December 2, 2022
Climate change has direct impacts on natural resources that are essential for daily life such as water, fishery resources, the availability of energy sources, and biodiversity. The scarcity or difficulty of accessing these resources can have serious implications from a gender and time use perspective.
Women, especially rural, indigenous and peasant women, are primarily responsible for feeding the family, as well as collecting basic resources for household subsistence such as water and firewood. These culturally assigned responsibilities correspond to the unpaid work carried out by girls and women, and the scarcity of these essential resources can increase the time that must be dedicated to it, resulting in the deepening of the structural knots of inequality.
Climate change is thus an additional burden and can push them into chronic poverty by directly and severely impacting access to livelihoods.
Added to the effects of climate change are the multifaceted effects of the pandemic, which deepened pre-existing gender inequalities, greatly impacting the autonomy of women in the region. In the international sphere, this has also meant a barrier in the implementation of effective climate action with a gender perspective, an issue that was discussed during the COP27 that took place this November. Through the review of the implementation of the Gender Action Plan, the Conference of the Parties urged the acceleration of efforts to advance in the implementation of the Lima Work Program, which seeks to generate a gender-sensitive climate policy.