]]>
Over time, that will mean one third of the dangerous fuel-gathering trips to the countryside, one third the loss of trees, one third the smoke inhaled by Dawelbiat and her young ones, one third the air emissions. And now that she is buying her fuel in the marketplace, she’s spending a third of what she used to and has more money to feed and clothe and educate her children.
Her stove—known as the Berkeley-Darfur Stove—is the brainchild of the Darfur Stoves Project (DSP), a US-based Oxfam partner organization that draws on the work of engineers at the Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory in California. DSP worked with women in Darfur to develop a stove suited to their needs that would use less than half the fuel of a traditional three-stone fireplace and significantly less than other stove models that are available locally. The result is a portable 12-sided metal stove - around 12” in every dimension - that is as advanced in its design as it is simple in its construction. And whose frugal output is a match for the scarce resources of the Darfur camps.
On a day in December, while her daughter and a friend play on a mat behind her and a neighbor holds her ten-month-old baby, Dawelbiat sits down on a low stool next to her stove and begins to cook her family’s mid-morning meal. The kitchen is a low mud-brick building, shadowy but brightly lit where the sun slips in through the doorway.
She places a pot of water on the stove, adds a few pieces of wood to the firebox, and sets the fire going with a match. When the water boils, she sprinkles ground millet into the pot and stirs it with a long, carved wooden stick until she’s created a thick porridge—known as asida—which she sets aside in a bowl. The next course is mullah, a soup made of onions fried in oil with dried meat, crushed tomato, okra, and spices. And finally, tea. In the space of an hour, Dawelbiat and her fistful of kindling have produced a meal for six.
At the compound of Oxfam partner SAG (Sustainable Action Group) in nearby El Fasher, the usual sounds of a Darfur town—the roar of vehicles, the clatter of grain mills, and the bleats and brays of animals—is replaced with the banging of metal on metal. Here in a building sided and thatched with sorghum stalks, eight men from the Al Salaam camp work at tables assembling Berkeley-Darfur stoves. They smile at visitors and get back to work, bending and hammering metal into its designated size and shape. To the list of benefits of the stoves can be added one more: employing survivors of the conflict, who—uprooted from their homes and farms—struggle to find any work at all.
So far, SAG and the workers from the camps have produced and distributed around 9,000 stoves. With enough funds, they’ll create 15,000 stoves in 2011. Some will go to the camps, others to rural areas hard up against the deadly combination of deforestation and armed conflict.
Dawelbiat is shy with strangers, but her praise for the stove is effusive all the same. “The stove is good because it’s efficient and saves fuel and cooks faster. It’s better at keeping the kitchen clean, and there is less smoke. You can easily cook with it and easily move it around. Even a small portion of fuel can make your food.”
“More people should have these stoves,” she concludes.
It is a point that no one argues.
]]>"El Salvador is a country with one of the highest rates of femicide (the killing of women) in the world, according to the United Nation’s Population Fund,” said Carolina Castrillo, director of Oxfam America’s Central America, Mexico, and Caribbean regional office. In fact, over the past three years, the number of femicides in El Salvador has increased from 28 to 46 a month.
That is one reason why, on Nov. 25, legislators voted to approve (by a 75-9 margin) the Special Integral Law for a Life Free of Violence for Women. "The penalty for femicide will be between 30 and 50 years of imprisonment," said Mariela Pinto, chair of the Committee for Family, Women and Children’s Affairs in the legislative assembly. The new law also provides penalties—such as fines and jail sentences—for other crimes, such as pornography, psychological abuse, and negative or hateful messages.
An important and innovative aspect of this new law is that it addresses gender-based violence from a prevention perspective and broadens the definition beyond domestic violence. (Gender-based violence also can occur in public spaces, workplaces, etc.) Effective January 1, 2012, the law will be binding in the public sphere, such as ministries and the media. This means government institutions, such as the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Health, as well the Public Attorney’s office and the National Prosecutor’s office will be bound by law to do their part in the prevention of violence against women and children.
"Some institutions already are taking steps in this direction," says Mélida Guevara, program coordinator for Oxfam America’s gender program in the region. "For our Campaign for the Prevention of Gender Violence [an initiative of Oxfam America in collaboration with nine Salvadoran organizations], the Ministry of Education is a very important ally, in incorporating gender-based violence and its prevention within school curricula.”
“We also signed an agreement with the Sub-Ministry of Local Development,” she continues. “This coming year, we will bring theater and performance art, as well as training in basic gender concepts and the prevention of gender-based violence, to communities within which the ministry already works. But it takes much more coordination effort and work to change habits, roles, and beliefs. If we talk about a culture of prevention, we talk about changing the way we have been doing things for decades, even centuries. And that entails a long process, in which we all have to do our share.”
The new law is a product of two different proposals, one of which the female assembly members authored. These members participated in an intensive certificate course on gender-based violence, another initiative of the Campaign for the Prevention of Gender Violence. The Feminist Alliance, an alliance of several Salvadoran feminist organizations in El Salvador, authored the other proposal. The assemblywomen’s proposal stressed prevention; the proposal from the Feminist Alliance stressed penalization. The proposals complemented each other and came to make one multi-faceted law—a major victory for Salvadorans.
“This is a remarkable achievement,” said Guevara. “The Campaign’s certificate course for the assemblywomen, which resulted in the proposal, dates from 2008. It required constant work with the assemblywomen and their advisors from all the different parties. First, the women themselves had to be sensitized and find each other in a cause that goes beyond ideology. Then, as the course went on, we could see them become more and more committed, and start to advocate for gender equity as part of all the government bodies in which they take part.”
Over, the coming year, Oxfam America and its local partners will be among many civil society organizations working on a widespread education effort to teach Salvadorans, civil society, and government players about the law’s contents and the sort of conditions that need to be created to make effective implementation possible.
]]>Celia Candiotti works as a security guard at the main municipal office of Huamanga, the capital of Ayacucho province in Peru. She’s tall and thin, and has a narrow face and severe eyes. She’s pleasant, but professional, as you would expect from a uniformed officer who commands respect.
Several years ago she was at work when she saw a 12-foot-high wall of water, mud, boulders, and cars flooding down one of the main streets in the city.
Cadiotti ran straight into the maelstrom to rescue people.
“You can’t fight your destiny,” Candiotti says, citing her training as a nurse and a firefighter. “I didn’t even think, I just responded -- I waded right in.” She rescued several injured people before she found a young girl, perhaps seven years old, trapped in a car. “She said to me, ‘I’m gonna die.’ I said ‘no’. But the water was coming in the window fast.”
That day the landslide killed about a dozen people, but thanks to Candiotti, that one young girl survived. The Ministry of Women gave Candiotti an award for heroism.
Candiotti noticed something then: people lined the street, horrified by the disaster, but did not help. She remembered this later when she went to a training session for the staff at the municipal office. The topic was how to understand and reduce racism and discrimination at their work, so they could ensure equal access to the services citizens need from the local government.
When it came to the pervasive racism in Ayacucho, Candiotti was much like the bystanders she saw on the street that day: concerned, but not sure what to do.
The training session was organized by APRODEH, a human rights group Oxfam has been funding to work on ways to reduce racism and discrimination in Peru. The organization led efforts to help local governments pass new laws – ordinances – that require equal access to services, equal treatment by officials, for everyone, whatever their gender or ethnicity, whatever language they speak, however they dress, and whatever their age or appearance.
Addressing the racism and discrimination directed toward indigenous people, women, and handicapped people is an important component of Oxfam’s work to reduce barriers that keep people in poverty. And training for municipal workers, who play an essential role in helping citizens gain access to crucial services from local government, is one way APRODEH and Oxfam are working to changing the way people think about each other—and themselves--in Ayacucho.
For Candiotti, a woman who grew up on the coast in a family of Italian immigrants, understanding and confronting the racism and discrimination she could see in Ayacucho since she moved here eight years ago is a tremendous blessing. She says APRODEH’s training helped her and others understand that all people have basic rights. “People from the highlands are not any less than me, and we all have to learn to relate to each other. I could see the changes in the staff here,” she says, standing in her uniform near the front of the municipal hall. “We left the training calm and happy, a joy has taken over us.”
Now, Candiotti says the staff of the municipality behaves completely differently. Whereas before the indigenous staff would be reluctant to even speak Quechua, the local indigenous language, they are now happy to help indigenous people who come to the office no matter what language they can speak. “When people come and inquire in Quechua,” she says, “we all speak Quechua now, our attitude has really changed. We used to make fun of an elderly señora dressed in traditional clothes, but not anymore.”
When she’s at work, Candiotti wears a uniform slightly too large for her slim, athletic frame, with a cap pulled low over her forehead. She’s got a serious look about her, but when she describes the changes in the staff attitudes her eyes get a little wet.
Near the front entrance, she meets with some indigenous, Quechua speaking women under an arch leading in to the massive, Spanish colonial courtyard. Her warmth comes through as she answers questions, gives direction, and laughs at a joke.
Candiotti acknowledges that perhaps some destinies can change: “There’s always been discrimination,” she says near her post at the front entrance. “But little by little, this is changing.”
]]>There’s a poster in the office of APRODEH in Ayacucho that depicts a group of highland indigenous people riding on a bus. Each passenger is regarding the others with suspicion: “I don’t like the look of that one,” one is thinking. Another thought bubble over the head of a fellow passenger says, “that cholo might rob me,” using a derogatory term for an indigenous person.
It’s a realistic scene, says Wilfredo Ardito, a 45-year-old attorney who APRODEH’s work on racism and discrimination in Ayacucho. He says Peru is an extremely ethnically diverse country, but years of racist attitudes towards the native people have resulted in the indigenous people themselves rejecting their own identity, refusing to speak their own languages, and turning their backs on their own culture. “They even use derogatory words against people like themselves,” Ardito says. “People lack self esteem, they respect white people more than themselves.” This is one of the key aspects of APRODEH’s training: helping people accept who they are, and to be proud of themselves. “Part of the process of eliminating racism is accepting your own face,” Ardito says.
APRODEH teaches staff at municipal government about discrimination and racism as a means to raise awareness and encouraging local communities to pass local ordinances to promote equality as part of a comprehensive effort to fight poverty in Ayacucho “We know it is more effective to have a local law,” Ardito says. “Most people don’t know about the national laws, not the police, not the judges.” One strategy that has proven effective is to work directly with elected regidoros, sort of like county commissioners, who represent specific constituencies in municipal affairs.
Socorro Arce, 45, is a regidora in Huamanga who helped organize a training session for all the female elected politicians in the department of Ayacucho – about 113 of them. This led to a network that is helping to promote women leaders, a space where Arce says “we can exchange ideas, and talk about human rights and gender, and we support new ideas like the ordinances, so we can reduce discrimination against people who speak Quechua, have a different religion, or women who are pregnant.”
Arce started fighting against injustice while in a religious high school, which she says was run poorly and discriminated against the darker skinned, poorer girls. “That’s why I became a leader -- the girls were really submissive, and I started to change that mentality,” she says. Arce was expelled twice, once for leading a strike against the school by students objecting to corporal punishment. “They would make us stand facing a wall with our hands on our heads for hours, it was like torture. I told them, ‘If you keep punishing us like this, we won’t go to class’,” she says she announced one day. “I was about 14 or 15 then.”
When APRODEH was looking for an ally to promote local ordinances, program officer Arturo Lopez decided to approach Arce because “she’s really accessible, I called her and she said ‘come on over,’ and she helped negotiate with the other women leaders.” He called the right person, it seems. Starting in her high school days, Arce says struggling against injustice was always high on her agenda. “In all the positions I have held as a leader, I have always spoken out against discrimination.”
Lopez and Arce are an unlikely pair. He is soft spoken, she is an aggressive talker, an avid networker. “I really like Arturo,” Arce says over a glass of fruit juice overlooking the central plaza in Huamanga. “He’s really calm. I’m more like an earthquake.”
Together they convened the women leaders, held a training session, and these women then went out and helped their communities pass four new ordinances in Ayacucho APRODEH says are fighting back against racism and discrimination at the local level.
]]>Near the city of Huamanga is a smaller municipality called Jesus Nazareno. After the city of Huamanga passed a new ordinance to address racism and discrimination, Jesus Nazareno took steps to do the same in 2008.
Jesus Nazareno is a community founded by people fleeing the violence of the 1980s guerilla war. This conflict originated in the highlands of Ayacucho, and indigenous people there suffered terribly at the hands of both the Shining Path rebels and the Peruvian military. Many were survivors of horrible human rights violations. The founders of Jesus Nazareno had the protection of human rights firmly in the foundation of their new community.
“We took this initiative to create a non-discrimination ordinance to counter the prejudice against campesinos, rural people, even disabled people,” says Nancy Contreras, who works for the Jesus Nazareno government. She says the central message the municipality wants to send with the ordinance is that everyone is equal in Jesus Nazareno. “We are all the same here, poor or not poor, disabled or not.” Contreras says Jesus Nazareno wanted to take measures that would help people gain equal access to those things local government does that can help people climb out of poverty: education, health care, and assistance for disabled people and the elderly.
At a meeting of staff, regidoras and regidoros, and volunteers at the municipal office, the scope of the ordinance starts to become clear:
On the other side of the city of Huamanga, San Juan Bautista developed an anti-discrimination ordinance later the same year. APRODEH helped train staff at the city hall, and aired radio spots to teach citizens about the new ordinance. Since then, one regidora named Magaly Bautista, 28, says she has seen significant differences in the ways people relate to each other in the town since she took up her elected post four years ago. “They’ve changed the way they relate to people,” she says. “I’ve seen changes in people’s conduct; it’s very fulfilling to be a part of it.”
Bautista says the new ordinance has created some positive things for her personally. Coming in to office as a 24-year-old, and a representative from the opposition political party, she says, “I felt discriminated against because I am young…all the people in power were over 40, and they always put me last.”
Now, she says “I have definitely seen changes since the ordinance passed two years ago…young people have gone from being passive to taking up a dynamic role in the government. They participate more in events, and the majority of public officials are women.
“I feel part of the team, and people listen to my opinions.”
]]>To Wilfredo Ardito, the links between poverty and racism in Peru are obvious.
“The differences between life in the highlands, and in the jungles, and life in Lima are extreme,” he says in APRODEH’s office in Ayacucho. “Life expectancy in Lima is 80, and in the highlands it is 50. The campesinos [rural people] are poor, illiterate, malnourished, and people think this can’t change. So when budgets are approved, there is money for a [football] stadium in Lima instead of for reducing maternal mortality in the mountains…there is an attitude that campesinos can suffer, they can exist in this state of poverty, it is all right.”
After 10 years of economic growth in Peru, Ardito says wealth is concentrated in very few hands in the country, and the situation of the poorest people has not changed much.
APRODEH’s strategy is to encourage local leaders to promulgate local ordinances to address problems of racism and discrimination, and then train local municipal staff and officials to implement and enforce the new laws. The training sessions, Ardito says, are particularly effective. “People are skeptical at first, or they think we are going to talk about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement...then they realize it is about their experience, and that they share with others experiences of racism.” This goes for indigenous people, as well as for mestizo (mixed race) and white people who may have been brought up to behave in certain ways towards others who are different. The realization of this can be profound, and life changing.
Oxfam America supports efforts to reduce racism and discrimination against indigenous people and women in Peru because these are the most impoverished people in the country. Helping indigenous people gain more respect for their basic rights will help them gain their fair share of quality education and health care. Eliminating discrimination will also help women gain access to better jobs and other services, and generally improve the situation for the country’s poorest people.
Building respect for indigenous people will also help communities value their own indigenous culture. This is essential because many indigenous groups have developed efficient, sustainable ways of living and working the land in some environmentally sensitive areas. The indigenous ways of using natural resources are being forgotten as people feel they must reject their indigenous identity in order to take advantage of all that modernity and western culture can offer. This is part of the reason why APRODEH and others are encouraging indigenous youth to speak their native languages and be proud of who they are—so they can live a decent life, take advantage of all that their government and society can offer them, without forcing them to assimilate into western culture and forget their past.
These municipal ordinances are helping Peru pull these problems out of the shadows,” Says Santiago Alfaro, Oxfam America’s program officer for indigenous rights in Peru. “Government employees can now see the negative effects of racism and discrimination on the quality of life in the country. APRODEH’s work in Ayacucho is echoing across the country, and there are now more and better legal tools available to help indigenous people remove barriers to public services.”
]]>As in every good story, there is suddenly an element of evil. At the sound of a growl, Little Red Riding Hood freezes. The wolf has been lying in wait behind her:
"Ah, little girl, where are you going?” asks the wolf.
"I'm on my way to my grandma's house,” she innocently replies.
"And why are you all alone?” persists the wolf, gnashing his teeth as if savoring his innocent prey.
"Because my mommy and daddy have taught me to take care of myself,” says Little Red Riding Hood.
Fairytales reflect reality
The performance is part of the “Ruta del Arte,” an innovative program designed to teach young people about gender-based violence and how to prevent it. It was created by the Escena X theatre troupe, which is working with the Salvadoran Women’s Association, with funds from Oxfam America. All are part of the Campaign for the Prevention of Gender Violence, initiated by Oxfam America and several other civil society organizations in El Salvador in 2005.
This innocent fairytale is not so magical for many children who are bullied, or are victims of gender-based violence in El Salvador. María Enma Landaverde from the Santa Tecla Women's Association is convinced that social violence is rooted in domestic and other forms of violence in Salvadoran society, and that it is important to teach children to stand up for themselves and understand when they are being abused.
The fairytale continues with Little Red Riding Hood being harassed by the wolf and a woodcutter, who are offering gifts to try to persuade her to go with them.
"If you come with me I'll give you a cell phone,” the wolf says to her.
"I'll give you a DVD,” promises the woodcutter.
But Little Red Riding Hood refuses their offers. The entire audience backs her up, telling her not to let them touch her.
Leaning against one of the pillars of the school building is Juana Silvia Flores de Domínguez, vice principal of El Progresso School. She is already familiar with the nationwide Campaign for the Prevention of Gender-Based Violence, its motto: "Between you and me...a different life."
"Here, gangs are less of a problem than domestic violence, and families neglecting their children. Some of the kids come to school unwashed, wearing dirty clothes, and hungry...” she says of the kindergarten and first grade children. "We also have cases of girls who come in with bruises on them, and when the teacher asks how they got them, they say that their fathers hit them."
With the help of the students, Little Red Riding Hood resists the wolf and woodcutter’s advances and discusses some issues raised with her audience.
"What sort of violence are we talking about?” Little Red Riding Hood asks a boy, about 10-years-old.
"Physical violence,” he answers.
"If someone touches our private parts, what sort of violence are we talking about?” she asks. "Sexual violence!" her audience replies in unison, demonstrating that the children are learning the lessons.
The Art Route will continue its awareness-raising program over the next six months and reach more than 50,000 children and adolescents in 57 schools.
]]>With prices going up, she has had a hard time keeping her business running. “When I started, I didn’t have to invest much… But everything is so expensive now and I didn’t know where to get the money. The interest rates at a bank are so high. I couldn’t afford it," she says.
“And then we started this [savings] group. Now I’m happy because I took a loan to buy paraffin. I’m able to make my candles again, and I’m selling again.”
Ten years ago, leaders of 189 countries met at the UN and promised to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015. They agreed to a roadmap setting out eight time-bound and measurable goals for 2015 -- the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). One of these goals is to promote gender equality and empower women. One measure of progress towards this goal is to look at the number of women working and earning money.
With paying jobs scarce in many poor countries, earning wages is particularly challenging for women. While many would like to start their own businesses, they lack capital and it is hard to find money to borrow. Without credit, they are unable to take advantage of economic opportunities and stay close to home and take care of their children.
Oxfam’s ‘Saving for Change’ program helps women organize themselves and pool their savings to form a small fund. From this fund, the members can take out loans, which they normally use to start small-scale businesses, deal with emergencies, or improve their quality of life. The program serves poor women in rural and semi-urban areas who do not have access to conventional micro-credit institutions. Savings can be as little as $1 a week and loans as small as $25, or less.
Sandra, like Rocío, also lives in Guatemala and recently joined a Saving for Change group. “Before, I had to go elsewhere to get a loan, and that was so difficult. But now we have our savings and can get our loans. And it’s our own money,” she says. Sandra took a 50 quetzales ($6) loan to buy wool for making Guatemalan cloth. She hasn’t sold it yet, but when she does she expects to make 200 quetzales ($25).
These amounts sound small, but they make a substantial difference in the women’s lives. Take Elena Miranda, who now owns a bakery in Chalatenango, El Salvador. “I took a loan to buy a machine to make bread and pastries… at only one percent interest. Within two months I could pay half of it back… With this business, I cover all the daily household expenses,” she explains.
Saving for Change is based on the group members’ own savings. They borrow no external capital. It teaches women how to manage their fund, and within a year the groups are able to continue their activities on their own. By the end of 2010, Saving for Change aims to reach 10,000 people in El Salvador and Guatemala. That is 10,000 empowered women who are one step closer to lifting their families out of poverty.
]]>“Before we would use 100 francs to buy tea,” Diallo said after a group meeting at her home, while she was selling a small bag of cooking spices to a young boy waiting patiently in her doorway. “We would sit around and laugh and tease each other. We didn’t know that if we put our 100 francs together, we could do something really important.”
Saving for Change group members pool their savings, and borrow money to invest in small businesses. Selling foodstuff as Diallo does is quite common, as is selling phone cards, and buying and selling cloth and clothing. Members pay back their loans with 10 percent interest, and the money grows in the group fund for 12 months, when all the assets are disbursed to members equally, and a 12-month cycle starts again. Last fall at the end of the last cycle, each member got nearly $50.
Mariama Ly, a 38-year-old mother of four wearing a bright red head scarf that forms a perfect circle around her face, says she did really well this past year. “I bought new furniture for my house, a bicycle for my son, and I invested the rest in my business,” she says brightly.
Her enthusiasm is easy to understand when you hear her story: Unable to find any steady work in their village, called Bandafassi, Ly’s husband had to move to Dakar where he is a fisherman. It is a good 800 kilometers (just under 500 miles) away, so he only comes home for the annual Tabaski holiday, which marks the end of the Ramadan fasting period. He stays for a couple of weeks, handing over the money he has earned to support the family.
But the money rarely lasted a year, forcing Ly to buy much of the food and clothing for her family on credit. When her husband came home, Ly says “He dealt with all my debts, he had to go around the village paying it all back.” It was the source of stress in their relationship.
After she joined the Saving for Change group in her village, staff from an organization called La Lumière used a grant from Oxfam to teach her and the other members how to establish a saving fund, make loans to members, start their individual businesses, pay back the loans, and re-invest her profits.
Ly began selling dried fish, pepper, vinegar, and other spices around her neighborhood. She says she can now cover all her household expenses. And her relationship with her husband has completely changed. “He’s treating me really well,” she says proudly outside her small home, the only one in her neighborhood with new thatch on the roof. “We talk a lot, we talk things over together. Before he just did what he wanted, but now we discuss it first.
“He’s really happy that I take this responsibility. I get a lot of respect from him now, and it makes me really happy.” Best of all, she says, “when he comes back to the house, there is just peace and love between us.”
Her group president Diallo says harnessing the modest savings and energy of the group members has created similar changes for all of them. “Before we had no way to help ourselves, but now with just 100 francs a week we solve a lot of problems, and help our husbands and our children.” Now, instead of sitting around drinking tea and teasing each other, she says “We tease the men. We are handling all the expenses now, not them.”
]]>With the support of Oxfam America and in collaboration with medical staff at Panzi Hospital, researchers from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) performed a retrospective cohort study of sexual violence survivors presenting to Panzi Hospital with a specific aim of answering the following outstanding questions:
That’s the message from Oxfam’s Sisters on the Planet Climate Leaders Summit. Held in Washington, DC, on International Women’s Day, the event brought together 94 women leaders from 33 US states—plus “climate witnesses” from Mississippi, Peru, Uganda, and Senegal—to honor women who are tackling climate change at the community level. In an effort to bring women’s voices to the forefront, these leaders met with 125 members of Congress and officials from the Obama administration, where they called for US climate legislation that helps poor people adapt to the crisis.
Environmental justice advocate Majora Carter delivered the keynote address at the summit. Carter is president of The Majora Carter Group, LLC, a consultancy specializing in environmental justice and sustainable economic development, as well as host of The Promised Land on NPR and the Sundance Channel’s Eco-Heroes.
In an exclusive interview with Oxfam, Carter talked about poverty here and abroad, the need for climate change adaptation, and why women can lead the way in coming up with solutions.
Oxfam: Why did you get involved with Oxfam and the Sisters on the Planet initiative?
Majora Carter: The similarities between people living in poverty anywhere—including the "developed" world—are very often greater than similarities between rich and poor in the same country. It mostly boils down to inequality within societies, and I am very familiar with what that looks like in the US. I want to learn more from the solutions that are being developed elsewhere, where different conditions have inspired creativity; and see how our work can play out in scenarios that may look different, but are really quite similar just under the surface.
How does climate change affect women in particular, especially women living in poverty? How can women lead in coming up with solutions?
Decades of dirty energy infrastructure … has been disproportionately burdening poor people in various ways. One way in particular is the public health of children, and care for these kids almost always falls on women—a mom, a grandmother, an older sister. The same holds true in places where water is scarce—women are the ones who have to travel further to transport it back home.
The good news is that because women are so in touch with the effects of climate change and its causes, they are in an excellent position to devise local solutions. But we have to use this unfortunate moment that history has cast our way. It is easy to shine a light on the mistakes of the past and where they have delivered us. We can't be afraid to use this position and contrast past practices against new ideas. The old arguments of inertia which say: "that's how it's always been done before..." are very vulnerable at the moment. Women (who have been excluded from any of the decision-making processes that brought us here) represent the possibility of new vision—but only when they realize that command is taken, not given.
During the summit, “climate witnesses” from places like Uganda told firsthand stories about how climate change has affected their lives. Why should Americans support their efforts to fight back against the crisis?
The dire situations that the "climate witnesses" described—in terms of literally losing their ability to support themselves, and in some cases, their land—represent a clear moral concern. However, my personal experience growing up in the South Bronx has made me skeptical about the strength of moral arguments in our society. It's usually the economic argument that carries the day.
How we embrace climate adaptation here, and the practices we influence abroad, will affect our global economic systems in many ways. … All the choices we make as a society can be thought through a little better than we have been; but putting the environmental equality of all people at the forefront of any process will guarantee better climate adaptation and better economic health for everyone. …
Climate change mitigation strategies are important too, and will have positive or negative effects on our economic health as well—depending on whether we lead, or back into the issues as they become impossible to ignore. We want to lead, even if it looks like it costs more up front; the advantages of leadership outweigh disadvantages of playing catch-up in matters big and small. I am proud to be associated with Oxfam and its very pro-leadership stance.
]]>