Impacts of Climate Change on Women’s
Human Rights: Bangladesh perspective

1. Introduction

At present, the consequences of climate
change including increased temperature, increased sea level, excess
precipitation, droughts, biodiversity loss, natural disasters and reduced food production
threaten human rights and social justice. These consequences have brought more
adversely impacts on low-income countries, which have produced less greenhouse
gases. In particular, some vulnerable groups such as women are more vulnerable
to climate change because they have weaker ability to address the challenge of climate
change. As one of the least-developed countries in the world, Bangladesh faces
the enormous challenges of the global climate change.

Women in Bangladesh have been seriously affected by the climate change, with their human rights under great threat. This essay will analyze how climate change affects the human rights of Bangladeshi women and find potential pathways to tackle these problems. It will achieve this by firstly giving definitions and basic analyses about climate change and human rights. Following this it will look at how Bangladeshi women’s rights to life, health and education were affected by climate change. Finally, it will seek to give effective advice for better response to these impacts.

2. Climate Change and Human Rights

2.1 Climate Change

There are two major definitions of climate change that are widely used. The two different definitions are presented by Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). According to FCCC(1992) as cited by Pielke (2004), FCCC that focused on international policy, described climate change as “a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity, that alters the composition of the global atmosphere, and that is in addition to natural climate variability over comparable time periods”. On the other hand, IPCC that focused on scientific assessments defined climate change as “a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer”(Qin, Stocker & IPCC, 2013 : p123-125). It is clear that IPCC give climate change a broader definition than FCCC.

On the ground of FCCC definition,
the reduction of vulnerability cannot be realized except though greenhouse gas
emissions. But according to IPCC definition, there are some measures including
adaption policies effective to address ecological or societal vulnerability
brought by climate change. In this paper, both of this will be taken into
consider.

2.2 Human Rights

Facts and studies have shown that
climate change poses a great challenge to human rights issues. Human rights are
the inherent rights of every individual, regardless of our nationality, place
of residence, sex, ethnicity, religion, language or any other status (Ariella
Azoulay,2015). As United Nations (n.d.) have noted, “human rights included the
right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion
and expression, the right to work and education, and many more”. It is worth
mentioning that the concept of human rights does not remain at the theoretical
level, but is described and protected by International human rights law (IHRL)
and some national laws. For example, in Britain the Human Rights Act 1998 was
introduced to protect human rights.

As women’s human rights are
gaining increasing attention in the context of advocating gender equality, some
research and related institutions begin to focus on the impact of climate
change on women’s human rights and do some work to help local women in the
climatic vulnerable areas.

3. Climate Change’s Effects on Women’s Human Rights in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is one of the countries most
likely to suffer adverse impacts from climate change. This is mainly influenced
by two factors, one of which is its special geographical location and the other
is its social and economic underdevelopment.

The total land area in Bangladesh is
147,570 square kilometers, including 80% of the floodplains. As a result,
during the rainy season, most parts of the country (except the Northwest
Highlands) are prone to flooding. Saleemul Huq（2001）compared
Bangladesh with the Netherlands, indicating that geographical location is not
the only reason why Bangladesh is affected by severe climate change. Bangladesh
and the Netherlands are both low-lying deltaic countries, but the Netherlands possesses
enough financial and scientific capacity to build higher seawalls for protecting
its citizens against natural disasters, but Bangladesh cannot.

3.1 Effect of Climate Change on the Right to Life

Climate change has caused frequent natural
disasters in Bangladesh. Gender issues have always been a marginalized topic in
the context of climate change, but we can still find some gender-related data
in related climate change studies.

Women are less able to escape from natural
disasters. For example, during the 1991 Bangladesh Cyclone, the mortality rate of
women was five times higher than that of men among the 20-44 age group(UNEP,2005).
The reasons why there was a such difference are as follows. First, there is an
imbalance of information between men and women in Bangladesh. Men can
communicate with each other in public places for access to information, while
women are mostly at home, unable to obtain timely and useful warning messages. Secondly,
most Bangladeshi women lack the skills to swim or climb trees, and their
dresses are not conducive to their escape from the disaster. In addition, it is
more difficult for women to get rescuing resources to deal with damage and loss
from extreme weather events because of the long-standing social bias. In other
words, the gender inequality in Bangladesh society contributes to the
vulnerability of local women.

3.2 Effect of Climate Change on the Right to health

As a result of climate change, women’s work
has become even more dangerous and difficult in the society of Bangladesh. In
most poor communities, getting drinking water for their families is the
responsibility for women, just as Bangladesh. Climate change causes problems of
drought and salinization of water in Bangladesh (Aguilar Revelo, 2009). Women
in families have to walk a long distance to obtain water resources, which
consumes a large amount of their time and leads to high risks of injury and even
death in the process.

Climate change have driven child marriage
risks in Bangladesh, with women’s right to health damaged. Natural disasters such
as floods and droughts aroused by climate change have made thousands of people become
displaced and lose their financial sources (e.g. crops). In this “hopeless” situation,
 many parents have to marry their young daughters
off. Girls Not Brides (2017) noted that Bangladesh already had one of highest
rates of child marriage in the world at 52%. Around 30% of girls in Bangladesh
are married before their 15th birthday. Early marriages make these girls more
vulnerable to domestic violence, and pregnancy at a young age is harmful for
women’s health.

3.3 Effect of Climate Change on the Right to Education

High temperatures, droughts and floods have
made farmers in rural areas lose their land, crops and livestock, then these
people have to migrate from villages to the so-called “climate change refuges”in
Dhaka. Education is free in rural Bangladesh, while it is not free in Dhaka  (Jabeen,2014).  In the face of high tuition fees and living
costs, parents choose to let the girls give up education. Gender bias in
Bangladesh society also contributes to the choice. Families often prefer to
give boys the limited educational opportunities and the girls should make an effort
for boys.

Also, gathering water and producing crops
become increasingly difficult due to extreme weather in Bangladesh so that girls
have to stay at home to share the housework. It becomes more and more difficult
for local women to participate in decision-making process of climate change
policy and measures due to lack of education. As a result, many policies and
measures for dealing with climate change are formulated almost entirely by men
and can not accurately satisfy the demands of women.

4. Possible Solutions

Protecting
women’s human rights from climate change needs transboundary cooperation
including international institutions, local government, NGOs. There are some
suggestions to address the issue and to improve women’s human rights in the
context of the climate change in Bangladesh.

First, women’s
empowerment in the decision-making process is of vital importance. Actually, this
concept has been clearly stated in some policies or agreements, but it still
faces many challenges in its practical application. For example,“The Paris Agreement”explicitly requires that gender equality and women’s empowerment
should be taken into account in addressing climate change, and gender
differences should be considered in actions and capacity building to address
climate change(Guiot,2016).

However, in
poor countries, women’s empowerment is not easy to realize in practice because
of social prejudices and the low educational level of women. For better
empowerment, local governments should provide education subsidies or free
education for these climate refugees. Relevant policies should be introduced to
demand that all children including girls receive basic education. Compulsory
education gives girls more employment opportunities and enables them to participate
in the stages of social decision-making, making their voices heard in the area
of addressing climate change issue. Moreover, women’s education optimizes the
demographic structure andthus has a positive impact on climate change. This
creates a virtuous circle.

Secondly, the
infrastructure should be improved. As mentioned earlier, water is greatly
affected by climate change, and women’s access to water becomes more difficult
and vulnerable. It seems impossible to change this culture in Bangladesh that
women should get water for their families, but infrastructure projects can be
implemented in local area to help them get watereasier.

For example, local
governments, corporations or international organizations can invest money and
technology to establish water factories to enable local residents to use clean
tap water directly. In addition, construction of the roads and schools in local
villages can also reduce the time and distance to go to school. As a result,
the way of getting water becomes safe and women can have more time for
education.

Finally, women’s access to early warning information
and the basic skills to deal with disasters should be improved. For example, the
local government and other non-governmental organizations can provide local
women with free disaster-resistant training. Considering the low-level
education of local women, training materials should be designed easy to
understand. And a special information transmission team including female should
be set up to timely transmit important information to women groups and reflect
the demands of women.

5. Conclusion

Women in Bangladesh is one of the most
vulnerable groups when it comes to the impact of climate change. With the
impact of climate change, women not only need to spend more time in domestic
work, but also becomes more vulnerable in the process. Climate change has
aggravated the problem of poverty, leading to the emergence of dropouts and
child marriages. In fact, women’s rights to life, health and education have
been adversely affected by climate change.

Fortunately, more and more agencies and
researchers have been aware of this issue and done some related research. These
research outcomes have been gradually affecting the government’s policies about
climate change. However, increasing the human rights of women in Bangladesh
will require more efforts from multiple agencies. The essay also provides some
possible ways in practice to deal with the problem, including women’s
empowerment in decision-making process, constructing tap water factories,
improving local roads, disaster prevention training for women.

6. References

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[5] Saleemul, Huq. (2001) Climate Change and Bangladesh. Science (New
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[6] United Nations Environment Programme. (2005) Mainstreaming Gender
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[7] Aguilar Revelo, L.
(2009) Training Manual On Gender and
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[8] Girls Not Brides.(2016) How Is Climate Change Driving Child
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[9] Jabeen, H. (2014) Adapting the built environment: the role of
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