5 ways climate change threatens women and girls

Story by: Viatori Photography by: PNUD Somalia Translated by: Carlos Duarte mar 5, Oct 2021

Story by: PNUD Somalia

The climate emergency is not in progress, it is already here. While all of humanity can suffer the effects of global warming and climate change, marginalized groups such as women and girls are vulnerable to particular adversities*.

In a year of a global avalanche of catastrophic heat waves, wildfires, floods and droughts, the latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released last week, sets off an alarm that is impossible to ignore: we are running out of time to keep the global average temperature rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The report, which has 234 authors from 66 countries, who cite 14,000 references, heralds more frequent and serious extreme weather events whose origin is related to human behavior.

No one escapes the harrowing and distressing consequences of climate change. According to the United Nations Population Fund, the number of people who will need humanitarian assistance will double by 2030 as a result. (According to the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Coordination, some 235 million people are in need of such help this year.)

It is not a competition over who suffers the most when nature responds violently to abuses perpetrated by humanity, but vulnerable and marginalized groups, such as women, who make up the majority of the world’s poor and whose livelihoods they depend on. To a large extent, natural resources, among other risk factors, are exposed to particular calamities.

According to the United Nations Development Program, women, girls and boys are 14 times more likely than men to die in a climate disaster.

Here are 5 more ways climate change affects women and girls.

Screenshot of a video of the World Food Program. Hundreds of thousands of women of reproductive age are prevented from accessing family planning due to droughts, floods and other climatic extremes that also threaten access to food and livelihoods.

1. More gender violence.

Women and girls, who have primary responsibility for collecting water and wood for fuel, have to walk further in search of scarce resources. When populations are displaced due to climate change (think of the droughts in Somalia and Angola), women and girls face an increased risk of gender-based violence in refugee camps or internally displaced persons. Women make up 80% of the people displaced by climate change. Once again, looking for resources to manage their homes, they walk through unknown territories, which increases their vulnerability.

The Population Fund found that sex trafficking spiked after cyclones and typhoons hit the Asia-Pacific region, and intimate partner violence increased during drought in East Africa, tropical storms in Latin America, and other weather events. similar extremes in the Arab States region.

Similarly, according to a blog post by the United Nations Development Program, rates of domestic violence, sexual abuse and female genital mutilation rose during long periods of drought in Uganda. Violence against women increased in Pakistan after the floods and in Bangladesh after the cyclones. Developed countries are not immune.

2. Increase in child marriage

Climate extremes destroy livelihoods and exacerbate poverty. This can incentivize families to marry off their young daughters so that there is one less mouth to feed, in exchange for a bride price, or because they believe they are enhancing a daughter’s future opportunities. Whatever the motivation, in countries affected by climatic disasters such as Malawi, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Mozambique, among others, there have been increases in early marriage rates.

3. Increase in neonatal mortality

Research indicates that “an increase of 1 degree Celsius during the week before delivery is associated with a 6% increase in risk during the warm season (May-September), which translates into approximately four additional stillbirths for every 10,000 births ”. Further investigation is warranted, but evidence points to a connection between extreme heat and negative results related to childbirth.

4. Worsening of other threats to maternal and child health

As an example, vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever have been linked to miscarriages, premature births, and anemia. Rising temperatures are prolonging the seasons of activity for mosquitoes, which spread these diseases, and humid environments encourage their reproduction. Climate change can also increase the spread of vector-borne diseases, such as the Zika virus, which in pregnant women can cause serious birth defects such as microcephaly (reduced head due to a brain abnormality).

UNFPA Kenya. Las investigaciones indican que “un aumento de 1 grado Celsius durante la semana anterior al parto se asocia con un aumento del del 6 % en el riesgo durante la estación cálida (mayo-septiembre), lo que se traduce en aproximadamente cuatro mortinatos adicionales por cada 10.000 nacimientos.

5. Disruption of sexual and reproductive health

As the COVID-19 pandemic has clearly demonstrated, emergencies divert healthcare resources toward fighting the most recent threat and away from services that are deemed less essential. Emergencies due to climate change will become more frequent, meaning that sexual and reproductive health and rights services could be among the first to be reduced.

However, even if sexual and reproductive health and rights services are maintained, displaced women and girls often lose access to them, which can lead to unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. They can lose access in other ways as well, such as when Cyclone Idai hit Malawi in 2019.

“Many parts of the Mangochi district were submerged under water,” said Treazer Masauli, Senior Assistant Health Surveillance at the Mangochi district hospital. “We had to use a helicopter to reach areas that were not accessible by road to provide sexual and reproductive health services, such as condoms, as a method of family planning and for the prevention of HIV and STIs, as well as education among HIV-related peers and services”.

More than 20,000 women of reproductive age in Mozambique were at risk of an unplanned pregnancy when they lost access to contraception in the wake of Cyclone Eloise in January. Similarly, after Hurricanes Eta and Iota struck Honduras in 2020, an estimated 180,000 women of reproductive age were prevented from accessing family planning.

Crop failure due to climate change can also affect sexual and reproductive health. One study found that after shocks such as lack of food, Tanzanian women working in agriculture switched to transactional sex to survive, leading to higher rates of HIV infection.

The world must recognize that sexual and reproductive health and rights are a climate issue, and that women must be part of climate policy-making. When women are involved in that task, the planet improves due to lower carbon footprints and larger areas of protected land. And when the planet improves, we are all better, says the Population Fund.

*This article was originally on the United Nations Population Fund website and has been minimally edited for publication in UN News.

Published by UNews

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