From blind to balanced : Nepal

                           

Current climate change policies are regressive in terms of gender inclusiveness and will perpetuate existing inequalities

           

Gender inclusive development has been a priority for Nepal since the 80s. This agenda has been part of democratic governance and sustainable development. In line with decentralisation policies, forestry and agriculture have been pioneer sectors in formulating gender-inclusive policies by provisioning 50 percent representation of women in grassroots organisations. Going beyond token ‘percentage representation,’ the community forestry programme, for instance, also requires women to hold leadership positions. Not only at the grassroots, gender inclusiveness is stressed even in higher government levels; the parliament had a 33 percent membership quota for women. This indicates that importance needs to be given to gender-balanced development at all levels. 

It should be noted here that these 50 percent reservation targets for women in grassroots organisations did not appear overnight but from more than 20 years of effort. Though the actual impacts of these policies have yet to fully materialise, the process of putting gender inclusive policies in place are commendable. However, this is not the case with recently formulated climate change policies. Despite earlier achievements, current climate change policies are regressive in terms of gender inclusiveness and will perpetuate existing gender inequalities.

Why have these climate change policies become regressive in relation to gender inclusion?  Is it because the gender issue is not an important issue in climate change? Certainly not. The fourth report of the Inter Government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outlines that the possible impacts of climate change are likely to increase the vulnerability of all people in general but women and the poor in particular. Although there is dearth of research and data on the gendered impacts of, and adaptation to, climate change, the projection of the impacts on gender are quite simple. It has been widely realised that women are disadvantaged due to their social, cultural and economic subordination. The possible negative impacts of climate change will first hit women and the effect on women from poor and marginalised groups will be particularly severe. Increased feminisation of agriculture due to the out-migration of men, coupled with the protracted political transition, has increased women’s hardship. In such a context, gender inclusive adaptation to climate change becomes even more necessary.  

The irony is that despite the projections of possible negative impacts on gender and the increasing appreciation of gender inclusiveness at the national and local levels, climate change policies continue to be gender blind. An analysis of five important national level climate change policies clearly reveals this. These key policies—all of which were released in 2010 and 2011—are the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) 2010, Strategic Programme for Climate Resilience (SPCR) 2010, Future Action for Climate Finance in Nepal 2011, Climate Change Policy 2011 and the National Framework on Local Adaptation Plan for Action (LAPA) 2011. In all these policies, the gender dimension has received little to no space. The word ‘women’ is mentioned only once in the ‘capacity building’ section of the National Climate Change Policy. A senior government official even told me, “In the current climate change policies, gender has only received a cosmetic touch for the purpose of securing funding.” One non-government official remarked, “There is no one to raise the issue of gender in national level climate change forums, forget about what needs to be raised.” Simply putting the word ‘gender’ in a policy is not sufficient. There needs to be a clear articulation of gender-based problems and solutions to climate change. If policies are gender blind, their implementation will make gender injustice even worse.

So how can we be progressive in formulating gender inclusive climate change policies? How can we institutionalise and build on existing achie-vements by embracing the emerging socio-economic situation and accounting for the changing demography due to men’s out-migration? First, there has to be a high-level policy mechanism to ensure that the current policy making processes and outcomes are built upon existing policy experiences. Amendments need to be made according to the changing context so that the roots of gender injustice are addressed. All climate change adaptation policies related to forest and agricultural biodiversity will need to ensure equal participation of women and men in all climate change adaptation governance mechanisms and that leadership positions are shared equally by both genders.

Second, climate change policies should build on and make use of gender progressive provisions of various sectoral development policies (community forestry, for example). New policies should add value to them by taking into account the changing socio-political context. For instance, Nepali agriculture is becoming increasingly feminised where women constitute a large section of the agricultural force. In such a situation, there are no alternatives other than to directly link policies to women’s need and capacity.

Third, thinking about adaptation and development on a wider social-ecological system will be key to addressing the impacts of climate change in the farming system where forest biodiversity and livestock rearing are the main elements. The current compartmentalisation of forest and agriculture in terms of jurisdiction and service delivery has weakened the social-ecological system. As a result, the forest and agriculture-based livelihood strategies of farmers are facing greater challenges. For example, due to the priority given to the growth of timber species while managing local forests, fodder supply has gone down, paralysing the livelihoods of poor farmers who depend heavily on livestock farming.  This shortage hits women harder as it is their traditional gender role to manage fodder. Facing these challenges is becoming a great burden for women who have to shoulder all the responsibilities related to the household, farm production and community in the absence of their fellow men. So, it is crucial that these gender issues are understood, and addressed in the climate policies. 

Bhattarai is a PhD candidate in gender and climate change studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia 

 

 

Source : ekantipur , 4th June 2013