Women & Climate Change

Time for a Woman to Lead the UN

By Lyndal Rowlands
Judging by the latest polls it now seems more likely that the United States will have a female President in 2016, than the United Nations will have a female Secretary-General.

Water Security Critical for World Fastest-Growing Economy

By an IPS Correspondent
Lack of water management and limited access to data risk hindering Myanmar’s economic growth, making water security a top priority of the new government.

Justice for Berta Caceres Incomplete Without Land Rights: UN Rapporteur

By Lyndal Rowlands
The murder of Honduran Indigenous woman Berta Caceres is only too familiar to Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Farmers Can Weather Climate Change – With Financing

By Friday Phiri
Merian Kalala, a farmer in Solwezi, capital of the North-Western Province of Zambia, knows firsthand that climate change is posing massive problems for agricultural productivity.

Indian Women Worst Hit by Water Crisis

By Neeta Lal
A staggering 330 million Indians, making up a quarter of the country's population (or roughly the entire population of the United States), are currently reeling under the effects of a severe drought, resulting in an acute drinking water shortage and agricultural distress.

Women “Water Friends” Script a Success Story

By Stella Paul
Prema Bai, 58, bends her head and pushes hard her wheelchair on the village road. In the early afternoon, the village of Mamna appears almost deserted although it is home to 742 families and is located in Uttar Pradesh - India’s largest and most populated state. Thanks to a severe drought, every man and woman under 50 has fled Mamna in recent weeks, leaving behind the elderly and women with very young children. “They thought we were like cattle, a burden in this hard time because we only eat but yield no returns,” says Bai whose two sons and their wives also migrated to Agra -- a city 255 km away -- to work in a brick kiln.

The Empowerment of Women Will Be Central to Realising Sustainable Global Development

By Mary Robinson
“Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality” – the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day serves as a timely reminder that, despite incremental progress of recent years and the ambition of the new global development agenda, we must redouble efforts to achieve a world underpinned by gender equality. All women must be empowered to realise their full and equal rights. But what does it actually mean to step it up for gender equality?

Sargassum and Climate Change in the Caribbean

By Guillermo Fuentes
When the habitants of Puerto Morelos saw their white beaches turn brown, they felt they needed to take urgent action for their community. Given the limited effectiveness of the response, they organized themselves to clean public beaches, but the situation got worse.

Water and Sanitation: Bridging the Gender Gap on India’s Seas

By Malini Shankar
Jeeja Behera, 34, the wife of a fisherman in the village of Sannapatna in India’s cyclone prone Puri district, dreads the onset of the cyclone season between October and January every year due to the lack of water, sanitation and hygiene in cyclone shelters.

Peruvian Women Install Solar Panels and Light Up their Communities

By Pilar Celi
Five women from Candarave Province, located in Tacna (Peru), travelled to India to be trained and to learn how to install solar panels. The training has enabled 272 families to have electricity and improve their quality of life.

Women Leaders agree COP21 Must Have “Gender-Responsive” Deal.

By Stella Paul
53-year old Aleta Baun of Indonesia’s West Timor province is a proud climate warrior. From 1995 to 2005 she successfully led a citizens’ movement to shut down 4 large marble mining companies that polluted and damaged the ecosystem of a mountain her community considered sacred. After their closure in 2006, she became a conservationist and restored 15 hectares of degraded mountain land, reviving dozens of dried springs and resettling 6,000 people who were displaced by the mining.

Women Farmers Strive to Combat Climate Change in the Caribbean

By Desmond Brown
In the Caribbean, some women find themselves on the frontline with the battle to mitigate climate change. Meet Dr. Krystal Cox. She is one of three girls who all studied medicine and got medical degrees.

In Botswana: Leaving the Corporate Office to Work the Land – and Finding Opportunity

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
Beauty Manake moves around these days with a “million dollar” smile on her face. The 31-year old woman from Botswana now runs a thriving vegetable and livestock farm, as well as an agribusiness consultancy group.

“Paris Is Not the End of a Climate Change Process but a Beginning”

By Marianela Jarroud
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet says the climate summit in Paris “is not the end of a process but a beginning,” and that it will produce “an agreement that, although insufficient with respect to the original goal, shows that people believe it is better to move ahead than to stand still.”

Opinion: Women in the Face of Climate Change

By Renee Juliene Karunungan
After surviving the storm surge wreaked by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in November 2013, women in evacuation centres found themselves again fighting for survival … at times from rape. Many became victims of human trafficking while many more did anything they could to feed their families before themselves.

Latin American Scientists Call for More Human Climate Science

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
With the effects of global warming becoming more and more visible and the complicated socio-economic decisions indispensable to address this planetary crisis, science needs a new breed of experts: social scientists who specialise in climate change.

The U.N. at 70: Leading the Global Agenda on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality – Part Two

By Lakshmi Puri
The efforts of the United Nations and the global women’s movement to promote the women’s rights agenda and make it a top international priority saw its culmination in the creation of U.N. Women, by the General Assembly in 2010.

The U.N. at 70: Leading the Global Agenda on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality – Part One

By Lakshmi Puri
If there is any idea and cause for which the United Nations has been an indispensable engine of progress globally it is the cause of ending all forms of “discrimination and violence against women and girls, ensuring the realization of their equal rights and advancing their political, economic and social empowerment.

Women’s Groups Say Gender Equality is a Must for Sustainable Development

By Beatriz Ciordia
On the eve of negotiations on the political declaration for the United Nations Summit to adopt the Post-2015 Development Agenda, the Women’s Major Group (WMG) calls on governments to define a transformative agenda to ensure just, sustainable and rights-based development.

From Residents to Rangers: Local Communities Take Lead on Mangrove Conservation in Sri Lanka

By Amantha Perera
Weekends and public holidays are deadly for one of Sri Lanka’s most delicate ecosystems – that is when the island’s 8,815 hectares of mangroves come under threat.

Zimbabwean Women Weave Their Own Beautiful Future

By Busani Bafana
Seventy-seven-year-old Grace Ngwenya has an eye for detail. You will never catch her squinting as she effortlessly weaves ilala palm fronds into beautiful baskets.
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