UNDP Goodwill Ambassador
November
16, 2017
Women are
poised to be grass-roots leaders for climate action, since implementation at
the local level will largely fall on their shoulders. Photo: Giacomo
Pirozzi/UNDP Benin
As world leaders meet for climate talks this week
in Bonn, at the UN Climate Change Conference, they should embrace
the tenacity, spirit and energy of women to promote more effective climate
actions across the globe.
We will not achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement — nor our goals of ending
hunger and poverty and protecting our planet — if we don’t put women up front
as the key agents of change.
Although females make up half of the world’s
population, we are often pushed to the sidelines in decision-making. But women
are poised to be grass-roots fighters for climate protection, since so much of
the burden for climate action will now fall on them at local levels. This has
become a citizens’ movement.
Much of the work is being done on the ground — in
farms, ranches, homesteads, and industries that are impacted by climate change
— but needs to continue up to the boardroom and to the places of power where
decisions are made, fates are decided, lines are drawn, and deals are brokered.
Women have unique approaches that can complement joint efforts to fight climate
change in new, innovative, and more sustainable ways.
I think about all the young women and mothers who
are facing starvation with the prolonged droughts in north-east Nigeria,
Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.
Women
need education, training and resources to feed their families and protect their
local ecosystems. Photo: Arben Llapashtica/UNDP Kosovo
These women should be the central pillars in
feeding their families. Yet they are removed from decision-making at home, lack
access to resources like land, savings accounts, and insurance, and don’t have
the basic essentials many take for granted. Climate action must not only shift
to address the unique needs of these women and girls, but it must also empower
them and utilize them as true agents of change.
How do we do this? Women need more access to
climate governance through important mechanisms like the UN climate talks, and
leadership roles at both local and regional levels.
They also need education, training, and resources
to protect their local ecosystems, feed their families, and save enough money
to send their kids to school and to the doctor. Women need to be empowered as
entrepreneurs so they can access new markets, such as farming, with new
climate-resilient crops — which would insulate their communities from the
revolving shocks that climate change brings.
As a Goodwill Ambassador for UNDP, I have been
inspired by women taking the lead around the world, such as Apiyeiw Akwor in
Ethiopia, a single mother who, despite changing rainfalls and
recurring droughts, doubled her family’s income with new solar-powered
irrigation systems and new farming techniques.
Such women are the face of the beginnings of true
climate action. Action that goes beyond taking women into account and actually
brings them to the table is the only answer for facing climate change head on.
This article was originally published in the Boston Globe.
In her role as Goodwill Ambassador for the United
Nations Development Programme, actor and activist Connie Britton focuses on poverty
reduction and women's empowerment. Follow Connie on Twitter: @conniebritton, Instagram: @conniebritton and Facebook: @theconniebritton.
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