ROME — Women who run farms and rural households in poor countries suffer more from climate change and face discrimination as they try to adapt to other sources of income in times of crises, the United Nations warned on Tuesday.
A new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization, ‘The Unjust Climate’, shows that female-headed rural households lose on average 8% more of their income during heat waves and 3% more during floods, compared to male-headed households. the head.
That inequality translates into a per capita reduction of $83 from heat stress and $35 from flooding – for an annual total of $37 billion and $16 billion respectively in poor countries, according to the UN agency in the report.
“Given the significant existing gaps in agricultural productivity and wages between women and men, the study suggests that if left unchecked, climate change will significantly widen these gaps in the coming years,” the FAO said.
The Rome-based FAO came up with the statistics by surveying 100,000 rural households in 24 poor and middle-income countries around the world. The agency then integrated that data with seventy years of precipitation and temperature data.
Significantly, the report noted that few government plans to tackle climate change and promote adaptation strategies take into account the specific vulnerabilities of rural women and youth.
Only 6% of the more than 4,000 proposals in the national climate adaptation plans of the countries surveyed mentioned women.
The report notes that women in many poor countries face discrimination in their ability to have rights to land or make decisions about their work. Then, as they try to diversify their income sources due to climate crises, reducing farm and livestock productivity, they also face discrimination in accessing information, financing and technology.
The report called for targeted strategies to address the specific vulnerabilities of rural households headed by women.
“Social disparities based on location, wealth, gender and age have a powerful but poorly understood impact on the vulnerability of rural populations to the impacts of the climate crisis,” said FAO Director Qu Dongyu.
“These findings highlight the urgent need to devote substantially more financial resources and policy attention to issues of inclusivity and resilience in global and national climate action,” he said.