Loren seeks greater women's role in climate change,
disaster risk reduction efforts

Women are powerful agents of change in the overall climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts.

Senator Loren Legarda raised this point yesterday as she batted for the recognition of the women's active role in the climate change and disaster risk reduction efforts as envisioned by the Center for Asia-Pacific Women in Politics (CAPWIP).

"At the close of this Congress, we will call on the women of the world to engage with governments and communities to realize mitigation, adaptation and disaster risk programs that are truly attuned to their needs on the ground," Legarda said during her welcome remarks at the start of the three-day Third Global Congress of Women in Politics and Governance: Gender and Climate Change at the Dusit Hotel.

Legarda noted that women leaders from across the globe have realized that several milestone moments in global efforts to arrest climate change have not been gender-responsive, or gender-sensitive.

"It is time to redress the subordinate position of women in all spheres of their lives. This Congress will hopefully lead the way and set the guideposts as we push for gender responsive and gender sensitive responses to climate change problems as rightly pointed out by the CAPWIP," Legarda said.

Legarda herself has been one of the most active women in the Philippines , especially in creating awareness among people the value of tree planting as is her flagship campaign in the Luntiang Pilipinas - a nationwide tree-planting movement - which she created ten years ago as part of her advocacy to address the threat posed by climate change.

Women, she said, have always bore the brunt of shocks and trends of climate and environment change in the face of continued poverty, all because of the way people position women in society.

"In times of disaster and economic stress, women are the primary caregivers. They also carry out much of the household workload after a disaster, she said.

All these realities should lead to a single resolve: the efforts to combat climate change and mitigate the risks and challenges it poses to communities should be gender sensitive and gender responsive, Legarda explained

Education and information are vital part of the effort to make women truly active in mitigation, she said. Programs should explore how they might contribute to enable women and men's autonomous adaptation efforts, since we recognize that people adapt to climate change on their own, she added.

"We should then lift the social, cultural and institutional barriers that constrain women from effectively adapting to climate change effects in order to seek welfare and well-being for themselves and their families," she pointed out.

"We will call on the parliaments and congresses across the globe to craft gender responsive development policy agendas and reforms that address climate change risks, people's adaptation and programs for mitigation," she said.

Legarda cited some of movements wherein women play important roles, or some accidents where women were also at the receiving end.

In the Micronesia , women farmers have developed their own useful knowledge of the islands' hydrology, enabling them to find water and dig out water wells during droughts.

Kenya's Greenbelt Movement, relying on cadres of women engaged in massive reforestation, hopes to capture 350,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, check soil erosion and revive lost ravaged watershed areas, she said. Women have distinct nutritional needs that make coping with natural disasters tougher and harsher.

Even disaster rescue efforts discriminate against women. Women made up 90 per cent of the 140,000 people who died in a 1991 hurricane in Bangladesh while African-American women made up the majority of those killed and injured by Hurricane Katrina. In the 2006 tsunami that killed scores in Indonesia and Sri Lanka , male survivors outnumbered the female survivors 3 to 1 or 4 to 1.

Legarda cited good thing that happened in Honduras , which saved hundreds of thousands of lives because of its warning systems and hazard management overseen by women after leading a prompt but orderly evacuation of the communities hard hit by Hurricane Mitch in 2004.

Legarda said that a dramatic shift in the degree and scope of women's involvement in climate change and disaster risk reduction effort to materialize after this landmark effort of the CAPWIP.

CAPWIP is in partnership with the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU), the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).