'Women should have more say in climate decisions'

Dr Sara Ahmed is a senior programme specialist on rural poverty and environment with International Development Research Centre (IDRC). She holds a Ph.D in environmental management and an M.Phil in international relations from Cambridge University. She has worked on IDRC-funded project with research partners in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, as part of a larger programme on decentralisation and gender rights in South Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Dr Sara Ahmed/ Photo Credit: Anna Nath/ OWSA

Her areas of interest include climate change, gender and water governance, participatory action and learning, conflicts, human rights and human security.

Here are the excerpts from the interview:

OneWorld South Asia: How do you view climate change from a women’s perspective?

Sara Ahmed: I see it more from a vulnerability perspective. It is important to ask which women or men are affected. I don’t see climate change as a women’s only question. It is an issue that intersects with gender relations, poverty and vulnerability.

When you start looking at the women who are getting affected by climate change the most, you find that it is usually poor female-headed households with a number of dependents, widows and women from lower caste/ class backgrounds. There are also a lot of gender inequalities in climate change negotiations. Therefore, I would try and look at the question of women from a larger gender perspective that includes institutional, social, political and economic aspects.

OWSA: Access to clean and safe water remains a major challenge in many developing countries. As climate change adds to the existing woes, what potential do you see in women’s management of water resources?

SA: In India, rural women are already involved in the management of water for domestic use through their participation in panchayats, pani samitis and other such local bodies and programmes around decentralisation and water governance.

However, recent research supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) on water sector reforms in Gujarat and Maharashtra, has shown that despite women’s presence in various committees, their active participation, visibility and articulation of voice remain very limited. Moreover, they are typically assigned only ‘womanly’ tasks and responsibilities like ensuring that the area around community water infrastructure is kept clean. In addition, they are often asked to collect water tariffs because it is assumed that they can easily talk to other women who in turn can influence their husbands to contribute.

But, women are not necessarily involved in decision-making processes, nor are they consulted on where to situate water infrastructure or about the appropriate water fee to be charged. It is therefore important that women be given a greater say in decision-making. If this has to happen, a lot will depend on the space created for women in government programmes as well as the gender awareness of facilitating organisations.

In terms of water for productive use, there is still a major gap in women’s participation in irrigation management. Since most rural poor women do not have land rights, nor are they recognised as ‘farmers’, their participation in water user associations is limited. However, there are a number of NGOs who are facilitating women’s participation as nominal members while working to gender sensitise irrigation bureaucracies. These issues will become critical given the growing impact of climate change on agriculture and food security.

OWSA: It has been observed that gender concerns have not been adequately addressed at the international negotiating tables. How can the issue be lobbied for?

SA: We all know that the UNFCCC document is extremely gender-blind. But since COP-7, a number of women’s networks have been advocating gender justice as a basis for recognising climate justice. At COP-13 (Bali, 2007) and then in Poznan, Poland last year, the Gender Climate Change network (Gender_CC) and the Global Gender Climate Alliance (GGCA), along with various other networks like the Gender and Water Alliance have been doing a lot of lobbying to ensure that there are gender-sensitive policy recommendations in the declarations and documents that are coming out towards a revised UNFCCC.

But I think networking, lobbying, building alliances between grassroots movements and other larger climate justice-related movements are one part of the whole debate.

The kinds of solutions that are being proposed are largely within a technical and market framework. I think we need to move beyond that. Women’s groups are saying that the principles of sustainable development and human rights must be taken into account by the UNFCCC.

Unfortunately, the debates around climate change tend to get restricted to seeking solutions only in terms of setting emissions targets, adopting CDMs or facilitating carbon trading. These are all market-based technical solutions.

Women’s groups are demanding that 10% of the global adaptation fund be allocated to projects that support greater participation of women at the grassroots level. They are also asking that technical solutions for mitigation and adaptation be gender-sensitive. The water, natural resource management and infrastructure sectors are currently rather male-dominated and we have to find ways to strengthen the participation of women in various decision-making processes.

OWSA: What are the different gender-sensitive criteria and indicators specifically related to India that must be incorporated into climate change policies and programmes?

SA: I think a lot of work needs to be done on identifying indicators – both qualitative and quantitative – in terms of vulnerability, gender equity, etc.

It is important to understand how women and men are differentially impacted by climate change and incorporate relevant criteria in our adaptation-mitigation policies and programmes.

OWSA: Anti-poverty network Wada Na Todo Abhiyan is organising a women’s tribunal on climate change in the Indian capital next month. How can such civil society initiatives effectively engage women from different social groups in priority setting and development of interventions most relevant to their situations?

SA: One of the things platforms like these can offer to poor women from different social groups is an opportunity to voice their concerns and priorities. We can only hope that those voices are heard by the people sitting in corridors of power, who make decisions regarding development policies.

The other function that these kinds of platforms perform is to provide an opportunity for women and men from different regions to learn from each other. But more importantly initiatives like these help in raising critical issues and concerns and in facilitating dialogue between communities of practice, scientists and policymakers.

With editorial inputs from Manasi Singh.