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Bali summit: Are women our best hope for fighting climate change?
an article by Eve Andrews, Grist (abridged by permission)

[Global Greengrants, the International Network of Women’s Funds, and the Greengrants Alliance of Funds hosted a Summit on Women & Climate, August 3-7, 2014, in Bali, Indonesia, to bring together women’s and environmental rights leaders from around the world. Eve Andrews interviewed some of the participants.]


For her efforts to block a hydroelectric plant on a river sacred to her community, Bertha Cáceres has been relentlessly persecuted and threatened by the Honduran government. Photo by Eve Andrews

click on photo to enlarge

“For indigenous women, the relationship with the environment is very important – it has such a high impact on [their] lives,” says Mariana Lopez, program coordinator for the International Indigenous Women’s Forum. “They have a very close relationship with the cycles of nature. But with climate change altering those patterns — well, when nature is unpredictable, it’s very disruptive to their lives” . . . .

Ursula Rakova, executive director of Tulele Peisa, . . . is in the process of relocating her entire community from the Papua New Guinean island of Tulun to the nearby island of Bougainville. Why would someone go to all that trouble? Because Tulun is slowly disappearing into the sea. . . .

Rakova, like many other of the summit delegates, occupies an important role. As a woman in her community, she is primarily responsible for every aspect of food provision: farming, fishing, foraging, preparation. Because Tulun has been slowly eaten away by an invading ocean, the arable land is gone; the soil has been soaked in salt water. Nothing will grow except rice, which is not part of the traditional diet. The traditional staple of taro has died off from Tulun completely.

“Women are now being forced to do more physical work because they’ve got to find food,” she tells me. “And when they find the little food that they can, they give it to their children. They go without food almost every day. It is the women on the island who are suffering more of the impact [of climate change] than anyone else.”

Nearly 40 years ago, the Tulun community noticed that the ocean began to eat away at the shores of the island.

“We knew that something was happening to the island,” she says. “Although we did not really understand the science of climate change, we could see before our eyes that the islands were getting smaller, and the storms were more frequent, the king tides were frequent” . . .

Bertha Cáceres is the general coordinator of COPINH, an organization that has been fighting for control of indigenous lands for the Lenca people of Honduras for more than 20 years. . .

When I asked Bertha Cáceres how she considers the role that women — particularly indigenous women — will play in fighting climate change, this was her response:

“We have to change the system, not the climate, right? I think that we, as women, are in a very important moment right now, politically and historically speaking. Now is the era of women.”

[Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for this article.]

DISCUSSION

Question(s) related to this article:


Do women have a special role to play in sustainable development?,

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Latest reader comment:

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Bali summit: Are women our best hope for fighting climate change?
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This report was posted on August 20, 2014.