Climate change: “The guardians of the seeds”

Women are more affected by climate change than men. At the same time, they can give important impulses in the fight against global warming. Equality therefore definitely plays a role in the international debate.

Fantou Jeng comes from Gambia, a coastal country in West Africa. Storms and floods have increased sharply there in recent years. The consequences hit women and girls especially: “Girls have been forced to have children’s weddings because the farmers are impoverished because of the consequences of climate change. Children, especially girls, were no longer allowed to go to school because their parents were afraid that they would perish in the floods. “

“The guardians of the seeds”

In many countries women are responsible for feeding the family. A spokeswoman for the Ecuadorian indigenous peoples says: “We call ourselves the guardians of the seeds. And therefore also the guardians of future generations, their nutrition and their health.”

They take care of the sowing and harvest, fetch the water and cook. They therefore suffer more from climate change. But not only that. Nancy Pelosi, the spokeswoman for the US House of Representatives, quotes recent studies: “80 percent of the people who have to leave their homes due to the consequences of climate change are women,” she says.

Only a third of the delegates are women

The fact that women are particularly affected should actually also be made clear in international negotiations and treaties. Since 2015, in the Paris Agreement on climate protection, there has been an obligation to take this into account. But only 40 percent of the national climate protection plans deal at least marginally with special gender issues. Only a third of the delegates at the climate conferences are women.

The lack of participation by women is a general problem and leads to poorer solutions, says Sven Harmeling from the aid organization CARE. That is why the helpers on site speak specifically to women’s groups: “It becomes clear again and again that completely different things come out and much more clearly what is actually needed. To store water, whether there are measures in the field of agriculture, whether perhaps Schools and buildings must also be built to be safer against storms. “

Reliable borrowers

And Sylvia Holten from the children’s aid organization Worldvision also relies heavily on women when it comes to small loans: “In the area of ​​microfinance, over 90 percent of our work is done with women, because it turned out that we can rely on the loans to be repaid.” She names reliability, accuracy and cooperation as strong arguments for women-oriented projects.

Action plans alone do not bring justice, say many in Glasgow. This would also have to be implemented in the almost 200 countries. In any case, the American Nancy Pelosi speaks from the hearts of women at the climate conference when she says: “If women can do it, the world can do it.”