Over the last three decades the frequency of droughts and floods in East Africa have increased (for example, the 2016-2017 drought experienced in Kenya), resulting in crop failures and loss of livestock (EAC, 2017). Impacts of climate change are being acutely felt by women who make up a large percentage of poor communities worldwide that rely on natural resources for their livelihoods.
The theme for International Women’s Day, 8 March, is “Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives”. This year, International Women’s Day comes on the heels of unprecedented global movement for women’s rights, equality and justice. This has taken the form of global marches and campaigns, on issues ranging from climate justice, sexual harassment and femicide to equal pay and women’s political representation.
Echoing the priority theme of the upcoming 62nd session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, International Women’s Day will also draw attention to the rights and activism of rural women, who make up over a quarter of the world population, and are being left behind in every measure of development including climate action.
A Report by UN Women, ‘Turning Promises into Action’ notes that climate change cannot be fully addressed by individual countries, but rather requires enhanced global cooperation from both policy-makers and non-party stakeholders in order to bring women’s voices and specific needs to the table.
The 2018 Women’s Day therefore comes at a time when there is near global consensus that successful action on climate change depends on the engagement of women as stakeholders and planners in ensuring that everyone has access to the resources they need to adapt to and mitigate climate change. Coming on the heels of the recently adopted Gender Action Plan at the twenty third UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP23). The aim of the Gender Action Plan is to ensure that women can influence climate change decisions, and that women and men are represented equally in all aspects of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as a way to increase its effectiveness.
The Gender Action Plan sets out, in five priority areas, the activities that will help achieve this objective. These range from increasing knowledge and capacities of women and men through workshops and information exchanges, so that they can systematically integrate gender considerations in all areas of their work, to pursuing the full, equal and meaningful participation of women in national delegations, including women from grassroots organizations, local and indigenous peoples and women from Small Island Developing States. Other priority areas refer to the need to increase integration of the gender considerations—such as addressing women’s specific vulnerability to natural disasters as well as understanding women’s role in agriculture and food production, and supporting women entrepreneurs in the energy sector—into the areas of work of all Parties to the Convention; and to increase climate-related financial resources that integrate gender priorities and reflect the needs of women and girls. Lastly, the Gender Action Plan seeks to improve tracking of the implementation of the gender-related decisions.
In East Africa, Civil Society Organisations implementing the Project: Promoting implementation of the Paris Agreement (PIPA) in East Africa have recently raised a ‘red flag’ in form of a Policy Brief on the need integrate poverty eradication in implementation of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda), and have recommended measures that East African Community stakeholders can undertake to fully integrate poverty reduction in implementation of NDCs of the EAC Partner States. This Brief follows the PIPA project Partners’ submission at COP23 calling for development of the ‘Paris Rule book’ in order for the resulting NDCs and climate actions to mitigate climate change, build climate resilience, enhance sustainable development and above all reduce poverty in developing countries.
What is at Stake for Women in East Africa?
Poverty and climate change are among the most pressing challenges globally. The Paris Agreement set the goal to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (UNFCCC, 2015). It is this goal that the international community has committed to, in or-der to address climate change. At the national level countries have determined what actions they are willing and able to take to achieve this goal, and communicate this through their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)1, including open discussions through the Talanoa Dialogue, to raise their ambitions.
In Eastern Africa, agriculture sector is dominated by small scale farmers and is the main source of livelihood in rural are-as. It drives the rural economy, accounting for approximately 25 percent of GDP (World Bank, 2017), 70 percent of employment and five billion USD in food export revenues every year (FAO, 2017). The sector is highly exposed to climate change as farming and livestock activities directly depend on climatic conditions. The majority of agricultural activity in the region is rain-fed, and therefore, susceptible to weather fluctuations. Over the last three decades the frequency of droughts and floods in East Africa have increased (for example, the 2016-2017 drought experienced in Kenya), resulting in crop failures and loss of livestock (EAC, 2017).
Another major constraint is related to unequal access to land that disfavours women. Furthermore in this region, large quantities of agricultural commodities produced by farmers tend to perish un-marketed as small-holder farmers lack technology for processing and preservation. In addition, irrigation facilities remain inferior and inaccessible to the poor.
Furthermore, with increasing soil erosion, nutrient depletion and land degradation, land resilience has been reduced and the effects of drought and floods exacerbated. The combination of deforestation due to croplands open, the extension of agriculture onto land with low potential, and the use of more basic farming techniques and technologies due to cost and capacity barriers, make the current agricultural system unsustainable in the long term.
Therefore women who largely make the bulk of the smallholder farmers primarily face the wrath of these unfavourable changes.
East Africa Partners’ NDCs: What is planned in the Agriculture Sector?
Agriculture is a priority sector for adaptation in all NDCs of the three countries. All the three countries aim to increase agricultural production and productivity, as well as create sustainable production systems and improve market for farm products.
In summary, the proposed priority adaptation and mitigation measures for the crop and livestock sectors in the NDCs of the three countries include improving land and water management, expanding information and early warning systems, expanding Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), diversification of crops and livestock, strengthening extension services, expanding value addition and post-harvest handling, improving access to market and microfinances, expanding research, rangeland management and promotion of crop insurance. Crop pests and diseases are expected to in-crease as a result of regional warming due to climate change. Partner states should improve measures to overcome pests and diseases in next review of NDCs.
CSA seems to be a priority intervention to NDCs of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. CSA has the potential to increase sustainable productivity, increase the resilience of farming systems to climate impacts and mitigate climate change through greenhouse gas emission reductions and carbon sequestration. For smallholder women farmers in East Africa, the opportunities for greater food security and increased income together with greater resilience will be more important to adopting CSA. Often, food-insecure, resource-poor, smallholder women farmers in EAC partner state cannot afford to make a long-term investment required for many climate-smart agriculture practices, while market and institutional environments are not conductive.
What needs to change in the agriculture sector?
The agriculture sector NDCs in EAC should focus on improving livelihoods and income so that there is incentive for women smallholder farmers to invest in CSA.
Climate actions should also consider combining practices that deliver short-term benefits with those that give longer-term benefits to help reduce opportunity costs and provide greater incentives to women smallholder farmers to invest in better management practices. Existing production and market systems should be modified to facilitate equitable access for women smallholders to the technologies and financial resources they need to reduce vulnerability and risk.
What should different actors do to address the main constraints faced by women small holder farmers?
Overall, in order to integrate poverty reduction in implementation of NDCs of East African Community (EAC) Partner States, the East African Community Secretariat, Partner States, Civil Society, Private sector and development partners have a collective role to play.
For example the EAC secretariat should ensure clear alignment between Partner climate change policies and poverty reduction strategies (including gender related aspects) while reviewing the EAC’s Regional Climate Change Policy (2011), the Climate Change Strategy (2011/12 – 2015/2016), and the Climate Change Master Plan (2013 – 2033) to mainstream the Paris Agreement commitments
There are upcoming global, regional and national policy reviews for example the Global Stocktake. Here, EAC Partner States should take into account existing safeguards to address social exclusions and (gender) inequalities in order to guarantee existence of the poor women and other marginalized communities to cope with global warming and its effects. In addition, the relevant climate change ministries and departments should undertake specific efforts to ensure wider participation of the poor and their representatives in the implementation of the NDCs and their reviews.
Civil Society Organisations should mobilize citizens and citizen groups to regularly generate information and ideas for contribution to raise the ambition of the NDCs by highlighting the need to address poverty that affects millions especially women. In addition, CSOs should play a role in the promotion of tried and tested local technologies (amongst potential supporters) that have potential to enable poor women and other marginalised groups to adapt to the unpredictable climate change patterns in East Africa.
Among others, Development Partners should ensure that development cooperation support for implementation of NDCs in East Africa is sensitive to addressing poverty amongst women and other marginalised groups.
Read the full Policy Brief: Illuminating the need to integrate poverty reduction in Implementation of the NDCs in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda) from the PIPA Project Partners from here
