Women's Day 2023: Women, feminist leadership can lead vulnerable communities to resilience, climate justice

Disaster or climate change impairs access to resources reducing the ability to fulfil the needs of women and their families. This responsibility makes women emerge as first responders in times of humanitarian crisis.

No one can capture the relationship between women and disasters in a single narrative. At one level, emergencies affect vulnerable communities disproportionately, and hence amongst these communities, women and children are impacted more. However, women have proved to be most effective in leading emergency response. Moreover, a growing opinion holds that women’s leadership is vital to climate justice.

On International Women’s Day, it would be meaningful to review women’s role and the importance of feminist leadership in building resilience and climate justice. Lack of access and control over resources and exclusion from claiming basic entitlements increases women’s vulnerability and undermines their ability to cope with the impacts of disasters, including those induced by climate change.

In developing countries, women are responsible for basic resources -Women in developing countries are still primarily responsible for securing food, water and energy for cooking and heating. Impaired access to these resources resulting from disaster or climate change reduces their ability to fulfil their needs and those of their families and the wider community.

Perhaps this responsibility also makes women emerge as first responders in times of humanitarian crisis. Development professionals seek to engage the most impacted communities in decision-making and leadership roles as early as possible. Again, we have found women-led efforts to be most effective.

Feminist leadership is also effective for resilience-building efforts or what is also called disaster risk reduction efforts. Across the decades, women have led movements to protect our environment, from Chipko in the Garhwal Himalayas, the Silent Valley in Kerala, Appiko in Karnataka and the Narmada Bachao Andolan. More recently, in Odisha, we have seen women in the community radio movement leading the community to safety during disasters.

Odisha example-With the increasing frequency and intensity of disasters seen across the globe, including in India, our emergency work must focus on resilience building. If we were to take Odisha as an example, being a coastal state in India, located at the Bay of Bengal and counted as amongst the poorest states in the country, the recurrent cyclones, floods and exceptionally harsh heat waves during non-monsoon times in summer, increases the existing vulnerabilities. There is recurrent damage to crops and livestock, with loss of life and livelihood, damage to shelter and the depletion of already meagre resources. People from marginalised communities in high-risk areas are most vulnerable. They urgently need support to mitigate the impact of these recurrent disasters, reduce the risk and build resilience.

Evacuation plans-It is commendable that evacuation plans are in place in Odisha, and people can reach safe spaces like cyclone shelters in a timely manner; this has led to low casualty figures in recent years. However, mitigation and rehabilitation efforts have been inadequate. In villages facing coastal erosion and high-intensity natural disasters, people are deprived of a decent livelihood, education and healthcare facilities. A recent study by ActionAid Association, across 23 coastal villages in Puri, Kendrapara, Jagatsinghpur, Bhadrak and Ganjam districts in Odisha, reveals that 10-15 per cent of the population has permanently migrated and a considerable proportion are migrating for large parts of the year. Dropout among college-going women is very common, lack of financial resources and restricted mobility being the primary reasons.

Underrepresented & Vulnerable communities-Climate change and disaster preparedness efforts need to be addressed with the leadership of the communities affected and specifically with the involvement of the women of underrepresented and vulnerable communities. Other than specific targeted interventions of the Government, the participation of women, youth, people with disability and minorities are not prioritised in the overall disaster risk reduction efforts like capacity building, planning, mobilisation, formation of village-level groups, and linkages with entitlements. As a result, these communities have witnessed a high degree of suffering and difficulties amidst the COVID-19 pandemic due to a lack of access to support.

Scheme linkage-Last year, the administration released rupees 20 lakhs from the Chief Minister Relief Fund for services to people with disability. Besides, 829 vulnerable households from coastal districts of Puri, Bhadrak and Jagatsinghpur were linked with different schemes and entitlements of the Government. This includes livelihood linkage, pension for people with disability, scholarship support and housing support. Over 30,000 girls and boys have been provided with financial assistance from the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board, Odisha Rural Development and Marketing Society and corporate social responsibility projects towards linkages with education, vocational /technical education, and skill training in Odisha.

Action plan-The purview of women and feminist leadership to vulnerable communities must occur within an enabling context, which the Government needs to provide. Odisha was amongst the first states to formulate an action plan to address climate change issues. It is especially commendable that the plan recognised the need to make women’s and children’s vulnerability a major focus. A 2018 document speaks about “empowering women as agents of change and innovation and not to depict them only as the victims of climate change.” However, the lack of bottom-up planning, starting with the annual plans of Gram Panchayats made through consultations with communities, and community-based organisations, remains a weakness.

Consultation-There is a need to recognise and prioritise the issues of sea erosion, salination and displacement and develop a plan with an allocation of resources. Besides resilience building, these issues should be included in NDRF and SDRF norms so that people can avail compensation whenever they are severely affected. Furthermore, affected communities, including the most marginalised communities, women, youth, and members of Panchayati Raj Institutions, should be consulted. A rebuilding and resettlement plan needs to be developed by Government with a timeline and allocation of resources.

Compensation-The Government should adopt an appropriate loss and damage assessment process and consider the loss of lands to sea (homestead and agricultural), salination of agricultural land, loss of livelihood by marginalised communities, loss of women's access to resources and burden on women and compensate appropriately.

Resilience building-The building of resilience should take into context existing vulnerabilities and especially the issue of land rights. Agriculture land to Dalit landless, small and marginal who have lost their land to sea and irrigation facilities, access to credit without interest, subsidy for agriculture and integrated farming, and seed support. The livelihood of women needs to be strengthened with training and credit facility. Women’s role as farmers needs to be recognised, and they should be provided with the facility of Government as farmers. Young people especially need to be provided with skill training, credit support and employment opportunities and ensure Education to the children addressing the issue of dropout and school closure.

Civil society-Local organisations like people’s, women’s, and civil society organisations need to be consulted in rebuilding and resettlement. In addition, community radio stations need to be consulted as it plays an essential role in emergency response. India should gear up its finances for this and also ask for the establishment of a loss and damage financing facility at COP27.

Developed countries should bear the cost of the impact of climate change induced disasters on vulnerable communities. Let’s hope that we realise women's primary role in dealing with disasters and climate change and support them and the local and collective efforts on the ground to bring relief to vulnerable communities.

(ByDebabrat Patra, Associate Director and Humanitarian Lead, ActionAid Association. Disclaimer:The views expressed in this article are author's own)