1. Gender Differentiated Health Impacts of
Environmental and Climate Change in Nepal
International Conference on Climate Change Innovation
and Resilience for Sustainable Livelihood, 12-14 January
2015, Kathmandu, Nepal
Mandira Lamichhane Dhimal,
PhD Student, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Email: ldmandira@gmail.com
3. Introduction
• Nepal is one of the most vulnerable mountainous
country to climate change
• Most vulnerable sectors identified in Nepal’s National
Adaptation Programme of Action to climate change
(NAPA) 2010 include agriculture, forestry, water and
energy, public health, urbanization and
infrastructure, climate induce disaster and gender
as cross-cutting issue (MoE 2010)
4. Rationale of Study
• The impacts of climate change will not be
homogeneously distributed across the
geographical regions and socio-economics groups
since the poorest countries and communities will
be more vulnerable (IPCC, 2007)
• Recent debates have also emerged indicating that
climate change is not gender neutral
(Dankelman, 2010, Denton, 2004)
5. Rationale of Study
• Environmental and climate change impacts on
human health are different for men and women
because of their different social roles and
responsibilities, multiple forms of discrimination by
laws, social institutions, religions, and attitudes
6. Study Area
• Nepal is not only rich in geo-physical and
biological diversity but also in socio-cultural,
ethnic and linguistic diversity despite its small
territory of only 147,181 square kilometer
• According to the latest censes 2011, Nepal has a
total population of 26.49 million with 125 ethnic
groups and 123 language spoken as mother
tongue.
7. Socio-economic status
• Socio-economic status of Nepalese women is
lower than that of their male counterpart and
status of Nepalese women is observable in
different sphere of the society
(CBS 2012)
8. Status of Nepalese women
• Women constitute more than half of the total
population in Nepal, only 20 % of the
households have the ownership of their land and
house registered in the name of a female
member of the household
• Female headed households in the country is
only 26% and the literacy rate of the female
population only 57% compared to 75% in
males (CBS 2012)
9. • Study type: This is a review paper
• Search data base: Articles Published
inPubMed Central and Google Scholar
• Research reports available in electronic
version were also reviewed.
10. Result
• A growing number of climate change studies
and adaptation projects in Nepal, only few
have examined the gender and cultural
dynamic of the adaptation process
• Women are responsible for collecting
firewood and fetching water in rural areas, the
shortage of those resources induce by
environmental and climate change increase
work load on their shoulders including health
impacts
11. Gender, Food and Health
• Gender issues play an important role in food security in
Nepal
• For example, intra-household inequality in food
distribution was found in Hindu communities of
lowland Nepal (Sudo et al., 2006)
12. Gender, Food and Health
• The larger consumption of marketed luxury foods by
men outside their house is a significant factor for
gender inequality in nutrient intakes in the lowlands of
Nepal (Sudo et al., 2009)
• Maternal and child malnutrition may be further
aggravated by environmental and climate change as
erratic rainfall reduces food production.
13. Gender, Disaster and Health
• Women are more victims in disasters
• For example, during the severe 1993 flood in Sarlahi
district, the flood related mortality was higher for girls
(13.1 per 1000) compared to boys (9.4 per 1000), and
for women (6.1 per 1000) compared to men (4.1 per
1000)(Pradhan et al., 2007)
• This example suggests that, whenever climate change
manifests itself in weather extremes and disasters in
the lives of women and men, the impact will be higher
on females compared to males.
14. Gender, Environmental
Degradation and Health
• Environmental degradation induces temporary or
permanent migration, the outcome of which depends
on the degree of vulnerability.
• In Nepal, as more men migrate from mountainous and
rural areas to newly developed cities in search of
employment, more women are becoming the heads of
households with an increasing workload on their
shoulders (UNFPA, 2009).
15. Gender, Environmental
Degradation and Health
• It can be predicted that environmental and
climate change impacts induce more out-
migration of males, exerting workload and
health risks to the women left behind in rural
Nepal.
16. Gender, Water resources and
Health
• Depletion of water resources causes serious problems
to women particularly in sanitation, health and safety.
• For example, men often consider water shortages for
irrigation as a serious problem while women consider
household water access for drinking, cooking food and
sanitation as a serious problem (ICIMOD, 2009).
• For women, girls and children, water shortage means
health issues and acute labour burdens because they
are primarily responsible for collecting and carrying
water from long distances on difficult mountain terrain.
17. Conclusion
• Although the differential effects of climate change on
public health according to gender are increasingly
recognized as being a consequence of socially constructed
roles and responsibilities and adaptation capacities, the
gender aspect is still an under-represented or non-existing
variable in research and policy documents in the field of
climate change and public health in Nepal.
• In this context, research must integrate a gender
perspective to have a better understanding of the
multidimensional impacts of climate change in Nepal.
18. Acknowledgements
• Prof. Dr. Birgit Blättel-Mink, Goethe University
• PD. Dr. Diana Hummel, ISOE/Goethe University
• Dr. Ulrich Kuch, Goethe University
• Meghnath Dhimal, NHRC/ Goethe University
• Internation Promotion College (IPC), Goethe University
• German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
• Conference Organizing Committee
