Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
by many, even in 1997, as painfully inadequate, not least because developing nations
like China were not included. The conversion of specific sources of pollution into
tradable commodities through emissions trading was also allowed with the biggest
entitlements and benefits going to the worst polluters. The biggest per capita emitter
of all, the US, refused to accept even this and it was not until 2002 that Russia and
Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol, finally bringing the treaty into effect in 2005.
At the 2007 G8 summit in Germany, the American administration of George W.
Bush did recognize the reality of human induced climate change but nonetheless still
refused to endorse international action to significantly curb emissions. However,
towards the end of 2007, the US hosted its own international conference on climate
mitigation and reluctantly agreed to support, albeit unspecified, climate reduction
targets at the United Nations sponsored climate conference held in Bali that December.
Issues of climate change, global poverty, economic inequality and water shortage
also highlight the significance of gender in sustainable development. Although much
NGO attention has focused inevitably on the appalling inequalities and hardships
many women experience, gender issues cannot be separated from wider social, cultural
or environmental concerns, which sometimes seems to be the case. The Women's
Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) has campaigned vigorously
to combat the intergovernmental blindness to the gender implications of environmental
policy and actions. Global climate change negotiations, including the Kyoto Protocol
and the reports of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), concentrate almost exclusively on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, largely
ignoring the wider social and gender impacts. By 2007, only:
four out of the fourteen National Adaptation Plans of Action that have been
submitted to the global climate change convention specifically mention the import-
ance of gender equality. The MDGs set out global benchmarks on gender equality,
poverty eradication and environmental sustainability, although national reports
have so far neglected to seriously address the linkages between these areas.
(WEDO, 2007: 3)
A United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP, 2006) survey, 'Gender
mainstreaming among environment ministries', discovered that just two countries
involved in climate change activities had incorporated a gender perspective. However,
as well as arguing that women often suffer disproportionately from unsustainable
development, UNEP frequently promotes women as important agents for community
empowerment, social leadership and positive change. As the World Conservation
Union has shown (IUCN, 2007), communities often cope more effectively during
natural disasters when women play a leadership role in early warning systems and
post-disaster reconstruction than when they do not. The IUCN also notes that
women's local knowledge and skills offer tangible benefits such as the Inuit women
of Northern Canada having a deep understanding of weather conditions because of
their traditional responsibility for evaluating hunting conditions. When a drought
occurs in the small islands of Micronesia, local women who have a sound knowledge
of island hydrology find potable water by digging new wells. WEDO (2007: 3) adds
that women tend to share information related to community well-being, choose less
polluting energy sources and adapt more easily to environmental changes when their
families' 'survival is at stake'.
