a basket case when it comes to climate change impacts such as increasing salinity, frequent cyclones, tidal surges, erratic rainfall and extended droughts.

Women in Nepal

ENVIRONMENT: Nepali Women Live With Climate Terror

Suntali Shrestha wrings her hands in tension and despair as she recounts how she has been spending sleepless nights fearing that the flood alarm in her village would go off while she slept and she would be submerged.

Zambian farmers blame climate change for drought

Zambian farmers say a lack of rain is putting a strain on their crops and they are starting to point their fingers at climate change. Brian Moonga reports from Lusaka.

Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the UNCCD, at Changwon. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Q&A: ‘Soil is Key to Global Warming, Food Security’

Luc Gnacadja, in his second three-year term as executive secretary, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), is widely seen as delivering on his commitment to manage the world's drylands.

Mercy Hlordz (l), Akos Matsiador (centre) and Mary Azametsi (r) are all victims of climate change.  Credit: Jamila Akweley Okertchiri/IPS

GHANA: The Woes of Women Amid Climate Change

As streams dry out, groundwater levels dwindle, and forests and other vegetation yield to droughts or sever storms, women who live their lives in the rural areas of Ghana have to spend more time and energy finding water and food for their families.

Credit- Manipadma Jena:IPS

SOUTH KOREA: Drylands Meet Deserts Gender

Delegates to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification’s (UNCCD) meeting underway in this South Korean city are convinced that women, though affected most by desertification, hold the key to addressing hunger through land regeneration.

A provincial official (speaking) and the members of the Tribunal at the opening of the Hearing.  Credit: Marcela Valente /IPS

Women in Rural Argentina Speak Out on Climate Change

Rural and indigenous women in northern Argentina, hit hard by the expanding agricultural frontier, deforestation and the spraying of toxic pesticides, spoke out about their problems and set forth proposals for discussion at the next global summit on climate change.

Forest Biodiversity_credit- Public Domain

MEXICO: Women Left Out of U.N. Forest Plan

Despite the growing participation of women in forestry projects in Mexico, the national strategy for the United Nations-led REDD+ forest plan in this country lacks a gender focus.

Marina Rosales proudly shows off her organic guavas.  Credit: Edgardo Ayala /IPS

Salvadoran Campesinas Go Organic

The guavas grown by Mariana Rosales are big and bright green, and the best thing about them, she says proudly, is that she does not spend a single cent on fertilisers to produce them – something extremely rare in a country like El Salvador.

Councilwomen of Ancash are joining forces against climate change.  Credit: Courtesy of the Mountain Institute

PERU: Councilwomen Fight Climate Change in Land of Melting Glaciers

Some symbolic acts are powerful reflections of a broader struggle. In March some 300 women planted trees in the Santa River basin in northwest Peru to demonstrate their determination to preserve the environment and help adapt to climate change.

Lavender cultivation offers a viable alternative to Kashmiri farmers facing crop losses from climate change.  Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

INDIA: Facing Climate Change With Flower Power

Gazalla Amin’s office on the outskirts of this city, capital of Jammu & Kashmir state, is redolent with the fragrance of lavender wafting up from heaps of the dried flowers in a corner bowl.

Nobel Laureate Professor Wangari Maathai with then U.S. senator Barack Obama in Nairobi, Kenya in 2006. Credit: Frederick Onyango/creative commons

OP-ED: Wangari Maathai: A ‘Mighty Woman’ Who Spoke Truth to Power

Last night, Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, died. Most people think of Ms. Maathai as an environmentalist, planting trees. In reality, her environmental activism was part of a holistic approach to empowering women, advocating for democracy, and protecting the earth.

A vegetable vendor in Bangalore using a solar lamp to light her stall. Credit: SELCO/IPS

INDIA: ‘Women Make Good Business Sense’

Harish Hande believes that involving women in design, manufacture and sales pays dividends in any business, but especially in those making products that women ultimately use.

Chandrakumari Paneru, (fifth from right), at the Bhorle Community Seed Bank. Credit: Sudeshna Sarkar/IPS

CLIMATE CHANGE: Nepali Women Sow a Secure Future

Learning a lesson from crop failures attributed to climate change, Nepal’s women farmers are discarding imported hybrid seeds and husbanding hardier local varieties in cooperative seed banks.

An excited Rosemere Souto unpacks her brand-new industrial sewing machine.  Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet /IPS

CLIMATE CHANGE: Brazilian Women Rise Above the Waters

Almost a year and a half after floods wreaked havoc in a large part of the state of Rio de Janeiro, a group of women are struggling to rebuild their lives. They lost everything except their will to pick themselves up again and make the best of the aid they receive, to become self-sufficient again.

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