Gender-based loss and damage from climate change

As the world prepares for the next (29th) Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, taking place in Azerbaijan next week, there is no better time to lay out some home truths about the risks women and girls face as a result of exacerbating climate change. This is because last year at COP28, countries agreed to operationalize the Loss and Damage Fund, which will provide financial assistance to climate-vulnerable countries and marginalized communities.

Indubitably, the world has come to realize that each gender experiences the impacts of climate change differently. Women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than men – primarily as they constitute the majority of the world’s poor and are more dependent for their livelihood on natural resources that are threatened by climate change.

Loss and damage refer to the negative effects of climate change that occur despite mitigation and adaptation efforts. The term ‘loss and damage’ was formally recognized in 2013 at the 19th Conference of the Parties (Cop19) in Warsaw, where the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage was established. According to a 2023 study by Rebecca Newman and Ilan Noy, entitled, “The global costs of extreme weather that are attributable to climate change,” between 2000 and 2019, the world suffered at least $2.8 trillion in loss and damage from climate change – costing around $16 million per hour.

The loss and damage concept falls into two categories: Economic loss and damage (negative impacts where the costs are quantifiable, such as damage to infrastructure or reduced crop yields), and Non-economic loss and damage (negative impacts that are not easily traded in markets, such as culture, ecosystem services and displacement). There are gendered economic and non-economic losses. Some of these gender dimensions include, for instance, situations where women have reduced access to communal ‘environmental services’ due to increased competition with commercial businesses and landowners, or owing to traditions and social norms.
Furthermore, there are plenty of intangibles, which, without a good baseline, it is hard to count these climate change impacts and loss and damage. For example, according to UNICEF, around 200 million hours are spent by women and girls fetching water every day, and climate change-induced droughts make it longer and add to existing risks of violence against these women.

What is more, social disruptions and physical and mental health impact of climate change affect women more via Increased economic-social stresses, increased mental and physical health problems during pregnancy and after childbirth; and gender-based violence, including trafficking and modern slavery.

Sometimes it hides in plain view. Earlier this year, in February, some Port Harcourt housewives stormed the office of the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company to protest the poor power supply, which they claimed had made their husbands unable to perform their matrimonial duties in the bedroom. Marching like soldiers with placards displaying their grouse, the protesters had barricaded the entrance of the PHEDC, wailing that their husbands barely had time for them at night due to the intense heat caused by the power outage.
The report painted a vivid picture of seething conflict brought about by incessant power outages in urban Rivers. But for those who could read between the lines, there is a more insidious culprit behind the scenes.
A mother of two, interviewed in the PUNCH report, said, “I stay on Dim Street. This matter don tire me. I’m a married woman with two kids and I want to complete am three, but no opportunity. When you want to touch oga him go complain say heat too much. Na that side be my problem o because I don’t want another woman to collect my husband. That is why we are telling the government and PHEDC to help us. They (husbands) go want to do their thing outside. Then when they return late and you touch them, they will tell you to give them space. If you touch them again, they will tell you to move because the heat is too much. I cannot take it. That is why we are calling on the PHEDC and government to help give us light, especially because we pay our bills every month.”

There is no need for a wild goose chase; climate change is to blame for this domestic conflict dynamic. The power distribution companies have little to do with it. For one, Nigerians are no strangers to power outages, whether total or partial. We have already suffered a national power grid collapse more than four times in one month. As it stands, Nigerians are more likely to be shocked if power is supplied for a full twenty-four hours, than be surprised that it is not seen in a week. Darkness and epileptic power supply is the reality of both urban and rural Nigeria.

Someone might ask, why now? Why did the outspoken Port Harcourt wives take to the streets like a bunch of Aluta youths? The answer is in climate science. This year, 2024, is about to go down in history as one of the hottest in living memory. This is because it has already been established that this year’s summer was the hottest on record. According to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, August 2024 set a new monthly temperature record, capping Earth’s hottest summer since global records began in 1880.

Aside from this report, we, in Nigeria, have our way of knowing, from direct experience. Indeed, this year’s heat went off the hinges. There is no part of the country that did not feel the blaze. Generally known as the heat period, which follows the harmattan months of December and January, February and March usually come with a dose of sweltering heat. But this year’s ‘heat period’ was like a blanket of cauldron. There was so much heat that even the air conditioners changed their anthem.

Those who live in areas with little or no ventilation saw worse. This is why one would not be surprised at the Port Harcourt ‘no-power-for-the-other-room’ protest. According to the PUNCH report, the angry women came from the Mile 2 and Mile 3 axis of Diobu, a densely populated area in the state capital with poor urban planning. Checks showed that most of the residential buildings in the area lacked adequate ventilation. Indeed, anyone who had been to these mentioned areas could relate.

The houses are packed together like sandwiches, to the extent that in some places, a building cannot boast of a five feet gap between its window to the one in the adjacent compound.
There are also plain bad cases. The sexual violence suffered by women and girls who were displaced as a result of the deadly floods which ravaged about 30 out of the 36 states of Nigeria a couple of years ago was horrifying. It was reported that over 19 young girls were raped and many others molested in the camps where they took refuge from the floods that displaced them from their homes.

This is why I propose that Nigeria expand its Nationally Determined Contributions to incorporate a gender-based loss and damage component. Most NDCs mentioning loss and damage highlight experiences of economic and physical losses and refer to sectors like agriculture, fishery, tourism, infrastructure, human settlements, and energy systems. It is time to integrate the gender experience. And it is in our interest to join other developing and vulnerable climes to mainstream this relevant paradigm. The Women Environmental Programme should lead the way as it already achieved a milestone by championing the launch of the National Action Plan on Gender and Climate Change in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment, in 2021.