Engendering Climate Change: Learnings from South Asia

Engendering Climate Change: Learnings from South Asia explores the “gendered experiences of climate change” across various landscapes and social contexts in South Asia, and the strategies people use for adapting to environmental changes.This book was released on February 25, 2021, by the UK-based publisher Routledge, and its editors are Amrita Patel (adviser at the government of Odisha’s Department of Women and Child Development), Anjal Prakash (research director and professor at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy in Hyderabad’s Indian School of Business), Asha Hans (professor at Utkal University, Bhubaneshwar) and Nitya Rao (professor at the University of East Anglia, UK).The 262-page book has 11 chapters, contributed by 28 researchers and social scientists. It states that the effects of climate change are experienced differently based on the individual’s social location and exposure to risks, and that such effects aggravate pre-existing socio-economic vulnerabilities.The following are summaries of five of the publication’s chapters, which cover significant aspects of the gendered effects of climate change:Chapter 2: Vulnerabilities of rural women to climate extremes: a case of semi-arid districts in PakistanThis chapter by Islamabad-based researchers Ayesha Qaisrani and Samavia Batool discusses the ways in which women in the semi-arid districts of Pakistan’s Punjab province interact with the environment and natural resources, and the impact climate change has on them. It draws on household surveys and gender-segregated focus group discussions conducted in the rural areas of Dera Ghazi Khan and Faisalabad districts.The study found that women’s vulnerability to climate change depends on such factors as their age, geographic location, position in household and community, control over productive resources, decision-making power and access to opportunities for learning. The chapter states that their vulnerability stems from existing structures of discrimination.Chapter 4: Of Borewells and Bicycles: The gendered nature of water access in Karnataka, South India and its implications for local vulnerabilityThis chapter by Chandni Singh (researcher at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Bangalore) covers the challenges faced by people in Karnataka’s Kolar district in accessing water for daily use. Erratic rainfall, groundwater over-extraction and the erosion of traditional water management structures have compounded the district's water scarcity problem. The author studies the ways in which changes in water supply reconfigure women’s household duties.The findings display a steady shift in usage from traditional water management systems to private resources such as borewells. These shifts – the chapter says – have undermined the natural resource base through groundwater over-extraction, the usage of water-intensive crops and soil degradation. This has affected environmental sustainability in the region, as well as people’s capacity for adapting to changed climate conditions.Chapter 6: Climate change, gendered vulnerabilities and resilience in high mountain communities: The case of Upper Rasuwa in Gandaki River Basin, Hindu Kush HimalayasThis chapter’s authors are Kathmandu-based Deepak Dorje Tamang, who has worked with several organisations in the fields of development and environment, and Pranita Bhushan Udas, a researcher at Thompson Rivers University in Canada.It studies the effects of climate change in the daily lives of people in the high mountain villages of Nepal’s Rasuwa district, where increasing temperatures and changing rain patterns are disrupting crop cycles...