Starry, Starry Skies
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Women harvest cowpeas in Ghana. (Photo: Elisa Walton/USAID)
The residents of Nwadjahane, a village in southern Mozambique, have already seen some of the changes that are expected to come with global warming. Since the 1980s, droughts and floods have hit the village harder and more frequently than before. But the villagers adapted, forming farming associations that placed collective responsibility on finding potential solutions to climate disasters, such as planting new, drought-resistant species of rice, corn, and cassava. Those associations are especially popular with women, according to a report by the International Institute for Environment and Development, a policy-research group. And as a result, women's status among farmers has risen.
That's just one example of how women in the developing world may be uniquely affected by climate change—and how they can come up with unique solutions. Over the past few years, several research groups have noted that, in developing regions, women and girls may suffer more from global warming than men and boys do. That struggle comes on top of the unique challenges of dealing with climate change in regions with little money, infrastructure, or government support.
Here are four ways the consequences of climate change differ by gender:
At the same time, women have been involved in some unique solutions for matters of inequality, like the Nwadjahane farming associations. Here are a few more examples:
There's still plenty of room for better integrating women in developing regions into climate-change adaptation. A couple of suggestions we've seen include:
The existing solutions show how helpful women-led climate-change adaptations can be. Further initiatives could narrow the gender gap among those affected by climate change, and make a warming world easier to deal with for everyone.
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Se calcula que 524,000 niños trabajan inimaginables largas horas en los agotadores campos agrícolas de Estados Unidos, y todo es perfectamente legal.