Climate change is a process that manifests in a number of ways, including a rise in average temperatures; changes in rainfall patterns leading to floods, droughts, and in some areas, desertification; extreme and unpredictable weather patterns leading to more numerous and intense natural disasters; and the melting of glaciers and the polar ice-caps resulting in rising sea-levels and coastal erosion, leaving low-lying areas uninhabitable.

Women and climate change

The impact of climate change disproportionately affect the world’s 1.3 billion poor, the majority of whom are women. However, although women are forced to bear the brunt of the consequences of climate change, they have been systematically excluded from decision making mechanisms and denied agency in deciding when and how to overcome the vulnerabilities they face.

In Ghana, to ensure that climate change does not disproportionately affect women, Abantu for Development, a women’s right organisation, together with some international non-governmental organisations including the Southern Voices on Adaptation, have come together to create awareness of the negative impact of climate change on women and their children.

At a media seminar to raise awareness of the theme: ‘Gender and climate change within the context of the Joint Principles for Adaptation (JPAs)’, the Director of Abantu, Dr Mrs Rose Kutin, called on the country to source different funding packages to ensure an effective mitigation and adaption processes, especially by women.

According to Dr Kutin,climate change was a global challenge that burdened all of humanity but not equally, saying the poor majority of women were the most affected.

She said a lot had been done to ensure that the vulnerable were not unduely disadvantaged by the issues of climate change but added that more still needed to be done as developing countries, as women and children were the ones who were suffering from the negative impacts of climate change.

National Adaptation Project

She said currently, a four-year national adaptation project was being undertaken in the three northern regions to help improve on the livelihoods of people affected by various climate change impacts through increased levels of income, as well as a disaster risk management programme to help reduce the susceptibility of the vulnerable to risk which climate change passed to them.

Ms Grace Ampomah Afrifa, programme Officer, Abantu, who explained the JPA to the media, said it was a civil society initiative developed in 2014 to promote effective and equitable adaptation, planning and implementation of climate change policies and programmes.

She said the principles were a set of tools for ensuring that national policies and plans met the needs and fulfilled the rights of the most vulnerable people to adapt to climate change.

According to her, the JPA was being implemented in 14 countries across Africa and in Ghana, it was being implemented in 22 districts with an aim to influence policies.