Women have been identified as the greatest sufferers of the impacts of climate change and lack of access to water due to their different needs, gender discrimination and disparity, as well as the unequal relationship with water like their male counterparts.
In most homes, women are the primary users and managers of water for reproductive activities including cooking, cleaning, subsistence agriculture, health and sanitation, while men primarily use water resources for income-generating activities such as large-scale farming, agriculture or livestock.
But due to the impacts of climate change and lack of clean water, women have been impoverished as the poor women resort to rivers, lakes, leaking water from pipes and public boreholes to access water more often than men.
Also, the time women and girls spend on collecting water from these sundry sources often prevents them from gaining productive education and earning a formal wage, thereby entrenching them in poverty, just as women own less than 2 percent of land globally and their potential for decision-making over water resources remains low.
Executive Director of Child Health Organization (CHO), Vicky Urenna Onyekuru, made the assertions at a virtual training on Climate Change and Water organized by the Citizens Free Service Forum (CFSF) in collaboration with the Public Service International (PSI) for journalists and civil society groups on Tuesday, September 17, 2024.
Describing women and girls’ experience in sourcing for water as ‘feminization of poverty,’ she maintained that poverty and its feminization impact water use, adding that climate change negatively impacts availability of water through changes in temperature and precipitation.
During the Webinar moderated by Elvira Jordan of Environmental Defenders Network (EDEN), she said: “Increased temperature and low levels of precipitation have negative effects on water and decrease its availability. This is how climate change and gender inequality intersect with water availability.
“In doing so, climate adaptation efforts in the water sector will be better able to incorporate activities and goals that take gender issues into account and ensure activities do not affect inequalities.”
She urged policy makers and governments of African countries to integrate gender perspectives into mitigation and adaptation initiatives, insisting that investing in women as part of the climate change response leads to environmental gains and greater returns across the SDGs and broader development objectives.
“Decision makers and development partners at all levels need to accommodate women in the planning, financing and implementation of climate responses, including adaptation and mitigation, food security and agriculture, health, water and sanitation, forestry, disaster risk reduction, energy and technologies and infrastructure,” she stated.
She also advocated that such policies should ensure that adaptive actions build up the asset base of women, plan mitigation initiatives that promote poverty reduction and the empowerment of women and integrate principles of gender equality and women empowerment into financing for climate change.
Also in her presentation on Climate Change and the Water Sector, Executive Director, Tubali Development Initiative (TDI), Hauwa Mustafa, argued that nothing has drastically departed from the initial understanding that Climate Change, which is largely induced by the fossil fuel industry and human activities, has become a global existential threat that requires collective global action.
She maintained that the solution to the climate crisis lies with mankind, adding that it is a development issue, whose solution should address poverty, inequality and environmental distress.
“It is important for the Global South and especially Africans to understand that climate change denial is not based on any scientific theory, but more on the need to deny responsibility and continue to make profits a priority over people, especially by the Global North.
“We also need to understand how these processes are shaped by a system that sustains the business of fossil fuel at the expense of a dying planet. What this means is that we need to understand the political economy and social culture of climate change as well as look behind the figures, the stories and events,” she said.
Insisting that the extent to which climate change impacts on the water availability and use makes it an existential threat, she pointed out that when climate change worsens either through increased precipitation or excessive heat, surface water increases or dries up accordingly.
“Excess rainwater could therefore damage farmlands and property when its amount is beyond what the normal surface level can accommodate. We see how excess rainfall either damages crops or early seizure of rainfall leads to low harvest yield yearly. It happens to onion farmers in Sokoto, Zamfara and Kano states.
“Other consequences of climate change on water beyond drought and overflow is the acidification and salinization of water sources through carbon dioxide absorption and it leads to the killings and low nutritional values of sea and fresh water food, while scarcity of water and the overflow of rivers and dams can lead to contamination and pollution of surface and underground water sources,” she stated.
Citing a UNICEF report, she explained that cholera, diarrhea and poor sanitation cause over 70,000 deaths of children under five annually, while 73 percent of related diseases in Nigeria are caused by poor access to adequate, clean water, sanitation and hygiene.
Mustafa added: “While 60 million Nigerians lack access to basic drinking water, 80 million people have no access to quality sanitation facilities. Increasing scarcity of quality and sufficient water for agriculture use will impact on food security and food sufficiency in addition to disease infection, land conflicts and criminality.
“The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that water related disasters have dominated the list of disasters over the past 50 years and account for 70 percent of all deaths related to natural disaster as well as economic loses and damages.”
Maintaining that floods and overflows do not happen without sufficient warnings, she stressed that beyond reporting the incidents, Nigerians and the government will need to analyze the political economy of administrative negligence and the distribution of palliatives.
She, therefore, recommended the building and management of dams, irrigation sites, sanitation systems and early warning technology particularly for agriculture, water management, as well as the formulation of inclusive and locally adaptive policies.
“Since climate change affects the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe and the weather we experience, we need policies on water, sanitation and hygiene in public spaces for women and girls and infrastructure development framework.
“Reporting climate change must necessarily address the fundamental right to live a decent life, which means that the most essential resource that guarantees life must be protected, managed and sustained in such ways that are available and accessible in quality and adequacy at no cost.
“The life that water gives is being destroyed by human activity through climate change and as such, the media owes the world a responsibility for critical analysis, education and advocacy towards saving mother earth.
“We need to join global partnership and solidarity towards a system change capable of saving our planet because there will be no jobs including journalism on a dead planet,” she concluded.
Other presentations include Organizing and Collaboration to Address Climate Change and Water Challenges by the General Secretary, Federation of Informal Workers Organization, Comrade Gbenga Akomolafe and Role of the Media in Reporting Gaps in Climate Change and Water Sector by Comrade Michael Oche.
They stressed the need for robust mobilization and collaboration on climate change and water issues and the need for journalists to report stories that not only inspire action, but also bring about positive change, with figures, data, statistics and graphics that succinctly portray incidents of climate change and water crisis in the society.
