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Meet Haymar. She’s helping to strengthen women’s roles as risk and resource managers at the frontline of climate change.
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Women are disproportionally facing the impacts of climate change. Temperatures in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) have increased significantly faster than the global average, and are projected to increase by 1–2°C on average by 2050.
Within the context of climate change and male outmigration, the challenges that women in the HKH face are increasing. Changes in the availability of water and ecosystem services means that women have to spend more time collecting water, fodder, and fuelwood. Prolonged droughts harden the soil, add pressure to agricultural irrigation, and oblige households to source irrigation water at night, which in some areas is socially discouraged for women and unsafe due to assault risks or animal attacks.
Women have also shouldered the large burden of labor-intensive farming tasks previously assigned to men, such as threshing, land preparation, seedbed preparation, and woodcutting. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore.
Rural women in the HKH possess critical and valuable mountain-specific knowledge, experience, and technical know-how for sustainable management of agriculture, livestock, and natural resources,2 which needs to be recognized and harnessed for adaptation to climate change. Active participation of women in planning and decision making has been shown to improve the outcome and sustainability of interventions.
It is then essential to enhance women’s contributions to adaptation planning and implementation by formally securing and increasing equal participation in decision-making bodies and by increasing the recruitment of women staff in extension services.
Securing women’s influence and contributions to adaptation also entails creating enabling policies and institutions that reflect women’s new roles and responsibilities. Agricultural extension services, financial services, and adaptation interventions and technologies have to be targeted towards women as users and made accessible irrespective of ownership of land and assets. Additionally, such services need to be sensitive to the changing dynamics of households due to migration by accounting for the specific needs of women, their time constraints, and limited mobility.
This brief is developed based on the results of the Himalayan Climate Change Adaptation Programme (HICAP). HICAP is implemented jointly by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), GRID-Arendal, and the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research-Oslo (CICERO), in collaboration with local partners, and is funded by the Governments of Norway and Sweden. This work was partially supported by core funds of ICIMOD contributed by the governments of Afghanistan, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Norway, Pakistan, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
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