Delegates kicking off COP31 in Turkey today heard this year’s El Niño could have a devastating affect on the lives of women in particular.
El Niño is a natural climate pattern, worsened by global warming, which disrupts rainfall. This means areas can experience abnormal drought or floods – impacting lives across the world.
As discussed in this morning’s COP31 panel ‘World Animal Protection: The super El Niño crisis’, this has a huge impact on agriculture – but particularly the people who keep it going.
Aouatif Zebiri, spokesperson for YOUNGO, said: “According to FAO, 44% of working youth earn their living from food and agriculture, while 395 million of rural young people live in areas where climate change is expected to reduce harvests.
“So we, as youth are not simply the future of food systems, we are already part of sustaining them. Yet, when climate shock affect every culture, the consequences go far far beyond food production.
“Water scarcity can increase the time women and girls spend collecting water – declining household incomes for example can compromise children’s nutrition, health and education – and limited access to water and sanitation can make it very hard for adolescent girls to manage their menstrual health safely and with dignity.”
She continued to say that these impacts reveal something very important – that frequently, in agriculture, social production is overlooked (particularly in climate funding, as later echoed by hair fellow speaker on the panel).
Farmers produce around one third of the world’s food but receive less than 1% in climate financing, despite their position as backbone of society – and often, their increased vulnerability to weather events (such as El Niño) due to geographics or other factors.
Fears have been raised that in these situations, women may be having to choose between household water and personal hygiene – worsened by their likely status as primary caregiver in the household. In Africa, 95% of unpaid care and domestic work is undertaken by women – where El Niño is creating severe multi-country drought in the South.
The panel called for more attention to issues such as these during climate financing, where governments should be looking into social production protection as a form of food security.
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