Just a few weeks now separate us from the UN COP27 Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, and preparations are in full swing.
It may have caught the attention of some when reviewing the names of the thematic days at the conference that there is one dedicated entirely to women. It is clear that the climate-change crisis is affecting everyone, but it is the world’s poorest and those in vulnerable situations, especially women and girls, who bear the brunt of the environmental, economic and social shocks.
But the same women and girls are also early adopters of new agricultural technologies, first responders when disaster strikes, and important decision-makers in the home about energy and waste. Therefore, climate action cannot be successful or sustainable if it does not include women.
According to reports, women and girls, especially those belonging to marginalised groups and the poor, are more affected by climate change than many groups of men due to reasons that include the way males and females are brought up in many societies.
This is mostly due to the customs of those societies, as most marginalised and poor societies are also often very conservative ones. For example, if a woman says that she would like to learn swimming skills that would help her in case of floods, this could be something that many groups in conservative societies do not accept. It is true that women (and men) in rural areas are particularly affected by climate change, but women are even more vulnerable.
Suppose, for example, that there is a climate-related disaster in an urban environment leading to malfunctions in the sewage network, the electricity network, water and the Internet. This will affect the health of women in particular, especially in periods such as the menstrual cycle. In disasters crime often increases, and migration also increases. The problems of girls are exacerbated by their having to leave school because of these issues.
According to UN estimates in 2018, 80 per cent of those displaced due to climate change were women. However, such consequences may also be a main driver behind women’s leadership role in climate action around the world.
In Côte d’Ivoire, for example, women make up 70 per cent of the agricultural sector, but they only own three per cent of the land they farm. Using traditional, labour-intensive methods, women have struggled to make a profit from producing shea butter, an industry for which the country is famous.
In Liberia, elderly and illiterate women, a particularly vulnerable group, are promoting solar energy as an alternative source to the more dangerous and expensive kerosene, reducing dependence on fossil fuels. Trained as solar engineers, women are helping their communities enjoy a better quality of life. People can move more freely as security improves at night, young children can study safely for longer hours in well-lit rooms, and livelihoods have expanded with newly skilled workers.
In rural Cambodia, women farmers are depending on biogas. In Egypt, some women suffering from climate change, especially those working in the field of agriculture, have also found new solutions
Fatima Al-Sayed, also called Um Mustafa, left her hometown of Fayoum and her job growing mangoes with her husband, daughter Mariam, and her son Mustafa to come to Cairo in 2019 with her family to work in building security. Her daughter Mariam worked for the women in the building to buy their needs and clean their homes.
Mustafa completed his education until he finished his high-school tourism exams and then worked in a restaurant. Mariam graduated from her education in the second year of middle school to help her mother clean the stairs of the building. The father worked as a Tok-Tok driver to meet the needs of his children.
The family left their hometown owing to the spread of a kind of mould on the mango crop in Fayoum that has spread due to climate change and temperatures that the fruit cannot thrive in. Their journey to Cairo was a form of climate migration, meaning people who leave their homes to migrate within the same country or outside the country’s borders due to climate change
CHANGING FAMILIES: Shawqi Nabil, an agricultural engineer, was doing well in the late 1990s and early 2000s in her work selling flowers and planting houses and balconies.
However, the work began to dry up as a result of climate change, causing Nabil to finish her higher studies and complete her Masters degree. She is now implementing a Green Nursery initiative to spread environmental awareness among children and teach them the principles of horticulture.
Even so, over the last 10 years, with climate change and temperature change, she has struggled to maintain the quality and quantity of her work. Customers have also become fewer because plants die more quickly due to the hotter climate.
The idea of linking climate change with biodiversity and the role of women in protecting it is part of what the ministry of the environment is doing today in Egypt’s nature reserves to teach women to produce products from natural resources, to become part of protecting nature, and to help reduce the effects of climate change, notably through crafts and eco-friendly projects.
The ministry is discussing initiatives that will be launched during the COP27 Conference, and women personalities who have contributed to the environment will be identified and selected as successful models.
Egypt’s Vision 2030 Strategy emphasises that disparities in the issue of climate change not only place women among the most affected groups, but also mean that women are an essential element and effective factor in achieving hoped-for changes in dealing with various aspects of climate change and have a role in achieving the development agenda.
They can help in the introduction of sustainable agriculture, especially in achieving agricultural productivity and flexibility and contributing to food security.
One example of a pioneering female environmental leader is Noha Samir Donia, dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies for Environmental Research at Ain Shams University in Cairo. Under her leadership, the Faculty was able to win first prize in the category of development projects for women in the National Initiative for Smart Green Projects organised by the ministry of planning and economic development under the patronage of the president of the Republic.
The Faculty won the prize for its Shams B Green project, which promotes solid waste recycling on the University campus. Its Green Transformation Unit is the first of its kind in the Egyptian universities, and under its patronage the project developed an integrated and sustainable programme that works in a systematic manner to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Egypt’s Vision 2030.
The waste management project on the campus is the first stage of the project, which will later be extended to other areas. Donia emphasised that in this project women had been the main pillar of the transition to green and sustainable production.
WOMEN PIONEERS: There is also a need for more women MPs working on the climate-change issue.
Nada Alfi Thabet, an MP, said that the issue of climate change had imposed itself on the whole world in recent years and that we have all seen its dangerous repercussions on various walks of life. The developed and developing countries alike have realised the seriousness of the issue and have moved to develop solutions to counter its effects.
Thabet said that facing up to the effects of climate change is a burden on everyone, and each of us has a role in it. However, women are among the most concerned parties, and they bear a great responsibility in limiting the effects of climate change.
She stressed that women are the first line of defence in combating the effects of climate change, as they are by nature always looking for solutions to similar problems, such as ways to access clean water, better education, and healthcare and ways to deal with and benefit from waste. They are interested in forming a suitable environment for the family, in addition to their role in creating broad community communication networks that support the national climate action agenda.
They have an ability to quickly disseminate ideas and raise awareness, as well as an innate willingness to confront and overcome problems.
Among such women’s initiatives, researcher Mai Aglan, director of programmes at the Egyptian Youth Council, has a unique and important experience to share in the shape of the Climate Partners Programme that aims to raise environmental awareness among Egyptian citizens.
Aglan helped to formulate the National Agenda for Climate Change from the recommendations of the representatives of the Egyptian parties who attended the Programme over the course of a year. She said that women have a crucial role to play in development and human rights since they are a major driver of development.
* The author is an environmental and climate change expert who works with local and international bodies and has represented Egypt at conferences on the environment and climate abroad.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 3 November, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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