Curbing biodiversity loss in fashion's supply chain

Image: Chris Charles

‘Transforming the Fashion Sector to Drive Positive Outcomes to Drive Biodiversity, Climate and Oceans’ is a new initiative with $4 million in funding to cut biodiversity loss in the fashion supply chain. Biodiversity loss and climate change are two out of nine planetary boundaries. In a previous article, I wrote about how fashion impacts climate change and suggestions for collectively setting a net-zero trajectory. Fashion’s impact on biodiversity loss, however, has gotten less coverage than climate change.

The current state of biodiversity loss

Biodiversity loss according to Britannica is “a decrease in biodiversity within a species, an ecosystem, a given geographic area, or Earth as a whole.” Global biodiversity loss has recently been calculated to be 100 to 1000 times higher than how it should occur naturally (or by the pre-industrial revolution). And this extinction rate is accelerating. We’ve destroyed 83% of wild mammals and 50% of all plants with an average 68% decrease in population sizes of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish between 1970 and 2016. With about 200 to 2,000 extinctions estimated to be occurring each year, that comes to roughly 2 million extinctions. We are destroying the Earth’s biocapacity by at least 56% to fuel our 21st-century lifestyles driven by capitalism, overconsumption, over-exploitation of natural resources, climate change, pollution and land-use change. 30 - 50 % of existing species are projected to be extinct by the end of the century.

The threat to humanity

As the planet is facing its sixth mass extinction, biodiversity loss is one of the greatest risks facing humanity on earth. It’s impacting all life on the planet presently and will do so for millions of years into the future. In the pursuit of economic growth, colossal amounts of aquatic, terrestrial and marine ecosystems have been annihilated. Capitalist activities have wrecked the biodiversity that all life in water, in air and on land depend upon. In this sense, we’re being our own worst enemy.

Image: Europeana

Amongst other factors, biodiversity loss threatens food security. The services rendered to humanity by the ecosystems are undeniably valuable to the existence and wellbeing of human beings. Services such as water purification, carbon sequestration, crop pollination and flood protection. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has calculated the worth of the services provided by ecosystems in the world at $125-140 trillion (US dollars) per year. That’s more than one and a half times the size of global GDP! Immediate action is necessary to address the loss of the biodiversity that feeds the world and maintains the balance and harmony of life on the planet.  

Fashion is taking action

We’re well aware that fashion is one of the biggest culprits amongst industries that contribute to environmental damage and biodiversity loss. As the demand for clothing gets bigger, the impact on the earth’s raw materials and therefore biodiversity loss will also increase. On the current trajectory, the fashion industry is expected to use 35% more land for the production of fibre by the year 2030. This is an extra 115 million hectares that can be left alone to preserve biodiversity. The good news is that fashion is starting to address its role in biodiversity loss within its supply chains.

The Fashion Pact is an international coalition whose signatories represent about a third of the fashion industry by volume with 60 signatories representing over 200 brands. In 2020 The Pact committed to biodiversity restoration and protection. The plan is for the ‘Transforming the Fashion Sector to Drive Positive Outcomes to Drive Biodiversity, Climate and Oceans’ initiative to develop and provide guidance to The Pact on best practice for reducing deforestation, clean supply chain and better agricultural practices. The hope is that fashion will eventually curb biodiversity loss through regenerative approaches to agricultural supply chains and by reducing carbon emissions while improving the lives of producers.

The endless pursuit of material growth for overconsumption means constantly plundering the earth for raw materials to manufacture products to sell for financial gain. It has turned the worst parts of humanity into agents of destruction, threatening to eliminate the firm support given to us by the earth for our continual existence. Instead, we can allow nature and the ecosystems to remain natural and thereby flourish. The result? We will reap a joyful upbuilding of the planet that’s far healthier, balanced, harmonious and equitable for all species including humans.

♥ Nina Gbor

Instagram: @eco.styles

Vintage: a portal to fashion’s sustainable future

Over the years, I’ve become somewhat of an op shop (thrift store) aficionado with a deep love for vintage (clothing circa 1940s – 1960s) treasures like this grand pink ball gown. I started op shopping at age 15. The love for vintage happened in my childhood from watching style icons of the vintage era in classic films.

About 90% of my wardrobe is either vintage or preloved (secondhand). When I first started this journey, it wasn’t really cool to wear secondhand. People just thought you were either a hippy, poor or just freakin’ weird! It thrills me to know that vintage clothing is increasingly becoming more popular and it has had 46% growth in sales compared to 2017.

A league of its own

Each country in the global North has their figures but in Australia alone, over 501 million kg of unwanted clothes go into landfill each year! Another 94 million kg gets exported overseas but some of that also ends up in landfill, albeit on another continent. Why am I bringing this up? Because these figures include vintage clothes! I haven’t figured out the precise amount but it irks me nonetheless to even think of vintage being wasted like this. Vintage clothing is in a league of its own. Here’s why: vintage usually lasts at least 4 or 5 decades longer than most contemporary clothes. Secondly, if your wardrobe is blessed enough to be graced with quality vintage pieces, you possess a little piece of history that might hold clues for a sustainable fashion future. And finally, incorporating vintage pieces into your wardrobe is like style on steroids! Exhibit A: my pink ball gown. No, it’s not a costume even though I look like I’m on set of an 1800s period drama!  

Everyone can wear vintage

Vintage fashion is certainly not limited to ball gowns like mine and the ones you see on screen sirens like Elizabeth Taylor or Grace Kelly. You can find daily vintage-wear ties, scarves, shirts, dresses, pants, skirts, brooches, hats, etc. Each item brings its own special kind of magic. Some pieces give you all the ‘feels’ of the era they were made. Even though vintage can range from thousands of dollars in cost for luxury designer items, all the way down to merely just a few dollars in cost, the value of a vintage piece is not in the price. It’s in the magic of that piece. For instance, the way it can set your wardrobe ablaze with stylish inimitability and the power it has to turbocharge your serotonin levels when you get dressed.

Mainstreaming vintage

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you’ll know that I abhor trends. Trends are short term and therefore fuel textile waste. And the implication with trends is that people are to wait for a celebrity or advert to dictate or bestow permission to wear something, whether or not that thing is right for you. That choice belongs solely to you and your intuition. So, instead of making vintage-wearing another trend, let’s make it part of our daily culture by giving ourselves the permission to wear it throughout life. Take back your personal power (if you haven’t already) and normalise the habit of incorporating vintage pieces into your wardrobe. The greater goal here is to for it to become an everyday thing for as long as humans are wearing clothes.

How to wear vintage

I’ve been pondering upon what it’ll take for vintage to become as ubiquitous as fast fashion with all age groups. Start with baby steps by incorporating one item at a time to mix with your more contemporary pieces. My ensemble below is an example. This white denim jacket, tan cross body bag and sneakers transform this dress from ball gown to more casual everyday wear. I literally wear this look to lunch, dinner or to hang out with friends. The next time you need something in your closet, try searching through online vintage stores, your local vintage shops, op shops or even save the dates of the next vintage markets in your area.

When we all rise to the challenge of #DailyVintageWearing, we’ll be heroes for preserving these treasures that hold the exquisite craftsmanship of artisans from past generations for the future generations to experience. And on some level, we’ll buffer the environmental burden created by clothing manufacture and textile landfill waste.

STYLING

Outfit sourced from:

Rose pink vintage ball gown: Op shop

Tan Belt: Noffs Op Shop

White denim jacket and tan cross body bag: Hand-me-downs

♥ Nina Gbor

Instagram: @eco.styles

Images by Najah Onn

A different kind of Christmas

I chuckled when I found this Grinch t-shirt at a clothes swap a couple of years ago. 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' is a culturally iconic story and popular children’s book I read as a kid. In the 2000 film adaptation with Jim Carrey, the Grinch’s home was bombarded with trash from the townspeople’s Christmas celebrations. For this and other reasons, the Grinch hated Christmas. So, he tried to stop the holiday by stealing people’s Christmas presents from their homes while they slept.  

I've never been a fan of the superfluous nature of the festive holiday period with its excessive overconsumption rituals that seem to get worse every year. Christmas has been reduced to the notion of excessive material consumption, excessive food waste, excessive packaging, decorations and presents that people don't need or probably don't even want. Most of it ends up in landfill. Australians for instance wasted an estimated $400 million on unwanted presents last Christmas! Some environmentalists even say that Christmas is the world’s greatest annual environmental disaster. Americans throw away 25% more trash during the holiday season, amounting to 25 million tons of garbage which is about 1 million extra tons per week based on data from Stanford University. And according to the OECD, about 54 million plates of food are thrown out in the UK every Christmas. Food waste and its supply chain is a major source of CO2 emissions. The IPCC report on Climate Change and Land stated that wasted and lost food is responsible for up to 10% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. This might be why my Grinch t-shirt resonates. The Grinch is in this way symbolic of disrupting the holiday overconsumption culture.   

It feels like the beautiful things about the holidays like family, culture, connection, community and the opportunity for rest and reflection have been corrupted. Now it’s all about consumerism and directing our efforts towards skyrocketing profits for big corporations. So, what if we redirected all of these resources towards making life liveable for people who are underprivileged or marginalised? What if, instead of going along with the old tradition of giving presents to someone who doesn't really need it, maybe the cost or the item/service can be donated to the people or organisations that work towards environmental regeneration?

I think the moral of the Grinch story was that after lamenting on the stolen presents, the townspeople realised they could have a happy Christmas without the excessive material stuff. We too can create a different kind of Christmas. During the super consumption period that goes from Black Friday through to the holidays and into the January sales, we buy and consume a lot of stuff in richer countries. It’s a good opportunity for low-income earners to afford necessary items and luxurious treats. It’s also a time to shift this modern trend of THE NEED TO BUY things we don’t need. We spend a big portion of our lives shopping and spending. This isn’t necessarily about being frugal. This is about filling our lives with purposeful activities that have a more lasting impact on our souls than just inanimate objects we pay for.

The holidays carry a different meaning for everyone, but I hope the end of this year is a time of positive introspection for all of us. A time we use wisely to do some self-love and self-care by alchemising the things within us that keep us from evolving to our highest selves. And shifting habits like unnecessary consumption that damage ecosystems and hurt the environment. And by doing random things like showing bundles of love and acts of kindness to the people that would never expect it from us both online and in-person.

The holidays done differently

If we choose to resist the status quo and #MakeChristmasGreatAgain, here are a few tips:

Personalise the holidays. It’s important to recognise that we don’t have to stick to doing the same thing we’ve been doing for decades or centuries. We can make brand new holiday traditions that hold personal meaning for you, family and friends. Ones that don’t have to rely on excessive use of things or products to make the holidays fun.

Giving – Have you noticed that people who have a lot, get given a lot too? Consider giving to people who really, actually need resources and things for their survival and personal growth. This is one way to tip the scales towards more balance and equality in society. Seek out people in need within your local community or even in parts of the global South to give to. Giving need not be something limited to the holidays. It can be all year round.

Quit holiday sales – Reducing overconsumption is about finding alternative habits to replace excessive shopping. Buy what you need, reuse, recycle and repair when you can. Place a higher value on experiences over things.

Photos by Madé Kosala

♥ Nina Gbor

Instagram: @eco.styles

The perks of secondhand fashion (from a lifelong fashionista)

I’ve been wearing secondhand clothes since before I can remember. First, it was through hand-me-downs from my brothers during my childhood tomboy days. Later in my teenage years, it evolved to crafting my own personal style using the super eclectic range of clothes in thrift stores. It was a rare and unique opportunity to find my passion at an early age, playing dress-up by mixing vintage and trendy pieces. I loved secondhand shopping and styling so much that I built a career on it!

Even with all the style and excitement, I got from secondhand shopping, it took years for me to publicly come out as a secondhand fashionista. It was social taboo because of the stigma attached to it like the perception of dirty, mouldy clothing and the idea that it was only for poor people. Fortunately, this stigma has shifted, and secondhand fashion is becoming popular and even more fabulous.

One of the most surprising things I discovered about secondhand fashion is that it teaches you to figure out who you are and helps you appreciate yourself. As opposed to following fashion trends, selecting pieces to form a cohesive wardrobe from a plethora of clothes from multiple fashion eras and diverse cultures naturally makes you dig a little deeper beyond the surface to figure out who you are and what you want to express in your style. Eventually, I discovered a few more perks to this wonderful world of secondhand.

1. Social sustainability – Majority of the people who make our clothes are women in poorer countries, mostly in Asia and Africa. They are exploited because they are not paid fair, liveable wages where they can afford the basic life essentials such as healthcare, education and adequate food for themselves and their families. This happens despite working 12 – 16 hours a day. Buying secondhand sends a message to brands that we will stop buying their clothes when they are exploiting garment workers. It’s important that we inform these brands and urge them to pay liveable wages so that the workers do not end up unemployed.

2. Environmental sustainability – Fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world. About 80 - 150 billion new garments are produced worldwide each year, more than double what was made in the year 2000. Of the garments made each year, 85% ends up in landfill or incinerated. Most of this pollution happens during manufacture and disposal.  Secondhand shopping reduces reliance on raw materials, chemical procedures and fashion waste to landfill which all contribute to environmental damage. A circular economy with secondhand is a much better way to go.

3. It’s more affordable – Secondhand is such a great option for your savings and when you’re on a budget. However, considering the vast amount of environmental damage that fashion is responsible for, it’s essential to bear this in mind so that we prevent overconsumption of secondhand fashion. In a previous article, I explained in more detail why secondhand fashion is not about being cheap.  

4. Self-empowerment - I alluded to this earlier when I talked about knowing and expressing yourself in your style. Secondhand can be a relatively quicker and easier way to glide on the path of inner growth and self-discovery. If you choose not to follow fashion trends that have been dictated, you’ll realise your personality, goals, character or lifestyle will be the tools you use when you’re choosing your pieces. It can strengthen your self-image and instil a stronger sense of confidence.    

5. Unique personal style - Needless to say, shopping secondhand means your style is likely to be authentic and different from the usual. If you value individuality when it comes to your wardrobe and outside the box fashion styles then secondhand is your new (or existing) best friend.

This month, Oxfam UK is running a SecondHand September campaign where they’re inspiring people to say no to new clothes for 30 days #SecondHandSeptember. In the UK, 13 million items of clothing end up in landfill every week. In Australia, 6,000 kilos of textile waste ends up in landfill every ten minutes. Oxfam’s challenge is a fun opportunity to help reduce fashion waste by fully immersing yourself in secondhand fashion if you haven’t done so already. To find sources for secondhand clothing that are local to you, you can search online for clothes swaps, thrift stores, markets and wardrobe rental/hire platforms. Here are a few online platforms: Yordrobe, Ekoluv, Depop, Etsy, Carousell, Poshmark, Marketplace and Beyond Retro.

STYLING

With this ensemble, I went for a mixed pattern, monochrome look using a staple tan waist belt to break the monotone pattern. Finished the look with leopard-print stilettos. I added the vintage, red clutch bag for a bright colour pop. The standout features of the outfit are the ruched sleeves on the polka dot top and the monochrome chessboard pattern on the skirt because it demands your attention. When you’re styling yourself, choose pieces and combinations that make sense to you and make you feel good.

Outfit sourced from:

Polka Dot Top - Savers Australia Op Shop

Monochrome Chessboard Skirt – Marketplace

Tan Belt – Noffs Op Shop

Red Vintage Purse - Marketplace

Leopard-print Stilettos – A wardrobe staple 

♥ Nina Gbor

Instagram: @eco.styles

Climate change has the biggest impact on women but how can we fix it?

Image credit: Information Age

For both palpable and less obvious reasons, women are crucial to the survival and thriving of our species on multiple levels. From past millennia to date, women have been a perpetual force in upholding family units and communities. And a force that contributes significantly to powering economies. In fact, if we’re serious about creating positive change on a global scale, we need to empower many more women. Yet, of the billions of people in the world living below the poverty line, 70% are women. Based on the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is evident that people who economically and socially are most vulnerable and marginalised experience the greatest impacts when it comes to climate change. Women fall into this demographic. If we continue to allow this to happen, climatic catastrophes will prove even more fatal for humanity. Therefore, avoiding further climate breakdown by protecting women and the environment is imminent.

Climate change bears its brunt mostly on the bottom 2 billion people on the planet. Even though the poorer half of the world’s population generates just 10% of emissions, the Global South suffers at least 75% of the costs of climate change. Wealthy countries in the Global North by far have always been the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. According to the Director of Feedback, Carina Millstone, “citizens living in the countries with the lowest per capita consumption of resources consume two tons of materials per person per year for their food and shelter; while those living in countries with the highest per capita consumption use 60 tons of materials per capita per year.”

Women in the Global South are disproportionately impacted more than any other demographic. For instance, UN figures indicate that women make up for 80% of people displaced by climate change. Tasks such as household chores, family care giving, fetching water and gathering energy sources like charcoal and firewood for heating and cooking, and of course agriculture make women more vulnerable when disaster strikes. Disasters such as flooding, droughts, deforestation, coastal storms, extreme and unpredictable weather patterns, soil erosion, etc displace women usually through life or death circumstances.

Image credit: Nandhu Kumar

When it comes to the susceptibility of women in the Global South, social, cultural and economic factors such as differential roles, lack of credit and poor infrastructure are also to blame. Access to decision-making, tech, training and extension services that would enhance their capacity to adapt to climate change are insufficient or non-existent. Moreover, as a result of continuous impacts of inequality, colonialism and racism, women from the Global South and women of colour in some regions experience an even heavier burden when it comes to climate change. And finally, women in the world have less access to agricultural land.  The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) stated that around two-thirds of the female workforce in the Global South is involved in agricultural work. However, they own less than 10% of the land despite leading the world's food production by 50 - 80%. Before we explore ways of fixing these issues, let’s have a more holistic, in-depth look at some of the specificities around climate disasters that impact women:

Extreme rain and droughts - With rising temperatures, there has been and there will continue to be more floods in some areas and droughts in others. Flooding drowns food crops and droughts dry them up. This leads to food scarcity which is the precursor to other issues such as poverty through livelihoods being destroyed, malnutrition and starvation.

Food scarcity – Girls and women have a greater susceptibility to malnutrition and vector-borne diseases which are made more prevalent by climate change. And they’re more likely than boys to get less food during times of food scarcity. These food shortages cause communities to go to war over shrinking food resources.

Image credit: Guardian.co.uk

Life security – Women face heightened safety risks during times of war, conflict and disasters with issues like domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking and other human rights violations. With limited access to information and limited movement outside their homes, women are 14 times more likely than men to die during disasters, according to reports by the African Development Bank.

Lack of socioeconomic power - Women in the Global North are also affected by climate change. With less socioeconomic power, women overall experience more poverty than men. It, therefore, becomes harder for them to recover from disasters that have affected jobs, infrastructure and housing. An example is Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA in 2005. The city had a high level of poverty amongst its African American residents. They were most affected by the hurricane flooding. Scientists predict that as sea levels rise from climate change, low-lying cities like New Orleans are at risk of flooding.

Education – Women are more likely than men to end formal education early in multiple regions. In Africa, female illiteracy rates were over 55% in 2000, compared to 41% for men. This means they are far less likely to get into leadership positions where they can influence climate mitigation policies.  On this matter, environmental scientist Diana Liverman said, "Women are often not involved in the decisions made about the responses to climate change, so the money ends up going to the men rather than the women.” Because women are likely to do more work to secure household livelihoods during extreme weather circumstances, they have less time to access training and education, develop skills or earn income.

Image credit: Yogendra Singh

Disaster survival – An Oxfam report stated that in the wake of the 2004 tsunami, the men who survived the disaster outnumbered women by almost 3:1 in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India. It was reported that women spent more time trying to save their children, which delayed their efforts to escape the tsunami. They were also less likely to know how to swim than men. The 2004 tsunami was not a climate change disaster, however, due to the rise in sea levels from climate change and the loss of coastal ecosystems, tsunamis are expected to intensify. This, however, serves as an example of how expectations on women to provide family care also has uneven effects during times of disaster.

Life expectancy – A study of natural disasters spanning 20 years found that catastrophic events lowered the life expectancy of women more than men. In countries where women had higher socio-economic power, fewer women, in general, were killed and fewer women were killed at a young age.

Water shortage – When climate changes cause water bodies to shrink, it impacts the lives of those who are dependent on it. In Central Africa for example, 90% of Lake Chad in West Africa has encroached. Millions of people across five nations use Lake Chad as their water source. As the lake shrinks, women have to walk much further to get water for their families.

Image credit: UN IHE Delft Institute for Water Education

Internal displacement and refugees – Many women are forced into displacement from their homes or forced to become cross-border refugees as a result of climate change factors such as rising sea levels in West Africa and drying river basins in Southern and Eastern Africa. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC), adolescent girls and women are refugees at the highest risk of being trafficked for sexual slavery while in transit to a foreign land and of experiencing gender-based violence while in the refugee camps. Women risk assault at the camps when they venture out of the protected environment in search of water and firewood.  

Social vulnerability - Social vulnerability can come from lower wages, financial insecurity and inequality. In East Africa and Pakistan for example, drought and flooding have impacted farming, respectively. Men have a higher chance of relocating for higher wages than women. Women typically are unable to migrate due to family care-taking commitments.

How can we fix the disproportionate impacts from climate change?

The simple answer is to end all activities that perpetuate climate change. As I’ll explain later, indigenous women and communities in the Global South have centuries worth of ecological knowledge on mitigating some aspects of climate damage and implementing environmental restoration. In an equal spirit of partnership and cooperation, perhaps we can combine this traditional, organic and resourceful knowledge with modern technology for broader application to prevent, solve or restore some of the environmental damage. In any case, here are several more suggestions:

1. Imminent zero emission targets

Immediate action is required to protect women made vulnerable by climate change. Emphasis should be placed on protecting people and planet today, not protecting the future. The greatest concern should be for the people that rely on natural resources, the environment and climate every day to survive. Several of the biggest global zero-emission targets by corporations and nations are set to happen by 2050 but vulnerable people do not have 10, 20 or 30 years to wait. Therefore, global zero-emission targets need to accelerate towards present day, not 2030.

We’re currently overshooting the planet’s resources by 60% each year with regards to production and the earth’s ability to absorb and replenish resources that we consume. Our excessive overconsumption is driven by a few rich countries. The 2030 target has a higher chance of succeeding if we start with the 20 biggest greenhouse gas emitter companies in the world, especially with the participation of the US, China and India.

2. Propagate traditional knowledge and wisdom

Despite vulnerability, women should not only be seen as climate change victims. They have proven to be resourceful agents of adaptation and disaster mitigation. Historically, indigenous women and women from the Global South have an organic knowledge of the ecosystem that empowers them to feed their families and uphold communities in the face of disaster and dwindling resources. International geographer, Hindou Ourmarou Ibrahim says Indigenous women have the knowledge of adapting and restoring the forests after a disaster because indigenous people all over the world are very directly dependent on natural resources for food, medicine, education and of course survival. This way of survival has become extremely difficult for indigenous societies in the wake of widespread ecological changes in their environments resulting from climate change.

Indigenous people see themselves as part of the ecosystem with an unparalleled knowledge of the environment developed over centuries where they have depended directly on the forests for dwelling, food, education, medicine, safety, etc. This relationship has advanced their skills in things like preventing and restoring rain rainforests after burning. grandmother in Pacific will know where to get crops after the hurricane to feed her family. In Chad, nomads when they move with cattle, they know how to restore the ecosystem. When it comes to sustainable business practices, the knowledge of indigenous people is a valuable resource and indigenous people are a valuable partner that can protect environment, business.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Sassan Saatchi

 3. Representation

Every societal challenge we face will be better addressed if women and girls participate equally in both diagnosing and treating the problems. Women are best placed to devise responses that are effective and advance their own rights.

The UN has emphasised the need for a gender-sensitive approach to climate issues. And the 2015 Paris Agreement has specific provision for the inclusion and empowerment of women. Despite this, there is only a 30% representation of women in the average global and national climate negotiating bodies. A research study by the Proceeding of National Academy of Sciences found that only 20% of the scientists that authored the IPCC report were female identifying. It concluded that “the scientific community benefits from incorporating scientists from all genders, including women from the Global South. Therefore, intersectionality across multiple and diverse barriers such as race, nationality, disciplinary affliction and language are crucial to progress.

Image credit: Marc Cooriolesi

4. Policy and decision-making

Policies must be designed to include outcomes that improve the living conditions of women most affected by climate change. On the matter, Former President Jimmy Carter and Karin D. Ryan said, “… women are far too often excluded from decision making at all levels of environmental policy making.” “We have to think bigger, act quicker, and include everyone.” People in leadership positions need to actively do more to ensure girls and women are in leadership positions under equitable circumstances and with gender-responsive outcomes under the climate movement.

Women of the Global South, being the most impacted must also have full participation in top-level decision-making.  The priorities and needs of women must be reflected in planning, development and funding. Fundamental gender issues should be an intrinsic part of policy formation, for instance, equal access to credit resources, training services, tech and education. 

Women should also be part of the decision-making process at national and local levels when it comes to resource allocation for climate change initiatives, gender-sensitive investments in projects for mitigation, sustainable development, capacity-building, technology and adaptation.

In Fiji for example, at the community level, groups constituting and lead by women have enhanced the resilience of market vendors against floods, drought and cyclones.

5. Access to education & tech

In 1856, at a time when the work of female scientists were neither acknowledged nor respected, Eunice Foote managed to become the first scientist to lay the foundation of what we know as the greenhouse gas effect, by highlighting the connection between excessive carbon dioxide and increased atmospheric temperatures. The story of Eunice Foote is a symbolic reminder that many intelligent girls and women just need education and opportunities to enable their capability to contribute to creative solutions that will end the crisis. By ignoring the need to educate women and girls in the Global South, we may have lost countless solutions to the crisis that we will never know of. And we will continue to miss out on potential solutions if we do not take action on this matter. This need to invest in education for this demographic is an urgent matter.

Image credit: Girls Not Brides

Clean energy technologies should be devised and implemented in consultation with local women to reduce harmful emissions whilst aiding their economic productivity and security. Provision should be made for rural communities that don’t have electric power to gain access to affordable renewable solar micro grid energy. This is way more cost effective than coal plants. Access to tech and services can help farmers end food insecurity in their communities. In some instances, tech can potentially broaden the application of the indigenous, ecological climate initiatives.

6. Socioeconomic factors

40% of the poorest households in the world are headed by women. The idea that ending climate change has to undermine the living standards and ambitions of the world’s poorest people is a fallacy. As climate change and poverty are interwoven, we should aspire to have practical solutions to both issues simultaneously by refocusing on the living standards of women in the Global South. According to economic anthropologist, Jason Hickel, there's about 700 billion dollars in debt floating around the global South that needs to be cancelled.

Unsustainable sovereign debt restricts many developing countries from providing adequate support in climate crises. These governments are forced to divert funding from social services to maintain debt repayments to their international creditors. Widespread debt cancellation across the South is needed to get rid of unpayable debts that basically chain global South nations to their creditors instead of directing resources towards environmental restoration and disaster mitigation to save lives and livelihoods. Widespread application of this effort will require the influence and cooperation within the IMF, the World Bank, the Paris Club and the G20.

On a different note, initiatives and bodies that fund climate projects should make efforts to work around social, cultural and economic obstacles that prevent women from receiving such opportunities. A good example of gender-sensitive approach to operations and policies is the Green Climate Fund’s gender policy.  

7. Economic degrowth, decoupling and redistribution

Currently we’re overshooting our planet’s biocapacity by about 60% each year with regards to the earth’s ability to absorb our waste and replenish resources. Excessive overconsumption and the constant pursuit of material economic growth by nations hoping to increase their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is mostly responsible for this. This overshoot is of course accelerating environmental degradation, obliterating biodiversity and furthering climate change which is in turn affecting women.

Perhaps we can stop measuring our economic success by GDP because it doesn’t take ecological damage into account. For instance, the loss or damage to biodiversity, land, trees and other resources. Nor does GDP include domestic contributions largely done by women. If it did, perhaps poverty levels for would be reduced and women might be in better financial positions.  

What if GDP calculations included environmental preservation factors and levels of poverty eradication as a measure for economic success. An option on this pathway might be to look at models for degrowth and decoupling. Economic anthropologist, Jason Hickel talks about ditching our addiction to GDP growth through absolute decoupling of GDP from material use.

Degrowth means a planned economic shift from ecological overshoot to significant reduction in resource use in the Global North economies. The idea to reduce and maintain global resource use at sustainable levels. This post capitalist model means less focus on material growth. With regards to decoupling, economies that can detach environmental degradation while sustaining economic growth and minimising the amount of resources such as fossil fuels and water are described as decoupled. The focus is on growing the economy without the corresponding environmental pressure. It can also be explained as the "equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level" (Schneider et al., 2010). Models like these would diminish the pillaging of natural resources and hence, the negative environmental domino effect on women.

Another solution could be to evolve past capitalism and eradicate poverty simply by redistributing existing yields of economy from the wealthy nations, institutions, or individuals to the poor. We wouldn’t need to plunder the earth for more resources for economic growth to do this. Yet still, it would bridge the poverty divide and give women a fairer chance at thriving in climate damage circumstances and disasters.

♥ Nina Gbor

References:

1. https://www.wecaninternational.org/why-women

2. https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/august-2016/women-grapple-harsh-weather

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51u4JECraLQ

4. https://www.brookings.edu/research/girls-education-in-climate-strategies/

5. https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/womenin-shadow-climate-change

6. https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/03/08/power-structures-gender-make-women-vulnerable-climate-change/

7. https://www.pnas.org/content/115/9/2060

8. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43294221#:~:text=Women%20are%20more%20likely%20than,when%20flooding%20and%20drought%20occur.

9. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/HRAndClimateChange/Pages/GenderResponsiveClimateAction.aspx

10. https://time.com/5739622/women-girls-climate-action/

11. https://www.dw.com/en/climate-induced-sea-level-rise-to-worsen-tsunami-impacts/a-45730449

12. http://thesustainabilityagenda.com/episode-56-interview-dr-jason-hickel-author-divide/

13. file:///C:/Users/ninag/Downloads/9719.pdf

14. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-11-26/climate-change-worse-women/11735842

15. https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/oxfam-international-tsunami-evaluation-summary_3.pdf

16. https://www.greenbiz.com/article/why-economic-degrowth-ethical-imperative

17. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652610000259