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Pipeline 'man camps' loom over British Columbia's Highway of Tears.
A B.C. First Nation prepares for a possible influx of thousands of temporary energy industry workers over the next decade to try to prevent increased violence and crime.
Pipeline 'man camps' loom over B.C.'s Highway of Tears
By Brandi Morin in News, Energy, Politics | September 21st 2017
Drummers participate in the Nak'azdli Whut'en's All Nations Gathering between Aug. 4 and 6, 2017. Photo courtesy of the Nak'azdli Whut'en on Facebook
Nak'azdli Whut'en First Nation is nestled on the banks of Stuart Lake in north-central British Columbia, surrounded by rolling foothills and tall trees.
It is a relatively remote community, breathtaking in scenery and dependent on economic opportunities in forestry, mining, and pipeline development. It is a community bracing for major change.
Over the next decade, as many as 6,000 new energy industry workers could descend upon the region. The prospect of such a big influx of workers living in nearby “man camps” has aroused fears of increased violence and drug use.
The influx could more than double the population of about 4,500 in the Fort St. James area, which includes the municipality, rural communities and First Nations. Nak'azdli has just 1,972 members living both on and off reserves. The nearest city, Prince George, is 160 kilometres away.
To get ahead of the documented challenges that accompany an influx of temporary workers from outside the region, the Nak’azdli and Lake Babine First Nations are creating two full-time positions, funded by the B.C. government, to help them prepare.
Nak'azdli Band Councillor Ann Marie Sam says if several industrial project proposals go ahead as planned over the next decade, as many as six new work camps, housing up to 1,000 workers each, could be built within 60 to 100 kilometres of the community.
Among the proposed projects are TransCanada’s: the Coastal GasLink pipeline, the North Montney Mainline pipeline and the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline. The company is reviewing the Prince Rupert project, however, because Pacific NorthWest LNG announced in July that it would not proceed with a proposed liquefied natural gas export terminal near Port Edward, B.C. due to economy uncertainty.
The Nak’azdli band had also expressed opposition to Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have run through its territory had it not been rejected by the federal government last year.
The danger of bringing in "man camps"
The “man camps” are precisely what their name implies: work camps housing mostly male employees working on resource development projects.
There were more than four men for every woman working in the forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, and oil and gas industries in Canada in 2016, according to Statistics Canada.
The federal Liberal government is now reviewing Canada's conservation laws and is expected to tackle this issue. In June, it recommended changes to environmental assessments to require a gender-based analysis of an industrial project's impacts.
When the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission project was under review, community members expressed concern about two camps slated for construction in the traditional territory of the nearby Lake Babine First Nation. The Lake Babine and Nak’azdli nations found common cause, as Nak’azdli’s traditional territory hosts mining and forestry camps already.
The two nations commissioned a joint report, funded by B.C.’s Department of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, with research by the consulting company Firelight Group. Statistics from the study, released in February 2017, indicate that industrial camps are associated with increased rates of sexual assault and violence against Indigenous women, along with addiction, sexually transmitted infections, and family violence.
“The potential for sexual assault, violence, disappearances, (sexually transmitted diseases), increases with the number of trucks on the road,” study author Ginger Gibson told National Observer. “There’s a whole whack of issues that don’t get considered until construction is happening and that’s too late.”
The final report recommends governments and agencies consider legislation, programs and services to address problems associated with industrial camps, and plan for integrated service delivery in advance of resource development projects. It also states a need for governments to allocate new financial and human resources to health, social services, and housing in the region.
Specific recommendations, from provision of addiction counseling to building recreational facilities, are designed to prevent problems and to address them when the do occur.
In an email, a spokesperson for TransCanada wrote that the company regularly engages with Indigenous communities and would continue to do so throughout the life of the proposed Pacific NorthWest LNG project. Although TransCanada says it attended an info session during the research phase of the industrial camp report, it wouldn’t provide further comment on the findings.
The B.C. government didn't respond to requests from National Observer for comment for this article.
A view of Stuart Lake in north central British Columbia. This area is home to the small Nak'azdli First Nation, which is bracing for challenges that can accompany an influx of energy workers. Photo courtesy of the Nak'azdli Whut'en First Nation
'Rigger culture' puts Indigenous women at risk?
The Firelight Group's research included discussions with local community members about the experience of Indigenous women living near construction camps.
“There’s a ‘rigger culture’ that exists, where a lot of people are working together in a hyper masculine context and they’re not really taking care of themselves — they might be drinking and doing drugs, and then they’re blowing off steam,” said Gibson.
“They’re not in their home community and they don’t think about the (local) people as their family or neighbours so they don’t treat people very kindly.”
Following the findings of the study, Nak’azdli leadership is looking at ways to prepare for the next influx of workers. Community members talk about preparing to welcome newcomers to their territory. Industry representatives talk about working with Indigenous groups to provide local cultural competency courses to their employees.
The Nak'azdli Health Centre is assembling rape kits to gather physical evidence after assaults.
Coun. Ann Marie Sam says planning for assaults is an unfortunate necessity.
“When we started developing rape crisis plans the first question for me was, ‘Why do we have to tell our women we can’t protect you and sexual assaults are going to happen? And when they do, we’re going to have a plan for you,'" she said in an interview. "I thought it was so unfair for our community to have to do that."
Community leaders worry that nearby women and children could be a target for workers who parachute into the area.
Sam recalled seeing an unfamiliar woman in town about a year ago when she was out walking with one of her daughters.
“I watched her, wondering who she was. One of the delivery trucks from the (Mount Milligan) mine was coming through town, driving fast, saw her, slams on the breaks, dust on the road and stops beside her. She gets in the truck and I don’t know whose daughter that was — if she was a mother, or whose sister that was. But that really struck me.”
Sam said she wondered if the driver solicited the young woman for sex. “Who do you report that to? I didn’t report it because I didn’t know who she was and I didn’t know what happened to her."
Among risks identified in the Firelight report are increased rates of sexually transmitted infections. The Nak’azdli Health Centre is launching an awareness campaign and promotes STI testing for both workers and community members.
“We want to welcome workers to our town but we also want to let them know that these are the rules of our town,” community health nurse Liza Sam, the councillor’s sister, told National Observer.
“They (workers) don’t have any ownership to our town, so we really want to keep our community intact with less disturbances,” she explained. “If the mine’s gonna be here or other industries, we want them to be the best they can be for community members.”
The proximity of Nak’azdli to the infamous Highway of Tears only adds to the community’s safety concerns.
Since the late 1960s, dozens of women and girls — most of whom are Indigenous — have gone missing or disappeared along Highway 16, an east-west highway spanning northern B.C. that eventually leads through Edmonton and Saskatoon before meeting the TransCanada Highway at Portage la Prairie, Man. The “Highway of Tears” takes in smaller roads in the vicinity too, explains Highway of Tears Walkers co-ordinator Brenda Wilson.
Women reach for an embrace during the Nak'azdli Whut'en's All Nations Gathering between Aug. 4 and 6, 2017. Photo courtesy of the Nak'azdli Whut'en on Facebook
Away from home with 'a lot of money'
Mia is a First Nations woman in Alberta. A former sex trade worker, she said camp workers and sex go hand-in-hand. She worked in Fort McMurray for 10 years during the oilsands boom and was on call "23 hours a day."
Mia's name has been changed to protect her identity.
“I think the guys are maybe lonely," she told National Observer. "They’re away from home, they have a lot of money — disposable income if you will.”
She came from what she describes as an abusive, broken home, and said adversarial circumstances led to the sex industry at age 17. She said she was encouraged to tell clients that she was Spanish or Italian, because Indigenous women were considered trash.
“The men became angry if they knew (you were Indigenous), and your value goes down significantly, so we didn’t reveal that.”
Mia described many dangerous encounters, including one with a client she said threatened to hang her in his apartment in Fort McMurray — a memory that haunts her. Employers know full well what’s going on, she added. But they don’t get involved.
“In that industry, nothing would surprise me. I can see people that may be running the camps turning a blind eye to this kind of thing.”
Mia said local women and girls in Alberta are recruited to the sex industry to service camp workers on a regular basis by pimps and escort agencies, and that locals in communities like Nak’azdli wouldn’t be passed by.
“We already know of cases where our young people have been recruited right off the reserve through the Internet. But if (a camp's) in their own backyards, I would be very concerned,” she explained. “It’s scary. I hope that the communities are looking at ways of preventing and also educating on exploitation.”
Industry challenges
The Mount Milligan ore mine has been operating on Nak’azdli territory for the past four years. It’s roughly 60 kilometres from the Nak’azdli town site and has around 300 men working there at any given time.
A representative from Mount Milligan said the work camp mostly hires locally, so they go home every night.
“We do have a camp, but it’s not a big camp,” said company spokeswoman Joanna Miller. “Compared to a construction camp, they bring in a transient group of people — that’s not the case that happens at Milligan. Seventy per cent of (the miners) live in our local communities. For those who don’t live within a regional community the transportation is by bus.”
Mount Milligan works with local Indigenous groups to strengthen relationships by providing cultural competency courses to workers and teaching them local First Nation history. Miller sits on the community sustainability committee, which brings together representatives of nearby municipalities, regional districts, First Nations, educational institutions and economic development organizations.
“We work with the community to deal with concerns regarding social effects. Since I’ve been on that committee we have not had a single issue come forward. I have not had a conversation with an emergency personnel or RCMP in an instance where the mine has been a factor,” she said.
Mount Milligan’s practices align with the co-operation recommended in the Firelight Group report authored by Gibson.
“Everybody has to work jointly to take care of this issue,” Gibson said. “Siting is a big thing — where (communities) can control how often and who can get into your community. Making (workers) immobile at the camps so they’re not able to get into their trucks and be out looking for sexual services, makes a difference.
An undated photo of the Mount Milligan mine site in northern British Columbia. Photo courtesy of Centerra Gold
'Don't let it happen'
Tribes south of the border are familiar with the side effects of industry booms and influxes of workers living in "man camps."
Since the North Dakota Bakken oil boom began in 2008, reports of violence against Indigenous women have increased in the vicinity of the Fort Berthold Reservation, which is home to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations.
In 2013, North Dakota’s Uniform Crime Report showed an annual increase of 7.2 per cent in the total number of reported violent index crimes such as murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults. The report showed an increase of 17 per cent in rapes alone to 243 reported in 2012.
In response to those findings, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem told the Bismarck Tribune in 2013 that 12 of the state’s top oil-producing counties accounted for much of that crime. He also said that the North Dakota legislature increased funding for state law enforcement agencies to put more officers in the field.
Kandi Mossett, 38, has seen the effects of man camps first hand. She is with the Indigenous Environmental Network from North Dakota and is from New Town in the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, where more than 1,500 oil wells sprouted when the boom came.
“We definitely didn’t know about the man camps and how that was going to play out,” she told National Observer. “It was something that took over and shocked the community as far as how quickly the violence escalated and how it’s continued to cause problems in our community in this past decade.
“It’s a totally different place to live. It’s gross, the men are everywhere looking at women like they’re meat. We never used to have to lock our doors... but now people are scared for their safety. You make sure you have mace with you when you walk home at night.”
Her advice for the Nak’azdli and Babine First Nations as they deal with the prospect of more industrial camps is: “don’t let it happen.”
Since camps will be built if projects go ahead, she encourages the communities to get their police force involved and on site to monitor them.
The RCMP declined an interview request, but said in an email statement that the police force works with the Province of B.C. before industrial projects are approved to conduct socio-economic impact studies in First Nations and other communities.
Ultimately, industrial development is not something that Nak’azdli wants to abolish. They just want to make sure it will be safe when it comes.
Activist Kandi Mossett waits to smudge during Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. Photo provided by Kandi Mossett
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McKenna addresses 'climate Barbie' furor, slams rampant sexism on the right.
Canada's environment minister says she's fed up with the sexist comments women in politics have to put up with, and she accuses conservatives of being the worst offenders in the misogyny department.
McKenna addresses 'climate Barbie' furor, slams rampant sexism on the right
By Alexander Panetta & Mia Rabson in News, Politics | September 21st 2017
Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna makes her way to speak with media at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, on Wednesday, September 20, 2017. Photo by The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld
Canada's environment minister says she's fed up with the sexist comments women in politics have to put up with, and she accuses conservatives of being the worst offenders in the misogyny department.
Catherine McKenna spoke at length about this week's events where an opposition lawmaker referred to her as "climate Barbie," then deleted the tweet, apologized, and drew condemnation from the leader of the Conservative party.
She addressed the issue in a chat with Canadian reporters Wednesday along the East River in New York City — beside the United Nations, where she is attending a series of high-level meetings on climate change.
McKenna said she accepts the apology, assuming it's sincere. But she expressed anger about this becoming an issue while she's been having substantive meetings this week with the secretary-general of the United Nations, with California Gov. Jerry Brown, and with female climate leaders.
"You know what's really sad? That I'm having to talk about this. It's really disappointing, what happened. And unfortunately it's not about me — it's about how women, especially women in politics, face these kind of comments — sexist, misogynistic comments — especially from conservatives," McKenna said.
"I want to be talking about what I'm doing. But unfortunately we're having this conversation. And this isn't just something that happened once. This has been going on since I've been in this position. You can just look at my Twitter feed. And it's not about apologies. It's really about changes in behaviour, and changes in attitude. And that's what I hope comes out of this. We need to move on. I've got two daughters. There's lots of young women who want to get into politics, and I want them to feel like they can go do that, and they can talk about the great work they're doing — not about the colour of their hair."
The leader of the Conservatives referred to his daughters too, in a statement late Wednesday.
"As a father of three daughters, I want to ensure that gender-based stereotypes have no place in Canada or Canadian politics," Andrew Scheer said.
"The demeaning words used by the member were inappropriate and he has rightly apologized. The minister is in New York today and I am in the process of contacting her so I can assure the minister that this type of behaviour has no place in the Conservative caucus."
The unnamed member in that statement — Gerry Ritz — apologized.
Ritz triggered the furor Tuesday with the wisecrack on Twitter. He promptly deleted the tweet and apologized, but not before touching off a cascade of social media outrage, including from McKenna herself.
"I apologize for the use of Barbie, it is not reflective of the role the minister plays," Ritz wrote.
The issue dominated the start of Wednesday's question period. The Ritz controversy proved the perfect remote control for a government keen to change the channel amid sustained public anger over its proposed changes to small business taxes.
Three times, Scheer tried to press the government on its plans, and all three times Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr — standing in for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was in New York for the UN General Assembly — ignored them.
Instead, Carr demanded Scheer disavow Ritz's words and compel him to apologize in the House of Commons, not just to McKenna but to all MPs and all Canadians. Initially, Scheer would not bite. Until his statement late in the day, he hadn't said a word publicly about the tweet, avoiding reporters after both the weekly Conservative caucus meeting and after question period.
The Liberals, on the other hand, came back to it, again and again.
Carr said: "Leaders have to be sensitive to telling all Canadians that that kind of language is unacceptable... We gave (Scheer) an opportunity to do that today. He chose not to accept it."
The Liberals also took the opportunity to embark on a fundraising opportunity, issuing an email to potential donors from McKenna referencing the tweet and asking for money to help the Liberals build a "more inclusive society for our kids and grandkids."
Politicians of all stripes criticized Ritz for the remark.
Others also pointed out Ritz borrowed the "climate Barbie" insult from The Rebel, the far-right website Scheer has disavowed barring changes in its editorial direction, following its coverage of the racist demonstrations last month in Charlottesville, Va.
More than 80 stories on the website refer to McKenna with the insult, and several Rebel contributors were happy to acknowledge using it, including one who bragged Wednesday on Twitter that she had coined the phrase.
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Too much mansplaining in climate conversations?
Climate experts are calling for more women to take part in research and policy-making in order to respond to climate change with a gender-specific approach.
By Clothilde Goujard in News, Energy, Politics | September 7th 2017
#710 of 710 articles from the Special Report:
Race Against Climate Change
The World Meteorological Organization's Elena Manaenkova outlined the importance of including women in the climate change discussion during an International Panel on Climate Change meeting in Montreal on Sept. 7, 2017. Photo by the WMO
Previous story
In the catastrophic 2004 Boxing Day Asian tsunami, four times more women died than men.
In the worst affected village, Indonesia's Kuala Cangkoy, 80 per cent of the victims were female, according to Oxfam International. The number was so disproportionate, reported the humanitarian agency, because men were generally fishing or away from home, and many were able to flee while women at home tried to save children.
It's an imbalance that disturbs the World Meteorological Organization's Elena Manaenkova, who addressed the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Montreal earlier this week.
“Women couldn’t run because of their long clothes and they didn’t know how to swim,” she told National Observer in an interview.
The 56th session of the IPCC, which is tasked with providing sound climate science assessments to governments and policy makers, began in Montreal on Wednesday. At a closed-door workshop on Tuesday night however — held between the IPCC and Environment Canada — Manaenkova emphasized the importance of including more women in the world's response to climate change.
She and a team of other climate experts are urging organizations and governments to recruit for women scientists to help improve sensitivity to gender issues in climate-related policy. Natural disasters, she explained, are just one example of how a warming world can have different impacts on women and men.
Women have to walk further for water
As temperatures rise and droughts become more frequent, for instance, women in some countries who are traditionally tasked with fetching water face more problems, including sexual violence. According to the United Nations, women in Africa and Asia walk an average of six kilometres to get water but the distance can be much longer with droughts.
The delegate for Kenya, Patricia Nying’uro, has made note of that situation in her own country.
“If there’s a drought, (women) have to find water and in some areas they have to walk really far," she said in an interview. "Even though everyone feels (climate change), these women feel it a bit more."
As a senior meteorologist at the Kenyan Meteorological Department, she said whenever there are new seasonal forecasts for rain, they hold information forums and women are particularly interested.
“You will find that’s it’s mainly women who attend, one because they have the time and two, because they’re the most impacted,” she said.
To her, it’s important that more women participate in the climate change conversation because she feels not enough is being done to look at the impact on women.
“Women would be sensitive in general to things that happen to fellow women and the impacts on them,” she said.
Women line up for water near Moyale in the lowlands of Ethiopia's Oromia region on Feb. 11, 2006. Photo by Andrew Heavens on Flickr Creative Commons
IPCC aims to increase female participation
Manaenkova, the climate expert leading the World Meteorological Organization, shares Nying’uro’s position that more women experts need to participate in the conversation. During the gender workshop on Tuesday night, Manaenkova and other leaders working with IPCC gathered to discuss the situation and see how more women scientists could be included in IPCC’s work.
As a major organization assessing climate change to guide scientists and policy makers, the IPCC is trying to be more gender balanced, said Fatima Driouech, who spoke at the evening meeting. She is vice-chair of the IPCC Working Group 1, which deals with the physical science basis of climate change.
“Within IPCC, there’s good will to improve (gender balance) for the future. In this cycle, we feel there’s an improvement compared to the previous one,” Driouech told National Observer.
The Moroccan scientist is one of 10 women of the IPCC's 34-member bureau, which includes chairs and vice-chairs of the organization and its working groups and task force. She was also a lead author of the IPCC’s previous climate change assessment report.
“It’s important to include (women) in climate research and in science because there’s a need for different viewpoints, different visions and different ideas,” she said.
According to numbers released at the workshop and confirmed by IPCC, there are more female authors of special reports currently in the works than in previous years. The IPCC is nearly 30 years old, and was first established by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization to "provide a scientific basis for governments at all levels to develop climate-related policies."
Thirty-eight per cent of the 86 authors of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 per cent — scheduled for publication next year — are women, compared with 21.5 per cent of 1,001 authors who participated in the IPCC's fifth Assessment Report released in 2014. In a subreport of the fifth Assessment Report, all 33 authors from African countries were men.
In two other reports underway that are due in 2019, just under a third of the authors are women. That's out of 101 authors for a report on climate change and oceans, the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, and 103 authors for the Special Report on Climate Change and Land.
While there’s some global improvement, Driouech said some countries are still struggling to be more gender-balanced: “There are some regions where there’s a little imbalance to fix for everyone’s good.”
For that reason, at the opening of the IPCC session on Wednesday morning, where representatives of member countries were present, Manaenkova mentioned the need for “active debate on the gender sensitivity of the issues” reflected in the IPCC reports.
Despite growing understanding that gender balance can inform better research and decision-making in climate science, she said organizations like the World Meteorological Organization, as well as the IPCC and other UN bodies, have had to put a lot of effort to convince “skeptics” who didn’t understand why more women need to be included. That persuasion effort is still underway.
Delegates from the International Panel on Climate Change's 195 member states attend the first round of meetings during their week long session in Montreal on Wed. Sept. 7, 2017. Photo by Clothilde Goujard
Countries must nominate more women scientists
At IPCC, she said, some countries do not nominate enough women scientists to be authors.
“In some cases, (IPCC) has to positively discriminate, they prefer a woman to maybe ten men because she was the only one nominated,” she said.
At her own organization, she said they are thinking about enforcing nominations of women. As it stands, female nominations are encouraged and welcomed, rather than enforced.
Manaenkova believes that because IPCC focuses not just on physical climate change, but also socio-economic impacts and adaptation, it is even more important to have input from women. She said it would even be better to have reports with statistics separated by gender.
"(IPCC) says there's some women nominated who could be lead authors and their competence is very high, and high enough to be coordinating author," said Manaenkova. “We need to look for these women, find them, and pull them in."
The IPCC will be in Montreal until Sunday to discuss their reports on the impacts of global warming, and to develop the outline for their main and sixth publication on the topic, which scheduled for release in 2022.
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Ashden/Empower Generation
Women take control of solar revolution.
The solar revolution is reaching the remotest parts of the world and changing the lives of women otherwise trapped in poverty.
The solar revolution is reaching the remotest parts of the world and changing the lives of women otherwise trapped in poverty.
LONDON, 1 August, 2017 – A solar revolution is transforming the lives of women in the remotest parts of Asia. They no longer have to wait decades to be connected to a power grid but are able today to exploit the huge potential of the abundant sunshine.
In societies where women normally play a subservient role and spend much of their time on menial chores, solar businesses are creating a new breed of female entrepreneur who are bringing electricity to their villages.
In the last two years two schemes designed to encourage women to bring the solar revolution to parts of rural India and Nepal have won international Ashden Awards, which bring the organisations involved £20,000 (US$26,360) each in prize money and a lot of guidance to improve and extend their businesses.
The 2017 winner of the Ashden Award for clean energy for women and girls, Empower Generation, has enabled 23 women in Nepal to set up clean energy businesses and manage a network of 259 sales agents. They in turn gain a commission on sales of solar panels, lights, clean cooking stoves and water filters.
In a country where all but 12% of women are engaged in farm work, Empower Generation’s staff are now able to lead their communities out of energy poverty. Overcoming family and cultural resistance, they are developing leadership skills and setting up businesses employing women and also men as agents.
“I was working in a food packaging factory, working long hours and earning very little. I felt like I was swimming in a tiny well. Now I am swimming in the ocean. I have ambitions”
For customers who have no chance of a grid connection, solar lanterns and solar home systems bring clean electric light and ’phone charging, often for the first time. Even those who are connected to the grid use the products as a back-up during the frequent blackouts, or for attending to crops and animals after dark.
Customers include both local families and NGOs, many of which are working on programmes initiated as a response to the 2015 earthquake.
The scheme is designed to build women’s confidence in themselves and their ability to run their own affairs and manage their finances. It also helps reduce the use of kerosene and therefore air pollution.
One of the entrepreneurs, Mina Mahato, said: “I can now balance doing good in my community with running a successful business. I am extremely proud of the sign outside my shop that bears my own name.”
Another new businesswoman, Basanti Chaudhary, said: “Before Empower Generation, I was working in a food packaging factory, working long hours and earning very little. I felt like I was swimming in a tiny well. Now I am swimming in the ocean. I have ambitions, and there are possibilities for me.”
Distant markets
Some of the businesses have been so successful that their CEOs are now selling many other household items. This success has inspired Empower Generation to expand beyond Nepal, and it has just moved into Myanmar.
The winner of the 2016 Ashden Award for clean energy for women and girls, Frontier Markets, runs an organisation called Solar Sahelis in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.
Sahelis (the name means “solar women friends”) had already provided clean, reliable light and energy to 630,000 people by the time it received its award. Its systems are also designed to replace kerosene lights, leaving families more money to buy food and other essentials.
Solar systems make cooking and studying easier, providing brighter, less smoky light than kerosene lamps. Robust long-range torches are particularly popular with women, for moving around outside after dark and checking livestock.
Solar torches are brighter and more reliable than battery-powered ones, and save users from running down ’phone batteries through using mobile ’phones for outdoor light.
Women decide
By the time Frontier Markets received its award 70,000 torches, 45,000 lamps and 12,000 solar home lighting systems had been sold. It estimates that, for around 70% of sales, women make the purchasing decision or are the main users of the products.
The cost of a single light product can be recovered within three to six months, through savings of typically US$3/month on kerosene and dry cell batteries. Cutting kerosene use reduces greenhouse gas emissions by about 12,000 tonnes/year of CO2, as well as cutting indoor air pollution and fire risk in homes.
To encourage people to give up kerosene, a Frontier Markets pilot programme gave a discount on a solar product to anyone who handed in a kerosene lamp. Around 50,000 customers took up this offer.
The products are sold with a written guarantee and warranty. Prices range from about $7.5 for the smallest lamp to $17 for a long-range torch, and $100 for a 15W solar home system with two LED lights, fan and mobile ’phone charger.
These are the latest in a series of Ashden Awards aimed at helping women and girls. Since the Awards were founded in 2001 Ashden has helped more than 200 enterprises around the world, which so far have collectively improved the lives of some 80 million people, saving more than ten million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year. – Climate News Network
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In Philippines, climate change and conflict both conspire against rural women.
Extreme weather and conflict have a particularly accute impact on female farmers in the Philippines.
Heavily exposed to increasing incidence of extreme weather events, the Philippines is among one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change in the world.
Climate-induced disasters in the Philippines frequently disrupt fruit and cash-crop production, resulting in income loss and higher food prices. Over the past four years, weather events have cost the Philippine economy an annual average of 0.3% of GDP.
Typhoon Haiyaan alone caused crop loss of 1.1 million tonnes and destroyed 600,000 hectares of farmland in 2013, costing the Filipino agriculture industry and small farmers an estimated US$724 million.
Migration as a coping strategy for women
Losses in rural areas, especially where there’s ongoing armed conflict, are not just financial. Across the world, climate and conflict are deeply intertwined and their negative effects mutually reinforcing.
In the Philippines, this relationship is evident in Mindanao, a farming community on the country’s southernmost island. Despite peace efforts to end over 40 years of social and ethnic conflict there, hostilities remain.
According to research conducted by the University of Queensland and Oxfam, the violence has particularly marginalised women, from female farmers to the widows of those killed in combat. In parallel, the area has also seen an increase in both typhoons and droughts over the past decade.
Conflict and extreme weather have triggered social and economic upheaval in Mindanao in recent years. Studies show that a 1℃ increase in growing season night-time temperature in the Philippines can cause a loss of rice yield and biomass by 10%.
Facing limited land availability and persistent poverty, agricultural productivity in Mindanao undergoing long periods of low production and food insecurity is on the rise.
Because young women, wives and widows can find seasonal employment in urban areas more easily the men, many women find themselves compelled to leave the area in quest of jobs that can help stabilise family income and mitigate poverty.
The outcomes are not always positive. In times of conflict and disasters, women and children are particularly susceptible to trafficking, sexual abuse, prostitution and what locals in areas facing scarcity call isang gabi, isang salop, exchanging sexual favours for food.
In Mindanao and elsewhere in southern Philippines, the transit and trade of underage girls and young Filipino children for the purpose of sexual exploitation, forced labour and use as human shields is on the rise, with an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 children linked to commercial sex exploitation.
Non-economic loss and damage from climate change
Female migration is just one of many coping mechanisms that rural Filipinos employ to adapt to the effects of their changing climate.
When faced with prolonged droughts or typhoons, farmers in Mindanao also make difficult choices, such as skipping meals, selling livestock and taking out loans. Many families decide to restrict consumption of food by adults in favour of feeding small children and the elderly.
As the chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, the Philippines has pushed international partners to develop mechanisms that would address the kind of non-economic loss and damage that can result from climate change.
There is now growing acceptance that extreme weather does not just impact tangible economic products that are traded on the market but also affects other, less tangible goods.
Recurring crop failures, for instance, have forced farmers into long-term lease arrangements and agreements with the private sector and traders, often at exorbitant interest rates. Other farmers have seen themselves compelled to give up their land, abandoning farming entirely and moving to the city.
In Mindanao, people told the University of Queensland and Oxfam researchers that they now associate annual extreme climatic events with the loss of belongings, death of family members, increased hardship, famine and hunger and loss of livelihood and income.
For women, these community-level concerns are compounded by the specific risks they face during seasonal migration to cities. Fear and psychological distress are a growing presence in their lives.
According to the research findings, all of these climate- and conflict-related changes have fundamentally shifted values, lifestyles and gender relations in Mindanao. Such social and cultural loss often goes unnoticed or unaddressed in climate change policies and disaster assessments.
Focus on gender
To help rural communities in the Philippines adapt to climate change and mitigate its negative effects, aid and development efforts should focus on improving the lot of women, particularly female combatants, widows and poor female smallholder farmers, many of whom face land-tenure problems.
That means stabilising the agricultural sector and fostering agricultural investments, which in conflict-prone parts of rural Philippines cannot be done without accompanying long-term peace and reconciliation processes.
Given the local sociocultural issues that must be navigated, the national government is likely better positioned than international aid agencies to spearhead programs that would link peace, security and reconciliation programs to agriculture and economic reforms.
It is the national government, too, that must integrate risk-transfer mechanisms, such as weather-index insurance policies, into the Phillipines’ existing public safety nets, subsidies and compensation schemes.
NGOs and international organisations do have a role in breaking the cycle of conflict, climate and gender inequality in Philippines. Access to micro-credit can play an important role in refinancing rural farming activities after disasters, and there’s some evidence that such programs work particularly well to build community resilience when they’re aimed at women.
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How Trump signed a global death warrant for women.
With one devastating flourish of the presidential pen, worldwide progress on family planning, population growth and reproductive rights was swept away. Now some of the world’s poorest women must count the cost.
Six months ago, one powerful white man in the White House, watched by seven more, signed a piece of paper that will prevent millions of women around the world from deciding what they can and can’t do with their own bodies.
In that moment, on his very first Monday morning in office, Donald Trump effectively signed the death warrants of thousands of women. He reversed global progress on contraception, family planning, unsustainable population growth and reproductive rights. His executive order even has implications for the battle against HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.
Rarely can the presidential pen have been flourished to such devastating effect. The policy it reintroduced will shut health clinics in Uganda and HIV programmes in Mozambique; it will compel women from Nepal to Namibia to seek out deadly back-street abortions.
“It is an unprecedented attack on women’s rights – it goes much deeper than abortion,” said Ulla Müller, president and CEO of EngenderHealth, a leading advocacy organisation.
“Girls are kicked out of school if they get pregnant. They are very often forced to marry the fathers. Very often they have to live in their in-laws’ house, where they have to do unpaid labour. It is a violation of women’s rights. We need to see this as a gender issue and very much as a power issue.”
Tewodros Melesse, director general of the the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), which stands to lose as much as $100m, said the US move “seeks to restrict the rights of millions of women. It asks us as a health provider, to stop providing services which are entirely legal in countries through our members – where some of the most poorest women, depend on them.
“The human cost of the gag rule will have a long and fatal legacy.”
Like so many far-reaching American policies, Trump’s executive order is enshrouded in complexity to the point where it seems almost designed to confuse.
The order reinstated the Mexico City policy (so called because it was first signed at the International Conference of Population in Mexico City, in 1984). Under this policy, any NGO outside the US seeking American funding for family planning has to pledge it will not carry out abortions anywhere in the world, even with its own money. Such organisations must agree not to talk to women about a termination, nor lobby governments to liberalise their policy on abortion.
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What is the ‘global gag rule’, and why does Trump support it?
US aid has never been used to fund abortion services (it is forbidden, by law). This is a ban on speaking about abortion – a restriction on free speech which the First Amendment does not permit within the US. For this reason, the rule became known as the global gag.
Trump’s version of the policy has massively expanded its reach. It is no longer just international family planning organisations that must agree not to “perform or actively promote abortion”. Every global health organisation that accepts US funding now has to sign the same clause. Anyone working to fight HIV, get vaccines or vitamins to children, or prevent Zika or malaria is facing a stark and unprecedented choice: sign, or lose all funding from the biggest aid donor in the world.
I believe that President Trump doesn’t give a hoot about any of these issues
Jon O'Brien, president, Catholics for Choice
As much as $10bn (£7.7bn) of global health funding hangs in the balance. Among those who will lose money if they refuse to sign up to the anti-abortion orthodoxy are the two big international family planning organisations, Marie Stopes International (MSI) and the IPPF. But for the first time, global NGOs such as Save the Children, WaterAid and the International HIV/Aids Alliance are also targeted.
The effects will be felt most keenly in the tiny, frontline clinics run by small NGOs struggling to help women and children in crowded townships, refugee camps and remote rural villages. There are no abortion doctors in such places (in most African countries, abortion is banned unless the woman’s life is in danger). These clinics instead offer contraceptive injections and condoms for those who would struggle to feed numerous children. But they also treat children for malaria and malnutrition and their mothers for HIV. This integrated care is now under threat.
But that’s not all. Trump has also decided to stop funding the UN Population Fund, which does hard and heroic work, reaching some of the most oppressed women in the world in refugee camps and war zones, as well as getting contraception to the remotest parts of the planet. In 2016, the US gave the organisation $69m in core funds and for its humanitarian response work.
And deep budget cuts to foreign aid under Trump include a proposal to axe every cent for overseas family planning, currently $600m a year.
The triple blow is already being felt by some of the world’s poorest women.
Take Nigeria, a country with one of the world’s fastest growing populations. The average woman there has more than five children. MSI predicts that because of Trump’s “global gag rule”, there will be an additional 660,000 abortions in Nigeria over the next four years, with 10,000 women dying as a result.
“This is going to be really huge,” said MSI country head Effiom Effiom of the US decision to pull funding. “They’ve been key in strengthening healthcare. It’s their funding that allowed us to reach 500,000 women in the past three years. Who will bridge that gap?” he asks.
It’s a question that bothers Sakina Sani as well. She has two children already and knows she cannot afford many more. She is grateful to a family planning clinic in northern Nigeria for furnishing her with a contraceptive implant that will enable her to plan out her family for the next four years. But after that, she’ll be on her own.
Sakina Sani, a mother of two, receives a contraceptive implant
Sakina Sani, a mother of two, has a contraceptive implant – known informally among young Nigerians as a ‘tattoo’ – placed in her arm. Photograph: Ruth Maclean for the Guardian
“I’d have to have more children,” she admits. “All I could do is pray harder for God to help feed them.”
Across the continent, in Uganda, her experience is replicated by Dausi Mukwana, 26, who had the first of her four children at the age of 14. An injectable contraceptive called Sayana Press and a tireless healthworker called Aisha Mugoya have belatedly given her control over family planning. But this is now in jeopardy: funding will dry up in the coming weeks.
“The number of maternal deaths will increase as the number of pregnancies increases, and the number of abortions is going to increase,” said Dr Moses Okilipa of Reproductive Health Uganda, a branch of the IPPF, which refuses to sign up to the Mexico City policy.
Dausi Mukwana, 26, a rural Ugandan, receives a contraceptive called Sayana Press
Dausi Mukwana, 26, a rural Ugandan, receives a contraceptive called Sayana Press. Photograph: Juozas Cernius/for The Guardian
The glaring paradox is that the global gag policy doesn’t even work. “The gag rule contributes to the very thing it purportedly seeks to reduce: the frequency of abortion,” said a report in June from the Guttmacher Institute, a US research organisation focused on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Evidence shows that when the gag is imposed, unwanted pregnancies and abortions go up.
Banning abortions and forcing NGOs not to offer any counselling or advice about them drives desperate women to the back-street abortionists and witch doctors.
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Hardline opponents of abortion don’t understand this; they don’t believe it or don’t care. At Trump’s right elbow when he signed the order was Mike Pence, a born again Christian. Trump is not religious, but some of his most influential advisers are – and the choice of Pence as his running mate brought on board the religious right. The new, improved global gag is their reward.
“I believe that President Trump doesn’t give a hoot about any of these issues one way or the other,” said Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice. He pointed out that Trump’s closest advisers include a significant number of ultraconservative Catholics. Kellyanne Conway has been a prominent anti-choice campaigner for decades, he said, claiming in interviews that “unborn babies can feel pain at 20 weeks” (a view that the evidence does not support). Steve Bannon, chief strategist and Sean Spicer, White House press secretary, are both conservative Catholics. Katy Talento, a health policy aide on the Domestic Policy Council, recently published an article alleging that “chemical birth control causes abortions and often has terrible side effects, including deliberate miscarriage”, a claim about the pill that is not supported by scientists.
And then there is Pence. At the Republican National Convention in Ohio last July, he called himself “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order”. Born into an Irish Catholic Democrat-voting family in Indiana, he found God at a Christian music festival in Kentucky in 1978. He was still a Democrat in 1980, when he voted for Jimmy Carter, but his views started to shift to the right at college and he became a big admirer of Ronald Reagan’s “common sense conservatism”. By 1988 he was running for Congress as a Republican. He lost but won a seat in the House of Representatives for Indiana in 2000.
In his 2000 Congressional campaign, he urged that the Ryan White Act, which provides funds for HIV treatment for the poor, should only be renewed if the money was “directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behaviour”.
As governor of Indiana in 2015 he made national headlines when he signed into law a bill that was interpreted as permitting discrimination against LGBT people in the state. Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, restaurants, hotels or shops would be able to cite a religious objection to serving gay customers. Pence was photographed signing the bill into law in March 2015 surrounded by monks and nuns in habits. A number of large businesses spoke out against the law, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and in the face of an outcry, Pence made revisions.
Opponents of the anti-abortion law signed by Mike Pence protest outside the Indiana State House in July 2016
Opponents of the anti-abortion law signed by Mike Pence protest outside the Indiana State House last July. Photograph: Mykal McEldowney/AP
His opposition to abortion has been solid. In October 2015, he awarded $3.5m of Indiana state funds to a charity called Real Alternatives, which promotes sexual abstinence and counsels pregnant women wanting an abortion to have the baby. Then, in March 2016, Pence brought in one of the toughest state abortion laws in the US. Abortion on the grounds of foetal abnormality, including Down’s syndrome, would be banned. All women wanting an abortion would be required to have an ultrasound examination, where they would see the foetus on the monitor, at least 18 hours before the termination. The harsher aspects of this law were stayed by the courts, but the US by now understood Pence was willing to fight the most controversial battles on behalf of the religious right. As Rolling Stone put it in January: “When Trump needed a VP nominee with a career-long reputation for being virulently pro-life to balance his own abortion flip-flops, Mike Pence was the answer to all his political prayers.”
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The day after the inauguration, 500,000 people attended the Women’s March on Washington on 21 January, to voice disgust at Trump’s past sexual behaviour and fear for the future of women’s reproductive rights. Days later, Pence became the first vice-president in history to attend the annual anti-abortion March for Life, held for the past 44 years on or near the anniversary of the historic judgement of Roe v Wade. Thousands of anti-abortion activists were bussed to the National Mall in Washington DC, some holding pictures of the foetus in the womb, others waving banners. “Trump loves the bump” was one. “We voted to make America pro-life again”, said another. A third read: “We hear your silent cries”.
“It is no coincidence that the first right cited in the US Declaration of Independence is the right to life,” Conway told the crowd, to cheers. But it was Pence who made the real impact. Trump had sent him to address this gathering, he said. Life, Pence said, “is winning again in America”.
Fighting back
The most devastating impact of the policy is on the big providers of family planning, IPPF and MSI, whose clinics all over the world will be stripped of US funds because they offer abortions in countries where it is legal to do so (in the UK, Marie Stopes provides terminations on behalf of the NHS). In developing countries, they partner with local NGOs, funding clinics where women may go for a contraceptive implant or injection but often for other healthcare too, such as an HIV test or cervical cancer smear. All of this is at risk.
MSI received $30m from USAid last year, which was 17% of its total funding. It is working to raise funds from other sources, but the gap will be hard to fill. Hardest hit will be services in Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria and the Sahel. These are places where MSI has been running substantial programmes with USAid funding. In Madagascar, 40% of women get their contraception from MSI.
IPPF has about $100m annually in US funds but, after the last global gag, it deliberately invested nearly half the money in HIV services, decreasing its exposure in case another Republican president came in. Trump’s extension of the Mexico City policy to all forms of healthcare means they stand to lose the lot. Among programmes under threat unless alternative sources of funding can be found are HIV treatment in the Caribbean, clinics testing for Zika across Latin America, and help for displaced people in Colombia.
“We have become much more of an integrated service provider. We’re trying to be a one-stop shop that takes you from the start of life to the end of life,” said Matthew Lindley of IPPF, who support fragile health systems in impoverished and war-torn countries.
“If we had USAid funding, we would have expected to avert 6m unintended pregnancies,” said Megan Elliott, vice-president for strategy and development at MSI. “Because we can’t avert them, we believe there will be an additional 2m abortions. Because they are in restricted environments, the majority of those women will be getting a backstreet abortion where they won’t be properly cared for and certainly won’t get proper contraception to prevent a further unwanted pregnancy.”
Isabella Lövin
In a picture widely seen as a parody of Trump signing the global gag order, Isabella Lövin, Sweden’s deputy prime minister, is flanked by female colleagues as she signs a bill. Photograph: Johan Schiff/EPA
Last time the gag rule was in force, between 2001 and 2008, USAid stopped supplying contraceptives to NGOs in 16 developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, many of which had very high rates of HIV. Guttmacher cites Lesotho, where one in four women were HIV-positive, and which got no US support at all for family planning or contraceptive supplies under George W Bush. In 13 other countries, USAid cut off support to the leading family planning organisation. The Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia suffered a 24% budget cut and had to reduce its services.
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The fightback began in March. She Decides was the idea of the Dutch trade and development minister Lilianne Ploumen, who was backed by the Belgian, Swedish and Danish governments. A fundraising conference attracted representatives from 50 governments and raised €181m.
That’s a drop in the ocean, they acknowledge, but the campaign to persuade more governments, philanthropists and the private sector to step up with cash continues. Earlier this month, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (which also funds work at the Guardian) announced it would increase its funding for family planning by 60%, with an extra $375m over the next four years.
Chris Hohn, a hedge fund manager, started the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, which makes grants for projects to improve children’s health in poor countries. Concerned about the harmful effects of pregnancy on so many adolescent girls, which can result in a baby suffering from stunting and malnutrition, his Fund is giving MSI $10m.
Millions of women have been given control over their bodies and their futures. Millions of girls have been able to stay in school and have hopes of a career. But the edicts of the Trump administration, rooted in an ideology that says the lives of women count for less than the life of a foetus, have set the world back years.
The gag meanwhile extends far beyond the world of NGOs. Western officials who don’t want to fall out with the Trump White House are silent. Those who work at the Department for International Development do not want to criticise their colleagues at USAid, who themselves are privately wringing their hands over a policy that will undo much of their good work on behalf of women and girls.
Further afield, the 30-year-old woman with 10 children she can’t feed or send to school, and the 14-year-old made pregnant by her uncle, can’t be gagged.
They have no voice at all.
Ruth Maclean in Maiduguri, Nigeria, and Liz Ford in Mbale, Uganda, contributed to this report
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With climate change driving child marriage risks, Bangladesh fights back.
Climate change-driven extreme weather - from flooding and mudslides to blistering heat - is accelerating migration to Bangladesh's cities, raising the risks of problems such as child marriage, according to UNICEF's head of Bangladesh programs.
With climate change driving child marriage risks, Bangladesh fights back
Laurie Goering
4 MIN READ
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Climate change-driven extreme weather - from flooding and mudslides to blistering heat - is accelerating migration to Bangladesh's cities, raising the risks of problems such as child marriage, according to UNICEF's head of Bangladesh programmes.
"In Bangladesh, climate change is in your face. You can't avoid it. You can see it happening," said Sheema Sen Gupta in an interview in London with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"Every year you have cyclones, floods, landslides. It's a given. It's now part of everyday living, and the clearest thing you see (from it) is rural to urban migration."
But surging migration to cities by rural families no longer able to make a living from farming or fishing brings other threats, from worsening urban overcrowding to child marriage, as families seek to keep girls "safe" in a new environments.
"I hesitate to say climate change and urbanization are the major causes of child marriage. But they do compound it and make it a bit more difficult to intervene," said Sen Gupta, who has been in Bangladesh for seven months and previously worked for UNICEF in India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Ghana and Somalia.
However, innovative efforts to curb the threat - particularly training young people to help each other - are paying off, with Bangladesh's government now incorporating programmes started by organizations such as UNICEF and Save the Children, she said.
Across Bangladesh, more than 4,000 youth clubs have been set up which gather young people regularly to listen to radio broadcasts on human rights issues, health, nutrition and other topics, and then discuss the issues.
Youth Initiatives
Preventing child marriage is one of the main focuses of the groups, Sen Gupta said, with members keeping an eye out in the community for girls at risk, and then, if they see a threat, alerting community leaders, who are able to step in.
"The best tool is the adolescents themselves," she said "They intervene - they know who to contact, they have a helpline. They call and say a marriage is planned."
Better yet, said Sen Gupta, a psychologist by training, the groups have created a growing conviction among many girls that early marriage is not only bad for their health and prospects, but something they can avoid with community support.
"Adolescents themselves are more able to say 'I'm not getting married'" she said. "Girls are able to stand up to their parents."
Monitoring of child marriage rates over the last two years suggests that numbers are falling, but Sen Gupta said UNICEF is not yet fully confident of the data.
Bangladesh in February passed a Child Marriage Restraint Act, which bans marriage of girls under 18 - a significant change in a country where 18 percent of girls are married before 15 and more than half by 18, according to a 2016 UNICEF study.
However, the new ban has a gaping loophole that allows parents to agree to such marriages in "exceptional circumstances" with a magistrate's approval, Sen Gupta said.
UNICEF and other partners are now "trying to frame the rules about what the exception is so everything doesn't become an exception", she said.
Sen Gupta said that low-lying and densely populated Bangladesh, widely seen as one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, sees the risks and has proved adept at scaling up successful pilot efforts run by non-governmental organizations into broader government-run programmes.
"Bangladesh has a good framework of climate adaptation, based on the fact that they need to survive," she said. "Clearly there is an awareness (climate impacts) are increasing and we need to do something."
That is an attitude needed more globally, she said.
"People need to understand how important this is for kids, for their rights, for their development," she said. "If we don't look at climate change, at addressing these issues, we won't make the progress we're committed to making."
Reporting by Laurie Goering @lauriegoering; editing by Belinda Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit news.trust.org/climate
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