mandira lamichhane dhimal

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Gender Differentiated Health Impacts of Environmental and Climate Change in Nepal International Conference on Climate Change Innovation and Resilience for Sustainable Livelihood, 12-14 January 2015, Kathmandu, Nepal Mandira Lamichhane Dhimal, PhD Student, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Email: [email protected]

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Page 1: Mandira lamichhane dhimal

Gender Differentiated Health Impacts of Environmental and Climate Change in Nepal

International Conference on Climate Change Innovation

and Resilience for Sustainable Livelihood, 12-14 January

2015, Kathmandu, Nepal

Mandira Lamichhane Dhimal,

PhD Student, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Email: [email protected]

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Outline of Presentation

Introduction

Rationale of study

Study area

Type of study

Search strategy

Results

Conclusion

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Introduction

• Nepal is one of the most vulnerable mountainous country to climate change

• Most vulnerable sectors identified in Nepal’s National Adaptation Programme of Action to climate change (NAPA) 2010 include agriculture, forestry, water and energy, public health, urbanization and infrastructure, climate induce disaster and gender as cross-cutting issue (MoE 2010)

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Rationale of Study

• The impacts of climate change will not be

homogeneously distributed across the

geographical regions and socio-economics groups

since the poorest countries and communities will

be more vulnerable (IPCC, 2007)

• Recent debates have also emerged indicating that climate change is not gender neutral

(Dankelman, 2010, Denton, 2004)

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Rationale of Study

• Environmental and climate change impacts on human health are different for men and women because of their different social roles and responsibilities, multiple forms of discrimination by laws, social institutions, religions, and attitudes

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Study Area

• Nepal is not only rich in geo-physical and biological diversity but also in socio-cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity despite its small territory of only 147,181 square kilometer

• According to the latest censes 2011, Nepal has a total population of 26.49 million with 125 ethnic groups and 123 language spoken as mother tongue.

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Socio-economic status

• Socio-economic status of Nepalese women is lower than that of their male counterpart and status of Nepalese women is observable in different sphere of the society

(CBS 2012)

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Status of Nepalese women

• Women constitute more than half of the total population in Nepal, only 20 % of the households have the ownership of their land and house registered in the name of a female member of the household

• Female headed households in the country is only 26% and the literacy rate of the female population only 57% compared to 75% in males (CBS 2012)

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• Study type: This is a review paper

• Search data base: Articles Published inPubMed Central and Google Scholar

• Research reports available in electronic version were also reviewed.

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Result

• A growing number of climate change studies and adaptation projects in Nepal, only few have examined the gender and cultural dynamic of the adaptation process

• Women are responsible for collecting firewood and fetching water in rural areas, the shortage of those resources induce by environmental and climate change increase work load on their shoulders including health impacts

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Gender, Food and Health

• Gender issues play an important role in food security in Nepal

• For example, intra-household inequality in food distribution was found in Hindu communities of lowland Nepal (Sudo et al., 2006)

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Gender, Food and Health

• The larger consumption of marketed luxury foods by men outside their house is a significant factor for gender inequality in nutrient intakes in the lowlands of Nepal (Sudo et al., 2009)

• Maternal and child malnutrition may be further aggravated by environmental and climate change as erratic rainfall reduces food production.

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Gender, Disaster and Health

• Women are more victims in disasters

• For example, during the severe 1993 flood in Sarlahi district, the flood related mortality was higher for girls (13.1 per 1000) compared to boys (9.4 per 1000), and for women (6.1 per 1000) compared to men (4.1 per 1000)(Pradhan et al., 2007)

• This example suggests that, whenever climate change manifests itself in weather extremes and disasters in the lives of women and men, the impact will be higher on females compared to males.

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Gender, Environmental Degradation and Health

• Environmental degradation induces temporary or permanent migration, the outcome of which depends on the degree of vulnerability.

• In Nepal, as more men migrate from mountainous and rural areas to newly developed cities in search of employment, more women are becoming the heads of households with an increasing workload on their shoulders (UNFPA, 2009).

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Gender, Environmental Degradation and Health

• It can be predicted that environmental and climate change impacts induce more out-migration of males, exerting workload and health risks to the women left behind in rural Nepal.

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Gender, Water resources and Health

• Depletion of water resources causes serious problems to women particularly in sanitation, health and safety.

• For example, men often consider water shortages for irrigation as a serious problem while women consider household water access for drinking, cooking food and sanitation as a serious problem (ICIMOD, 2009).

• For women, girls and children, water shortage means health issues and acute labour burdens because they are primarily responsible for collecting and carrying water from long distances on difficult mountain terrain.

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Conclusion

• Although the differential effects of climate change on public health according to gender are increasingly recognized as being a consequence of socially constructed roles and responsibilities and adaptation capacities, the gender aspect is still an under-represented or non-existing variable in research and policy documents in the field of climate change and public health in Nepal.

• In this context, research must integrate a gender perspective to have a better understanding of the multidimensional impacts of climate change in Nepal.

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Acknowledgements

• Prof. Dr. Birgit Blättel-Mink, Goethe University

• PD. Dr. Diana Hummel, ISOE/Goethe University

• Dr. Ulrich Kuch, Goethe University

• Meghnath Dhimal, NHRC/ Goethe University

• Internation Promotion College (IPC), Goethe University

• German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)

• Conference Organizing Committee

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Thank You