South Africa

Grassroots Women's Conference on Climate Change

In the lead up to COP17 in Durban, GenderCC Southern Africa has been leading the preparation of the Grassroots Women's Conference on Climate Change which will take place in Durban from the 24-25 November, 2011.

To get more information, click here.

Raising Awareness, Building Capacity, and Influencing Policy

Climate change is expected to affect many sectors of the natural and man-made sectors of the environment in South Africa, and many of them are of particular relevance to the work and livelihoods of women. 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. Agriculture may become less viable.

As it is, in many regions of South Africa, particularly in the provinces of North-West, Limpopo, farming activities take place on the edge of survival. 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. The annual flooding of the informal settlements in the Cape Flats is a case in point.

Therefore, GenderCC initiated a pilot project on Gender and Climate Change: Raising Awareness, Building Capacity, and Influencing Policy in January 2010. The project focuses on working with women's groups in rural communities of the North-West, Limpopo, Western Cape and some peri-urban parts of Gauteng province.

The overall goal of the pilot project is to contribute to integrating gender in climate change related policy making and adaptation strategies in South Africa. Focus areas are

• awareness-raising on the expected consequences and risks of  climate change;

• documentation of women's experiences of climate change impacts on agriculture, water, housing, fisheries and related livelihood issues, as well as

• feeding into the process of developing adaptation policies and strategies for local, provincial  and national government.

Dorah Lebelo, steering group member and coordinator of GenderCC's project in South Africa, joined forces with other experts and organisations to found GenderCC Southern Africa (SA), and introduced it as one of Southern Africa’s leading associations on Gender and Climate Change.

For more information please contact Dorah Lebelo, Coordinator of GenderCC-Southern Africa, and Focal Point Africa.

Capacity Building Workshops

Through a partnership with Malibongwe- a South African women’s development organisation- GenderCCSA held 14 workshops in Gauteng’s peri-urban and rural areas as well as in the Western Cape, with 13 to 150 women and youth participating. 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.

At one of the workshops, fisherwomen in Ocean View, Western Cape shared their climate change related experiences at the sea, i.e. how some fish are migrating due to changing water tempertaures. This often means that their fishing season has become shorter and they face the challenge of government regulated fishing quotas. The fisherwomen approached the government to ask for an extension of the season so that they could get good quality fish.
Due to fishing quotas, the women are not able to get casual employment between fishing seasons when they often have no other income. The Fisherwomen lack a Pension Fund, Maternity benefits and Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF). There is a need to engage the government on how to integrate self employed women into the system.

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, availability of natural resources including fisheries, etc. Their situation is 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 areas with a high rate of informal settlements.

Two workshop reports are available for download in the box to the right.

In 2011, GenderCCSA already started to carry out a second round of capacity building workshops. In Gauteng province, the focus will be on introducing income-generating activities related to Renewable Energies together with partner organisations (making hot boxes from fabric off-cuts and recycled polysterene containers; sale of solar cookers, mobile solar water heaters, solar home-lighting systems; Vesto stoves, etc). At the same time, GenderCC Southern Africa will help women’s cooperatives for recycling and organic food production to scale up their operations by introducing processing of waste to make crafts using recyclables, grow and process herbs & medicinal plants, make dried and pickled vegetables, etc to be able to diversify their income.

Developing policy recommendations and feeding them into the policy process in South Africa and the UNFCCC

Together with other South African women’s and gender organisations, GenderCCSA has also been working on influencing a National Climate Change Response Policy which is still being developed. After information sharing sessions, strategy meetings and conferences a joint submission on the policy was presented. These efforts are showing to bear fruits as a recently released Green Paper on Climate Change now also mentions “gender” and “women”, thus incorporating some of the recommendations made by GenderCCSA and its partners.
In early February GenderCCSA published its Gender Review of the National Climate Change Response Green Paper 2010. Although the Green Paper presents a promising start to the long term process of dealing with climate change but fails to incorporate a gender focus. Gender-blind planning tends to assume that all people are equal and that the planning process itself is free of conflict.
Some of the key criticisms are:
- The Adaptation Scenarios discussed in the Green Paper need to re-frame the problem as being about human behavioural change.
- The Green Paper should not only recognise “the requirement of social equity and economic sustainability… “, but also specify that programs and interventions that arise from policy should be gender sensitive.
- The participation of women has to be expressly stated in the policy principles.