Climate Change on Women and Children

Coast Women In Development (CWID) recognizes that rural women are the most vulnerable to
climate change, the husbands of these women go to the urban areas in search for employment
leaving the women behind, incase of climate change disaster, women and children are forced to
relocate to the nearest safe place, children are forced out of school until they are safely settled,
during this period the women and children are prone to waterborne diseases and famine.

Impacts of climate change in Africa are mostly associated with water, droughts, floods and this
changes affects agriculture, infrastructure, health and energy thus the challenge of climate
proofing requires improving the ways in which water is managed and used, these investments are
costly but can create jobs and enable communities to secure livelihoods.

CWID'S Programme Coordinator
Betty Sharon and Communications
Officer, Lorine Awuor in the African
Commission Climate Change
on Economic and Employment
Growth.

Community participation can make
their own the projects by investing
in water storage facilities.
Communal dams and water tanks
can be built alongside the rainwater
source to be used when the rains are
low. In these projects, issues of
employment creation and economic 
growth for women and the youth should
be considered before they are implemented.
Governments should capacity build the staff in meteorological stations to be able to capture and
disseminate information correctly so that people can be prepared for climate changes. Best
practices in effective data collection and dissemination should be invented in local communities.
Since the government is slow in information dissemination, NGO’s can be incorporated because
they are the ones who work on the grassroots where people are affected the most, thus funds
from donors and private investors partnership should be encouraged

For the youths and young scholars, climate change studies should be incorporated in the schools
curriculum as a way of increasing awareness in fighting climate change.
Women also need to be empowered in conservation of water systems by mobilizing women to
form women groups and fund them, build for them storage facilities which they can manage for
purposes of conservation.

Betty Sharon posing a question to
the Kenya's Prime Minister, Hon.
Raila Odinga

The concept of upgrading slums
should be incorporated in national
policies, youths and women should
be encouraged to seek employment
in order to upgrade the slums, i.e. in
sanitation, construction.

It is evident that the agriculture
sector is among the most vulnerable
to climate change, this is clearly
shown by the rising food prices.
The African governments, NGOs and 
Civil Society should move fast and revitalize farmereducation in line with climate change
because it is unpredictable, measures should also be put to ensure that farmers are actively involved in 
climate change and disaster risk issues.

Incentives such as schools and employment opportunities should be created to enable people live
in their local areas, people need to go back and develop their communities. Civil society has a
role in making people appreciate and want to stay and develop their community.

NGOs and Civil Society need greater activism on avoiding deforestation. They should set up
platforms for knowledge management. Input from research organizations is critical and
experiences on good practices should be documented and shared.

Regional networking should be is important because this is a national disaster and a human
plight that if not addressed now would have great negative impact in the world. NGO and civil
society trainings should be encouraged in order to address this issue effectively.
The media should be encouraged to consider climate change a top agenda in their news, this can
be done by capacity building reporters to editors, awards should also be given to those leading in
disseminating environmental issues because this is a crisis that has befallen us and need to be
prioritized

Recommendation
From the African Commission Conference on Climate Change and Economic Growth we hope
to address the effects of climate change during our community mobilizing and during the
conferences that we will get a chance to attend.