Gender and Climate Change: Raising Awareness, Building Capacity, and Influencing Policy

Through a partnership with Malibongwe, a South African women's development organisation, GenderCC held 14 workshops in several project areas, each workshop involving 13 to 150 women and youth. The majority of participants were unemployed and involved in volunteer community projects, or in the community development structures, and have formed struggling cooperatives mainly in agriculture, recycling, making clothing, etc. The workshops were designed to raise the women's awareness of climate change, explore how GenderCC can assist them in their efforts in terms of ecological food production and community upliftment programmes, and help them do things differently to mitigate the effects of climate change.

In 2011, a second round of workshops is being carried out. In Gauteng province, the focus will be on introducing income-generating activities related to renewable energies together with partner organisations. This includes making hot boxes from fabric cut-offs and recycled polystyrene containers, as well as the sale of solar cookers, mobile solar water heaters, and solar home lighting systems. At the same time, organisers say GenderCC will help women's cooperatives involved in recycling and organic food production to scale up their operations by introducing processing of waste to make crafts, growing and processing herbs and medicinal plants and making dried and pickled vegetables to help diversify their income.

Together with other South African women’s and gender organisations, GenderCCSA has also been working on influencing a National Climate Change Response Policy. After information sharing sessions, strategy meetings, and conferences a joint submission on the policy was presented.

Disaster risk reduction, Climate change

According to organisers, the workshops revealed that most of the participating women were unaware of climate change but had noticed the rapid change in temperatures, rainfall patterns, crop harvest, and availability of natural resources. Their situations were further challenged by a lack of service delivery, frustration with local government politicians and officials, government policies and systems, as well as a lack of access to land and other amenities for income-generation activities. Many communities had high levels of poverty particularly in area with a high rate of informal settlements.

GenderCC also says that women living in poverty are the most threatened by the dangers that stem from climate change. South African women are not immune to these climate change threats. In rural communities women are largely dependent on natural resources and agriculture for their livelihoods. Climate change will mean that the supply of natural resources will be threatened. Even minor changes to rainfall patterns (especially coupled with increased severity of droughts and floods) threaten food security. Women living in informal settlements, specifically in provinces of Western Cape and Gauteng are particularly vulnerable to frequent extreme events like flooding.