By Patricia Wattimena, Climate Justice Programme Officer, Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development
For more than a decade, Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) continues to be a collective tool for feminists and grassroots women in Asia and the Pacific to reclaim their power and status as knowledge holders of their own issues and realities. Through the Climate Justice FPAR concluded in 2019, the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) collected stories and findings led by grassroots women in nine countries namely Bangladesh, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam with a specific focus on climate-induced displacement. Their stories have since been widely used from local to international level to advance women’s human rights and gender justice in the context of climate crises.
Coinciding with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Sharm El Sheikh Climate Change Conference (COP27), APWLD takes the opportunity to amplify the stories and findings at a critical time when communities and countries from the Global South are struggling to demand the historical and present responsibility of the polluters to avert, minimise and address the devastating impact of loss and damage.
This regional report outlines the analysis of grassroots women on how they experience climate induced disasters along with loss and damage impacts on a daily basis right before the global health crisis caused by Covid19 pandemic, which undoubtedly exacerbates all issues that women and other climate vulnerable communities face.
Sikalwoti Sadha, a woman villager from Jogidaha village and a participant of CJ FPAR in Nepal shared in the report on the multiple burdens she bears as a Dalit woman who confronts the impacts of climate crises in her country.
“We are facing more difficulties. Whole day we do hard labour in the sun and rain. We go back to shelter at night, we have no electricity. So, it is very difficult to cook and feed our children. We are very tired and need proper sleep, but during the monsoon we can’t sleep due to flood risk and our shelter is also improper. Rainwater drops onto our bed; our clothes get wet. Being a Dalit, we don’t [get help] even during emergencies,” Sikalwoti shared.
The regional report also serves as a testament of grassroots women’s collective power and solutions to tackle climate crises. It reflects how the FPAR is a powerful collective tool, a product of common knowledge of feminists and grassroots women across Asia and the Pacific region to generate system change and challenge power structure within and outside their communities.
Highlanders Association, a CJ FPAR partner in Cambodia also noted how the FPAR empowered the community members and informed them of their rights.
They noted, “After we launched the FPAR within the community, villagers decided not to relocate. They want to live very close to their old village, because they know the floods cannot come to the uplands. They decided to relocate where they want, where they live, where they collect ideas from different members. We don’t know in the future if the companies will come to evict. But we build the fundamentals of living as indigenous peoples on our land. Community members are protecting forests and climate change, and it is important to them to [continue to do so]. If we didn’t have FPAR as a tool to bring them in, maybe all of them would decide to take the compensation money to leave.”
Meanwhile, at COP27, feminists and other social movements continue to assert the immediate adoption of the finance facility for loss and damage in the form of new and additional public finance that come in grants rather than loans. All while rich countries and the fossil fuel industry continue to deny their historical and present responsibility and push back on demand to put human rights and gender justice at the core of the negotiations.
Ana Celestial, Focal Point of the Climate Justice Programme Organising Committee of APWLD and representative of Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment in the Philippines, asserts, “We demand new and additional public finance that enables direct access of grassroots women and their communities to avert, minimise and address the impact of loss and damage. We urgently need the loss and damage finance facility with women’s human rights at the core. We say no to private financing and corporate capture within and outside climate negotiation spaces. Rich countries must be held accountable for their historical and present responsibility, their ecological debt to the peoples and the planet!”
Read the full report here.
