Climate change is already happening.

Insecurity – The total number of weather-related disasters has quadrupled since the early 1980s, and conflict over depleting resources is on the rise, causing more deaths and injuries.

Hunger – Climate-induced crop failures have contributed to skyrocketing food prices. More than three-quarters of the 800 million people who suffer hunger depend on agriculture to provide an income and the food for their family.

Health – Changing climate has increased water stress causing diarrhoea and cholera, as well as the spread of malaria and dengue-carrying mosquitoes to new areas as temperatures rise.

Livelihoods – Drought, flooding, extinction of plant and animal species, coastal erosion, and erratic temperatures are all undermining poor people’s access to natural resources.

Climate change exacerbates gender inequalities. Women and men face different vulnerabilities, are impacted differently and have different capacities to adapt and change.

In climate-induced disasters, three to four women usually die for every man who dies, or 85% of deaths[i]:

• In many Asian and Latin American countries, skills such as swimming and tree climbing are taught mainly to boys, which enable them to survive floods.
• Dress codes can restrict women’s ability to move quickly.
• Behaviour restrictions can hinder women’s ability to leave their households without a male relative.
• Food is often distributed unequally within families, with biases against women and children, disadvantaging them from receiving adequate food relief.

Climate change increases women’s burden in rural households. When droughts, floods or unpredictable rainfall make food, fuel and water scarce, women are forced to search for wild foods in the forest, spend more time caring for malnourished children, or walk for several hours a day to collect water and fuel.

Food - Women lack the farming tools and technology needed to cope with changing weather patterns, despite the fact they are important producers of the world’s staple crops and produce up to 90 percent of the rural poor’s food intake.

Fuel and Water – Climate change obliges women to spend more time and labour collecting wood and clean water as they must travel farther to reach local sources. Women and girls already walk on average six kilometres daily, carrying up to 20 litres of water.

Health care – Women are the caregivers when family members suffer diseases brought on by the effects of climate change.

Climate change undermines women’s strategies for self-improvement. More time spent collecting food, fuel and water keeps women from opportunities for education and income generation that could result in long term improvements in their families’ future. Male migration to jobs causes a further burden on women’s responsibilities and chores.

Women typically do not own land, buildings or machinery, and do not have access to credit as a result. They can rarely raise the cash needed to invest in a new business. They have fewer assets than men to fall back on, and often less power to demand their rights to protection and assistance. 

Yet women are powerful agents of change. Despite being more vulnerable to climate change, women are effective at mobilizing their communities and knowledgeable about natural resource and agricultural management. Strategies for adapting to climate change must recognize women’s abilities and include them in the research, development and implementation stages. Their participation will contribute to changing gendered beliefs about women and build a more sustainable community.

Climate change will have a massive impact on development and women’s rights. Canadians must:

1. stop causing harm by massively reducing our greenhouse gas emissions
2. start helping poor communities adapt before it becomes too late

The hazards of climate change – floods, droughts, hurricanes, erratic rainfall and sea-level rise – have to be tackled at their source – by reducing our excessive greenhouse gas emissions.

Tackling climate change also requires building people’s resilience to climate impacts, because hazards will become more severe at least until 2030 due to the delayed effects of emissions already released. [ii]

Poor communities need substantial support to adapt successfully to climate change. Oxfam believes we should contribute to adaptation costs in accordance with our responsibility for emissions and our capacity to assist. Canada, along with the US, EU, Japan and Australia should provide 95% of the cost of adaptation in low-income countries, estimated at $50 billion per year – and far more if global emissions are not cut rapidly. [iii]

We can change our own behaviour.

We can push our governments at the municipal, provincial and federal level to enforce emissions reductions.

We can push the federal government to commit money to adaptation strategies that:

• include gender-sensitive interventions;
• are integrated into long term development  strategies at the national level;
• prioritize the most vulnerable group: ethnic minorities and indigenous communities, women, disabled people and children;
• build on local and indigenous knowledge;
• are funded in addition to the 0.7% of national income pledged to foreign aid.