PUBLICATION: Women at the Center of Climate-friendly Approaches to Agriculture and Water Use

In a new paper, Shiney Varghese of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) examines proven agricultural practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen resilience to climate change through a case study of the Tamilnadu Women’s Collective in India. The collective, a federation of village-level women’s groups with over 150,000 members—the majority of which belong to the lowest caste—follow three principles for food security: 1.) empowerment of women; 2.) democratic local governance; and 3.) multifunctional agriculture.

Download the paper (pdf).

Resource: Gender and Water

Water management activities gain efficiency and impact when both women and men are involved in decision-making. Equitable access to and management of water is fundamental in promoting poverty eradication and sustainable development. This applies to women’s and men’s equitable access to and management of safe and adequate water, for domestic supply, sanitation, food security and environmental sustainability… Read more

Publication: Women at the Center of Climate-friendly Approaches to Agriculture and Water – New IATP Paper

February 8, 2011 – Extreme weather events consistent with climate change are already playing havoc with the livelihoods and food security of much of the world’s poor. This is particularly true for arid and semi-arid areas of the global south. Yet, most proposals for agriculture being discussed at the U.N. global climate talks and elsewhere focus on new technological developments, like genetically engineered crops. But these approaches are based on still unproven claims and do not fully consider their impact on the natural world.

In a new paper, IATP’s Shiney Varghese examines proven agricultural practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen resilience to climate change through a case study of the Tamilnadu Women’s Collective in India. The collective, a federation of village-level women’s groups with over 150,000 members—the majority of which belong to the lowest caste—follow three principles for food security: 1.) empowerment of women; 2.) democratic local governance; and 3.) multifunctional agriculture.

Shiney will present her findings at the United Nations in New York on February 22 as part of a workshop, titled “Climate Adaptation Challenges from a Gender Perspective.” The workshop is expected to contribute towards the fifty-fifth session of the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women. You can learn more about how the Tamilnadu Women’s Collective is using traditional knowledge and practices to increase food security and climate resilience by reading the full paper here and at www.iatp.org.

Multimedia: The Gold of Moqatam – Solar Technology and Gender Empowerment

Funding: IDRC’s Climate Change and Water program has recently launched a call for proposals for its new graduate research awards entitled “Adaptation H2O”.

Adaptation H2O aims to promote important research on the water-related impacts of climate change as well as to build the capacity of students working in this field. Adaptation H2O will provide up to 7 research awards to graduate students from developing countries (enrolled in a masters or PhD program) and 2 research awards to Canadian citizens or permanent residents (enrolled in a PhD program). For this first call (2010-2011), proposals must address one or more of the following themes:

• Economic analysis related to climate change adaptation
• Gender analysis of adaptation strategies
• Use information and communication technologies (ICTs) and spatial decision support systems for adaptation
• Adaptation strategies that examine water supply and clean energy together

For more details regarding the eligibility criteria please refer to the call for proposals or visit: www.idrc.ca/Adaptation-H2O. The application deadline is October 15, 2010.

Resource: IWMI launches Gender Topic Page

The International Water Management Institute has launched a Gender Topic Section on the IWMI web site. You may view it at www.iwmi.cgiar.org/Topics/Gender

Multimedia: Women and Water – A Tribute (Produced by IWMI)

Publication: Access to Water, Women’s Work and Child Outcomes

Authors: Gayatri Koolwal& Dominique van de Walle

World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 5302

Summary: Poor rural women in the developing world spend considerable time collecting water. How then do they respond to improved access to water infrastructure? Does it increase their participation in income earning market-based activities? Does it improve the health and education outcomes of their children? To help address these questions, a new approach for dealing with the endogeneity of infrastructure placement in cross-sectional surveys is proposed and implemented using data for nine developing countries. The paper does not find that access to water comes with greater off-farm work for women, although in countries where substantial gender gaps in schooling exist, both boys’ and girls’ enrollments improve with better access to water. There are also some signs of impacts on child health as measured by anthropometric z-scores.

Access the paper

Event (livestream): TEDxWorldBankGroup via live webcast

This year’s event will be on the Global Challenges in the New Decade encouraging conversation and debates on critical issues such as gender, climate change, agriculture and water. We hope you join our event and share your thoughts and ideas.

Click here to view event, on Friday April 23, 2010 – 1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. EST

Click here to participate in the online forum on gender, water, climate change, agribusiness–how does it all tie together?

Publications: Gender and Development Issue on WATER

“The use of water – including the question of who can have access, when, and how much they can have – is shaped as much by the way a society is organised, as by issues of supply. Gender inequality means that women – along with other marginalised groups – are often negatively affected by systems of water allocation, and usually lack the power to take a role in decision-making about which use of water takes priority. This collection of cutting edge articles show, in the vast majority of societies women bare the main responsibility for ensuring adequate water for domestic uses but rarely have a voice in deciding where new water resources should be located and examine the impact that ensuring this domestic supply has on women.”

To see the journal and articles