Lloyd Mutungwazi
THE traditional concept in Zimbabwe which notes that woman are the owners of crops should be seriously considered in this day and age to circumvent the impasse being caused by gender imbalances and climate change issues between men and woman.
Empowering woman in whatever way should be regarded as one of the panacea to uplift communities economically.
Zimbabwe`s population especially in rural communities is highly depended on subsistence agriculture and women are often acknowledged as owners of crops.
While this ownership exists as matter of culture more has to be done to support and empower women to fully realise and practise all forms of agriculture.
Agriculture in Zimbabwe for some years due to climate change has been negatively impacted thereby rendering woman to bear the brunt.
Climate change, largely attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.
In its worst form climate change has resulted in poor rainfall patterns leading to poor agriculture yields and impoverished society and women suffering the most in trying to make ends meet for their families.
According to Food Agricultural Organisation(FAO)’s Work on Climate Change United Nations Climate Change Conference 201I which says, “it is becoming increasingly clear that the goals of achieving food security, promoting sustainable agriculture (SDG2), and taking climate action (SDG13) are interconnected and need to be addressed in a coordinated way.”
Sustainable goal 13 aims to, take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
Climate change impacts men and women differently, given their different roles and responsibilities at the household and community levels. Women are more exposed and vulnerable to climate change because of their dependence upon climate sensitive activities and natural resources.
Climatologists highlighted that, because of its geographical location Zimbabwe is within areas which are going to get warmer and drier in the coming years, actually it had already started after experiencing continuous droughts in the past couple of years, whereby 2016 become the hottest year recorded in history and consequently the following years have been an increase in number of hit waves.
Due to their responsible roles in household like gathering, producing food, fetching water and sourcing fuel for heating and cooking, Researches indicates that women and young children are more vulnerable to negative impacts of climate change.
Because of climate change, fresh water become a scarce commodity due to continuous droughts. What does that mean for the household? That means mothers, girls and to some extreme cases elderly fragile grandmothers endure long distances to get water for the household while she`s got other jobs that she is doing.
The burden of fetching water for has been a thorny issue woman has to live by while a lot of people depend on dry land agriculture, crops for the past successive years were not doing well in the fields resulting in perennial food insecurity.
When there`s no food people are not happy culminating in one form or the other of domestic violence and women being weaker are always subjected to the losing side.
Apart from continuous droughts, climate change can also lead to continuous floods. However, cultural norms related to gender sometimes limit the ability of women to make quick decisions on whether to move to safer grounds in disaster situations until it is too late.
Similarly, gendered sociocultural ethos does not encourage girls to learn skills such as swimming and tree climbing that help people to survive during floods.
All these put together aims or calls for urgent attention of empowering women so that they can play an undisturbed role mitigating climate change while at the same time contributing to food security of their communities.
The United Nations Climate Change, introduction to gender and climate change document says: “Women commonly face higher risks and greater burdens from the impacts of climate change in situations of poverty, and the majority of the world’s poor are women.”
It further starts that: “Yet, women can (and do) play a critical role in response to climate change due to their local knowledge of and leadership in for example sustainable resource management and/or leading sustainable practices at the household and community level.“
