Women's coping strategies: strengthening security

Too often women are primarily perceived as the main victims of climate change and not as positive agents of change and contributors to livelihood adaptation strategies. As highlighted by Enarson and O'Brien, natural disasters could also provide women with a unique opportunity to challenge and change their gendered status in society. Women have been willing and able to take an active role in what are traditionally considered 'male' tasks in responding to disasters, e.g. following hurricane Mitch in Guatemala and Honduras in 1998.

In general, women have proved effective in mobilizing the community to respond to disasters, and in disaster preparedness and mitigation. For example, after Mitch struck the NGO Puntos de Encuentro in Nicaragua organized an information campaign “Violence against women is one disaster that men can prevent”. The campaign proved effective in changing men's attitudes towards violence against women.

Women usually have fewer assets than men to recover from natural disasters, and usually don't own land that can be sold to secure income in an emergency. Among the problems women identify when having to adapt to climate change, include lack of safe land and shelter, lack of other assets and resources, limited access to material and financial resources, lack of relevant skills and knowledge, high prices of agricultural inputs and other materials, and cultural barriers limiting women's access to services.

However, 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.

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:

• safety: a safe place to live for their families and themselves; including relocation to safe areas, shelters, and adaptation in situ by the construction of solid houses; the storage of their harvest and livestock;
• adaptation in agricultural practices, icluding 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 (incl. through exposure and exchange visits about adaptation strategies and livelihood alternatives);
• access to resources, including climate-related finances, improved access to credits and markets, to implement effective strategies and overcome constraints;
• ecological restoration.

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 the 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 areas in Kenya with thousands of indigenous trees.
3. In a CARE project in Bangladesh, women tended to prioritize aptation strategies that could be implemented close to home, such as homestead gardening and duck rearing. In the project, that recruited female field officers, women comprised 58% of total project participants.

The framework below shows that if we define human security as security of survival (mortality/injury, health), security of livelihood (food, water, energy, environmental, shelter, and economic security), and dignity (basic human rights, capacity, participation), climate change has different effects on these respective security aspects and show gender specific characteristics. Women have developed specific adaptive strategies to cope with these problems. There are a wide range of (policy) opportunities in which adaptive measures can be taken to address women's priorities in times of climate change that threaten their security.