Women's Rights Remain at the Core of Solving the Population Crisis. Image Credit: Randy Olson.
At the end of October, the UN has projected that the world’s population will reach 7 billion, a scary milestone amidst increasing global political and economic instability. More people will only place increased pressure on our environment, on the world’s habitats, forests, and resources such as water. But how does investing in women’s rights tie into slowing the world’s population growth?
Organizations such as the Guttmacher Institute and Population Action International (PAI) state that the number seven billion reflects the urgent need for people to be able to exercise their right to determine the size and spacing of their families. However, the majority of women and couples, especially in the developing world, are still unable to control their fertility.
In fact, experts estimate that there are currently 215 million women around the world who wish to either delay or prevent pregnancy but lack access to contraceptives. Guttmacher states that these women account for more than 80% of all unintended pregnancies in the developing world every year.
A few weeks ago, as oil kept gushing from the Gulf Coast waters, Obama let us know that he talks to the experts so he “knows whose ass to kick” for the disaster that is the BP oil spill.
The media in the US and cable news talking heads mouthed off not on the gazillion gallons of oil that is still oozing from deep inside the ocean, but on how controversial Obama’s “ass-kicking” statement was. The focus of the national discussion was not finding a way to stop the spillage immediately, but on the whole “angry black-man” image Obama must be careful to maneuver around because Barack just can’t afford to be seen losing his cool with his skin color.
Lots of Hype Around Obama's Oval Office Speech, But Very Little Substance. Image Credit: Flickr
Fast-forward to this week and the main question I have, especially after his Oval Office speech, is not about Obama behaving like an “angry black man”, but becoming an old, white man! An old, white man with gray hair and big, floppy ears, one which we all knew as President for the last eight years. The question on my mind was: “When did Obama become George W. Bush?”
Not only did Obama respond to the anxiety of a nation with what else but a speech, it was not even a good one. In fact, while during his candidate days Obama’s oratory skills could have you on your feet about whatever Obama told you to get on your feet about, the dryness of his speech on the BP oil spill almost put me to sleep. Until that is, I heard my TV utter these words from the President:
..Abroad, our brave men and women in uniform are taking the fight to al-Qaida, and tonight, I’ve returned from a trip to the Gulf Coast to speak with you about the battle we’re waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens.
Is it just me or is something about this quote so Bush-era?Are we talking about the oil spill in the Gulf Coast or the war Afghanistan?
There was something about this analogy that just sounded so wrong and out of context. BP is responsible for the drilling that caused this oil spill, so why are we talking about this as though we have been attacked? Why are we comparing it with war?
Obama’s statement suggested that the oil had attacked us. The oil was the terrorist. Obama was vilifying Mother Nature and making it sound as though we were the victims.
Two Months And Counting: The BP Oil Spill in the Gulf Coast. Image Credit: Flickr
But really it was the other way around. I could not articulate all the things that were so wrong with this statement until I read this piece in the Huffington Post by veteran journalist, Robert Scheer. It lays outs how what we have placed upon nature’s ecological balance with this oil spill is nothing short of an assault on nature:
The oil was minding its own business until some multinational corporations, enabled by a dysfunctional government regulatory regime, decided to wage war on the ecological balance of the oceans by employing technology that they were not prepared to control. Cleaning up the oil spill mess we made by raping the environment to satiate our consumer gluttony is not a glorious battle against evil but rather obligatory penance for the profound error of our ways.
Scheer asks how we can even attempt to place the blame on nature by asking:
You wound Mother Nature by punching a hole deep in her pristine ocean where you have no business going and when she bleeds uncontrollably you dare blame her for the assault?
Scheer also points out that all this is coming from a President who just before this disaster happened, had given oil companies the go ahead to “pillage in the deep seas at will.”
Pelicans Getting Stuck in the Blankets of Oil. The Environmental Damage is Immeasurable. Image Credit: Flickr
Off-shore drilling and Obama? See, I told you Barack was turning into George W.!
But enough of bashing the President and his speeches. The important thing is that during the worst environmental disaster to ever hit the US, what people really craved from Obama’s speech were solutions and leadership to get us to those solutions. Big hype over some fancy speech from some fancy room in the White House is just not going to be enough. We need concrete, real action steps we can take now because the oil is still gushing into our oceans. It hasn’t stopped and we don’t really know how to make it stop. And Obama sitting at his desk in the Oval Office failed to offer any ideas.
The good news however is that Rachel Maddow did! And she let us know exactly how we can solve this crisis. As cable tv pundits had a field day panning and bashing Obama’s speech, Maddow went in a different direction and offered her take on the speech she wishes Obama had delivered.
It really is worth taking the ten minutes to watch Maddow deliver her compelling and passionate speech which almost makes up for Obama’s lack of fervor:
Someone should make sure the President and his advisers are listening to Rachel Maddow, and taking note. Because frankly Mr. President, the time has come to go beyond “kicking some ass”.
I grew up knowing my country was drowning. My childhood memories are full of flashing images of annual monsoon rains making rivers out of our roads, lakes out of our rice paddy fields, washing away farmers’ harvests, pushing the rural population into our already overpopulated capital city. Of course the yearly floods alternated with even greater natural disasters- cyclones, tornadoes, you name it growing up I saw it. The rumor in the playground was that in twenty years Bangladesh would be completely underwater.
Today that statement is no longer a rumor, but very much a reality. According to the UK’s Guardian publication, Bangladesh makes up not even 10% of the land mass of South Asia , but over 90% of the region’s water passes through it. Experts state that Bangladesh ‘s shifting and intensifying weather patterns are making a bad situation worse. The case of Bangladesh shows us that climate change is real, and is already impacting populations and ecosystems around the world.
But the case of Bangladesh shows us something more: That it’s the world’s poor who will feel the impact of this change the hardest. And who exactly are the poor? Women, who make up approximately 65% of the world’s poorest populations.
Because of the traditional domestic responsibilities which fall on women and girls, experts state that climate change is having a disproportionate affect them. Women are the primary caretakers of families, primary managers of everything from food production to water management in their households. As UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) puts it, women are the ones who cook, clean, and farm for their families, in addition to providing health care and hygiene. Women are not only on the “frontlines” of climate change, but their work and relationship with the environment is so intimate that their experience with it changing is often just as personal.
Let’s look at the issue of water for example, a natural resource especially sensitive to climate change, and one that traditionally women are the managers of in their households. According to UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women), women and girls on average travel 10-15 kilometers, spending up to 8 hours a day gathering water for their families. Droughts caused by climate change are shrinking up and eliminating existing water supplies, making the distance to walk even longer. Because of the distances women and girls have to walk to fetch water for their families, millions of girls around the world are unable to go to school. Imagine that. The average person would never make the connection between accessing water and girls’ education. Yet it exists.
As the gendered impact of climate change becomes increasingly palpable, my question is- where are the feminist voices? Why are more women’s rights advocates and activists not picking up and rallying around this issue vigorously? Everyday you see articles in the news, but where is the real action? More importantly, where is the outrage? Just yesterday I read an article in the LA Times talking about how the newest kind of refugee is not from war, but from of climate change. They are called “climate refugees” and the LA Times states that almost 10million people around the world have been forced to leave their homes for “reasons ranging from rising (or falling) sea levels, lack of rain, and desertification.”
Back home in Bangladesh , the list of innovative ideas to combat and more importantly, adapt to climate change is endless. International aid organizations are working with local NGOs to build “floating villages,” clinics on boats, and help women educate their communities about securing flood and cyclone shelters.
But there has to be more. Women may be in the frontlines of climate change, but they are not only its victims. Their personal and intimate experience of the harsh impacts of climate change means that within them lies very real solutions to combat it. If the voices from the women’s rights movement don’t pick up this issue, loudly, clearly and unanimously, climate change will not only drown out countries, but the agents of change, women, with it. And that is simply not an option.
It is the responsibility of the women’s movement, both here in the US and abroad, to make the issue of our altering environment, our issue, otherwise everybody loses. Climate change is a human rights issue, but its very obvious gendered impacts make it a women’s rights issue.
