Caroline Malema is an HIV-positive widow with six children living in Karonga, Malawi. Climate change -- along with the deforestation that helps to drive it – has brought floods that have destroyed all but one of her banana trees. Drought due to climate change is drying up the local lake, making fish less plentiful and driving up their price. She and her children have been reduced to eating mostly maize gruel -- not enough nutrition to keep her healthy or her children growing as they should.
Malema’s situation is like that of growing numbers of women in the developing world, where they make up the majority of small farmers. According to a recent UN Report, women will disproportionately bear the brunt of climate change, as gender, poverty and impacts on agriculture come together in deadly combination. More women will be driven into prostitution, unable to feed their families any other way. They will have to work longer and harder to find fuel and water for cooking. Girls will leave school earlier. And when climate change brings natural disasters, women will be more likely than men to die in them.
The issue is getting some play at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen. The international relief organization CARE is urging the delegates to take a gender-sensitive approach, prioritizing the world’s most vulnerable populations. CARE’s president, Dr. Helene Gayle, said, “Women shoulder the greatest burdens of climate change and are best positioned to help their families adapt.” She called for women to be involved in making decisions at all stages of adaptation, from the village level all the way up to global policy making.
But with ordinary citizens, youth, women and environmental organizations like Friends of the Earth International being barred from the talks (even when they have passes to the Bella Center), what's the chance that the (mostly) men leading the talks on behalf of the countries -- and corporations -- most responsible for climate change will hear that call?
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