land rights

International Day of Rural Women – 15 October 2024

Rural Women Sustaining Nature for Our Collective Future

Achieving gender equality and empowering women is not only the right thing to do but is a critical ingredient in the fight against extreme poverty, hunger and climate change.

Women are responsible for half of the world’s food production while working as environmental and biodiversity stewards. As farmers, women have learned how to cope with and adapt to climate change, for example, by practicing sustainable agriculture in harmony with nature, switching to drought-resistant seeds, employing low-impact or organic soil management techniques, or leading community-based reforestation and restoration efforts

Indigenous women have been at the forefront of environmental conservation by bringing invaluable ancestral knowledge and practices, and rural women have been leading global and national climate movements that have spotlighted the need for action for the sake of this and future generations..

Given their position on the frontlines of the climate crisis, women are uniquely situated to be agents of change — to help find ways to mitigate the causes of global warming and adapt to its impacts on the ground.

However, reports prove that climate change has a more pronounced impact on women, primarily indigenous and peasant women, whose agricultural dependence, living conditions, and marginalization expose them to a greater degree of changes due to climate, loss of diversity, and pollution.

This International Day of Rural Women’s theme is “Rural Women Sustaining Nature for Our Collective Future: Building climate resilience, conserving biodiversity, and caring for land towards gender equality and empowerment of women and girls.”

Let’s promote their work as food providers and protectors of the environment. Let’s demand their participation in decision-making within their communities. Let’s promote rural areas where women can have the same opportunities as men.

Did you know?

Rural women have less access to a range of resources, from land rights and credit to education and technology. If women had the same access to productive resources as men, farm yields could increase by 20–30 per cent, feeding an additional 100 to 150 million people.
Every year, female-headed households experience income losses of 8 percent due to heat stress, and 3 percent due to floods, relative to male-headed households.
A 1° C increase in long-term average temperatures is associated with a 34 percent reduction in the total incomes of female-headed households, relative to those of male-headed households.

Source: Text: https://www.un.org/en/observances/rural-women-day Image:

World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought – 17 June 2023

Her Land. Her Rights.

“Women are major actors in the global efforts to reduce and reverse land degradation. However, in the vast majority of countries, women have unequal and limited access to and control over land. We cannot achieve land degradation neutrality without gender equality, and we cannot exclude half the population from land management decisions because of their gender. » – Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD Executive Secretary

Women hold a vital stake in the health of the land, yet they often don’t have control over it. In all parts of the world, women face significant barriers in securing land rights, limiting their ability to thrive and prosper. And when land becomes degraded and water is scarce, women are often the worst affected. Investing in women’s equal access to land and associated assets is a direct investment in their future and the future of humanity. It’s time for women and girls to be at the forefront of global land restoration and drought resilience efforts.

A launch pad for an ambitious women’s land rights agenda

The global focus for the 2023 Desertification and Drought Day is on women’s land rights— essential for achieving the interconnected global goals on gender equality and land degradation neutrality by 2030 and contributing to the advancement of several other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) will reaffirm its commitment to gender equality with these Desertification and Drought Day 2023 objectives:  

Raise awareness of the disproportionate impact of desertification, land degradation and drought on women and girls and the barriers they face in decision-making on land issues;
Highlight women’s contributions to sustainable land management and broader SDGs;

Mobilize global support to advance land rights for women and girls around the world.

This year’s global observance of Desertification and Drought Day will be held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, with events taking place in all parts of the world.

Gender equality remains unfinished business

According to UNCCD’s landmark study “The Differentiated Impacts of Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought on Women and Men,” gender equality remains unfinished business in every part of the world. Consider the following:

Today, nearly half of the global agricultural workforce is female – yet less than one in five landholders worldwide are women.
Women’s rights to inherit their husband’s property continue to be denied in over 100 countries under customary, religious, or traditional laws and practices.
Globally, women already spend a collective 200 million hours every day collecting water. In some countries, a single trip to fetch water can take over an hour.

Recherche

image-i-nations trésor