Corona Blog – Day 26: 19.04.2020

Day 26 19-04-2020

“Cleaner air, more vibrant wildlife, quieter surroundings… Isn’t this time such a breath of relief for mother nature?”, I wondered out loud. “Mother nature??”, exclaimed an annoyed and ever-vigilant-feminist Aparna, “Why not the environment? The earth? Or maybe just… nature?”

My first reaction to this inquisition was to brush it off as an overreaction. Nature could just as easily be any other family member. I like the environment; I am not sexist!

But I was completely missing the point. As our conversation progressed, it became apparent that there exists a deep connection between gender and nature, and hence gender and climate change.

Before getting to that, a little overview: who is most responsible for climate change and who is most affected by it? Are all of us on planet earth affected by it in the same way regardless of region, generation, age, economic and social classes or gender?

In a BBC article published last month titled “Climate change: The rich are to blame, international study finds”, a large study by the University of Leeds shows the contribution towards climate change to be heavily skewed towards the wealthiest. The wealthiest tenth of people consume 20 times more energy and 187 times more fuel than the poorest tenth.

While cities like Guangzhou, China; New York, US; and Seoul, South Korea top the list of largest carbon footprints, places that are most vulnerable to climate change include Lagos, Nigeria; Manila, Philippines; and Yemen. Going through the full list, it is evident that developing countries are much more in danger of suffering effects and disasters related to climate change.

What does this mean to women living in these regions?

Aparna Gopan (2016 kanthari), founder of Elefant in the Room, has this to say,

“Social construction of gender roles put women in the developing world more at risk from the effects of global warming. Those born into poor families face double the discrimination. Climate change effects are responsible for increasing the intersectional factors of gender and wealth inequality.”

The huge spike in domestic abuse that is being seen right now in the Covid-19 crisis is the norm when it comes to most disasters, although the scenario would be different.

Shelter camps set up to handle displacement of people due to disasters always witness heightened sexual and physical violence towards women. The lack of condom availability contributes to transmission of HIV and other STDs.

Women are often not taught survival skills such as swimming or tree climbing, as patriarchal societies see these activities as masculine and hence restrict them to just men.

Globally an estimated 60-80% of the workload in farming is done by women, yet they own less than 10% of the land. As crops are affected by climate change, this inequality is in danger of increasing even more.

Acute water shortages will force women, who traditionally gather water and firewood, to travel farther and farther to do so, which will deprive them of the time and energy to allocate to education, training or other empowering activities.

To seek a light at the end of the tunnel for such a problem, all one has to do is look at examples of women turning this patriarchal franchise around. The Niger Delta, rich with oil, is one of the most exploited and at one time the most polluted regions in all of Africa. Fed up with the ecological destruction, Nigerian women led a movement which forced courts to put an end to gas flaring, a practice that is responsible for release massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere and for ill-health to those living around a flared oil rig. In Bangladesh, a nation particularly sensitive to climate change, cyclones and the resulting flooding periodically results in high unemployment rates for men. The women find themselves in a trying situation, having to look after kids and the elderly with limited resources while often having to field mental and physical abuse from the men in the family. Tired of this cycle, these women adopted a strategy of storing and keeping reserves of food, fuel, fodder and medicine and also teaching their children to swim.

This is not to create controversy, but merely an observation: women around the world are showing better adapting strategies to crises like the ones above than men. Which just goes on to show that, if we are to have a fighting chance in our survival against climate change, we certainly can’t do it through action committees full of men.

Aparna Gopan’s “Elefant in the Room” is a provocative movement which runs theme-based campaigns around uncomfortable conversations, which people squirm away from. They attempt to provoke conversations around issues where silence is forced through theme-based campaigns. They choose “elefants” around subjects’ people generally squirm away from in disgust or contempt.

On any given day Aparna could be holding an “event” in conservative communities in India, Kenya or Sri Lanka, dropping jaws and boiling heads. Themes often revolve around gender, gender-based violence, sexuality, sex education, menstruation, environment etc.

As part of Month of Digital Climate Action spearheaded by Bring Back Green and Fridays for Future, Cochin, Aparna is doing a live classes online and posting videos on topics such as Ecofeminism, Ending unsustainable menstruation, the eco-gender gap, and climate breakdown and gender rights.

To see more of Elefant in the Room and Aparna follow these links:

Website: http://www.elefantintheroom.org/
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/aparna-gopan-a3a839140/
Month of Digital Climate Action: http://youtu.be/hMCHcTw7Zdg
Aparna’s TEDx Talk on “Necessity for Sex Education”: http://youtu.be/CeW9PE2VzgE