Women are disproportionately affected by climate change due to their social and economic roles. They represent the majority of the world's poor and depend more on threatened natural resources. However, women have historically developed adaptation strategies and possess valuable knowledge about water and resource management, food preservation, and withstanding disasters. The document provides examples of women adapting to climate impacts through practices like switching crops, finding alternative incomes, and collectively organizing. It argues that empowering women with access to resources, education, and participation in decision making can help communities better cope with climate change.

1. Women’s Adaptation to
Climate change: give
examples form different
regions of the developing
world.
Name of presenters:
1-NadaAli
2-Mahasin Ishag
3-Hajer Hamid
4-Arafa Khalil

2. Introduction:
Climate change is one of the greatest global
challenges of the twenty-first century. Its
impacts vary among regions, generations, age,
classes, income groups, and gender. Based on the
findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), it is evident that people
who are already most vulnerable and
marginalized will also experience the greatest
impacts. The poor, primarily in developing
countries, are expected to be disproportionately
affected and consequently in the greatest need
of adaptation strategies in the face of climate
variability and change.

3.  Women are increasingly being seen as more vulnerable than men to the impacts of
climate change, mainly because they represent the majority of the world's poor
and are proportionally more dependent on threatened natural resources.
Worldwide, women have less access than men to resources such as land, credit,
agricultural inputs, decision-making structures, technology, training and extension
services that would enhance their capacity to adapt to climate change.
 In spite of their vulnerability, women are not only seen as victims of climate
change, but they can also be seen as active and effective agents and promoters of
adaptation and mitigation. For a long time women have historically developed
knowledge and skills related to water harvesting and storage, food preservation
and rationing, and natural resource management. In Africa, for example, old
women represent wisdom pools with their inherited knowledge and expertise
related to early warnings and mitigating the impacts of disasters. This knowledge
and experience that has passed from one generation to another will be able to
contribute effectively to enhancing local adaptive capacity and sustaining a
community's livelihood.

4.  Climate change is becoming a reality. We must adapt to the consequences of
climate phenomena so that we can protect ourselves and our communities, as
well as do everything we can to reduce emissions and slow the pace of global
warming. The ramifications vary depending on where you live. These
consequences may be fires, floods, drought, hotter or colder than normal, or
a rise in sea level.
 There are many ways to adapt to what is happening now and what will
happen in the future. People can take some simple actions. For example, you
can plant or maintain trees around your home to keep the temperatures
inside cooler. Everyone should be aware of the increased likelihood of natural
disasters where they live and what resources they have in case they happen.
This may mean taking out insurances in advance, or knowing where to get
information on disaster and relief during a crisis

5. The Challenge of adaptation:
While the call for adaptation is clear, some of the communities most vulnerable
to climate change are least able to adapt because they are poor and/or belong to
developing countries that are already struggling to find enough resources to meet
basics like health care and education. Estimated adaptation costs in developing
countries could reach $300 billion per year by 2030. to provide $100 billion
annually in international climate finance. They must ensure that at least half of
these sums are spent on adaptation. This will be an important symbol of global
solidarity in the face of a challenge that we can only meet if all countries of the
world work together.

7. Women and adaptation :
Women play a pivotal role in natural resources management and in other
productive and reproductive activities at the household and community levels.
This puts them in a position to contribute to livelihood strategies adapted to
changing environmental realities.
Their extensive knowledge and expertise that can also be used in climate change
mitigation, disaster reduction and adaptation strategies-make them effective
actors and agents of change."

8. Numerous examples demonstrate that communities fare better during natural
disasters when women play a leadership role in early warning systems and
reconstruction. Women tend to share information related to community well-
being, choose less polluting energy sources and adapt more easily to
environmental changes when their family's survival is at stake." A 2000 study
found that women in South Asia displayed enormous strength and capacity
throughout the entire disaster cycle: preparing for hazards, managing after a
disaster and rebuilding damaged livelihoods. Activities included ensuring food
and water for the family, securing seed and other productive material and taking
care of the sick and elderly.

9.  worldwide women are starting to adapt to a changing climate and can
articulate what they need to secure and sustain their livelihoods more
effectively. Local strategies for adapting to climate change provide valuable
lessons. In studies from areas where flooding was problematic, women's
adaptation coping strategies and mechanisms included:
 moving to safer places: higher locations, making of temporary shelters,
increasing the plinth level of their houses or homesteads, and migration,
saving their assets: trying to store seeds and moving livestock to high places;
dietary adaptations: skip meals or cat non-traditional foods (such as water
hyacinth),or preserving food to be used in the lean time.

10.  energy-saving use of alternative energy-related technologies (solar, biogas, improved cooking
stoves).
 adapting their agricultural practices:
e.g. switching to other crops and varieties that are flood or drought resistant, multiple cropping
and intercropping practices, alternative irrigation facilities, mixing fertile with sandy soil,
changing cultivation to more easily marketable crop varieties or to other animals (e.g. in Nepal:
rearing goats and poultry farming; in Bangladesh, ducks instead of poultry)
 coming income or saving money:
working as wage (bound) laborers, borrowing money from money lenders at high interest rates,
secretly saving part of their comings, or distress sale of livestock; alternative health care: the use
of traditional medicine; organizing and collective action: e.g. setting up of community-based
self-help groups and networks, and group savings, or systems of group labor (e.g, through the
Nepalese system of Parma), are popular ways that women apply in coping with disasters. Not all
coping strategies are sustainable; for example, adaptation in diets, or money lending. Women
often have a clear sense of what they need to adapt better. In several studies women have
voiced their priorities in times of disaster.

11. women have voiced their priorities in
times of disaster:
1-safety: a safe place to live for their families and themselves; including
relocation to safe areas, shelters, and adaptation in site by the construction of
solid houses: the storage of their harvest and livestock, adaptation in agricultural
practices, including crop diversification better access to information; access to
services such as doctors and pharmacists, and agricultural extension;
development of their capacities, through training and information (including
through exposure and exchange visits about adaptation strategies and livelihood
alternatives).

12.  2-access to resources: including climate-related finances ; improved access
to credits and markets, to implement effective strategies and overcome
constraints ; ecological restoration. There could be important synergies
between climate policy and gender equality, e.g, linking carbon sequestration
with poverty reduction , clean energy for cooking that reduces indoor air
pollution and related diseases, cheap voltaic energy that lights houses and
enables education, and ecosystem improvement promoting sustainable
development and lightening women's tasks."

13. Examples of Women's Capacity to Adapt
:
 1. In the midst of a drought in the Federated States of Micronesia women used
their experience working the land to dig into the ground and create a new well
filled with drinkable freshwater. But planners and decision-makers had not
considered their possible contributions.
 2. In November 2006, the Kenyan women's organization Green Belt Movement and
the World Bank's Community Development Carbon Fund Project signed an Emission
Reductions Purchase Agreement (ERPA) to reforest 2,000 hectares on two mountain
are as in Kenya with thousands of indigenous trees .
 3. In a CARE project in Bangladesh, women tended to prioritize adaptation
strategies that could be implemented close to home, such as homestead gardening
and duck rearing. In the project, which recruited female field officers, women
comprised 58% of total project participants. Many strategies are being
implemented in Senegal in various sectors such as energy and forestry, agriculture,
water resources and trade. They contribute to sustainable development and
generate earnings at different levels.

14. The following are some of the micro-
strategies used by poor women in
Bangladesh to cope with frequent disasters:
 Avoidance or Prevention Strategies :
a.) Predicting and preparing for disasters.
b.) Protecting houses and homestead.
c) Storing essential items.
d.) Teaching children.
In Ghana : women farmers are trying to adapt to the increasing volatility of
rainfall by diversifying their livelihoods. After acquiring new skills, they produce
agricultural products such as soy milk and she a butter, which are highly priced in
the local markets.

15. Recommendations:
 Conduct an in-depth and evidence-based analysis of women’s and men’s roles in the sectors
to affect their strategies for coping with climate change.
 Improve understanding of women’s and men’s knowledge, roles and abilities will provide a
solid basis for policy and programmers developed to address and combat climate change
impacts.
 Increasing women’s participation would result in more environmental and productivity gains
and would create mutual benefits and greater returns across the sustainable Development
Goals. Likewise, women’s increased involvement in adaptation and mitigation efforts would
enhance the efficacy and sustainability of such efforts.

16.  Climate change actions need to be based on consultation with women, build
and incorporate their skills and knowledge, and provide opportunities for
improving health, education and livelihoods.

17. CONCLUSION

18. Those who are most affected by climate change today–
women, girls and marginalised communities–must be
involved in the design and implementation of climate
response actions to ensure the equal sharing of benefits.
Because women possess unique knowledge and experience,
particularly at the local level, their inclusion in decision-
making processes is critical to effective climate action.

19. Expanding women’s access to productive resources can
increase agricultural production and food security and
reduce carbon dioxide emissions. If all women
smallholders received equal access to productive
resources, their farm yields would rise by 20 to 30 per
cent, and 100 to 150 million people would no longer go
hungry. Increasing farm yields can reduce the pressure to
deforest more land, reducing additional emissions.