After a long trip, we have hit the ground running here in Bali. Today, we joined the thousands of representatives and observers from governments, international institutions, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to answer the question: what steps are we–as a global community–willing to take to address climate change?
Perhaps the real question is: who gets to decide? Whose vision will we be following? For women around the world, the answer so far has been cause for concern. Neither the Kyoto Protocol nor the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the two central documents in this debate, even mention gender or address the different ways men and women are impacted by climate change. This MADRE position paper explains some of these key issues, such as:
- How the vast majority of "natural disasters" strike in poor countries, while worldwide, women make up over 70% of people living in poverty.
- How droughts and floods, which are worsening with climate change, intensify women’s workload, as women are typically responsible for securing clean water for their families.
- How women's health and their status within households is particularly threatened by effects of climate change, such as food shortages, because of women's limited access to health services and their significant responsibility for agriculture.
The need for urgent action is great and widely recognized. The executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Yvo de Boer has said, "The science is clear. We now need a political answer." In the coming days, the hope is that governments will commit to launch negotiations for a long-term climate deal. The key question is whether countries, and especially the US, which is the world's biggest economy, will agree to mandatory limits on carbon emissions, a prospect the Bush Administration has consistently rejected.
Indonesian civil society organizations such as the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI) criticize most governments' narrow-sighted approach to climate change, which relies mainly on commercial fixes like carbon trading and ignores the inequitable burden of climate catastrophes in the global South.
The truth is that most of the discussions at the Bali International Conference Center, where governments are meeting, are focused on charts and graphs depicting temperature projections and global economic markets. But climate change is much more than a scientific or economic matter. The real face of climate change is a human face—a woman’s face—and the crisis needs to be addressed within a human rights framework. That’s the message that MADRE will be delivering in the coming days in Bali.
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