Climate change has disproportional impact on women

Climate change has a disproportional impact on women and girls, a senior official with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) has said.

John Hendra, deputy executive director for policy and program for UN Women, told Xinhua in a recent interview that "it's important that we get across that any future climate change agenda has to recognize the role of women."

The 28-year UN staff has concentrated on the young agency's role during Tuesday's Climate Change Summit held at the UN headquarters in New York.

The one-day summit attracted a record high of more than 120 heads of state and government to work for a final climate change agreement in Paris, France, in 2015. Climate change is also one of the hot topics for 193 member states at the annual high-level debate of the UN General Assembly.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the summit that, "Climate change is the defining issue of our age. It is defining our present. Our response will define our future."

As a result, Hendra said, the international community needs to make women part of the long-term climate change response.

He cited the Sub-Saharan region of Africa as an example of a continent with natural resources but a growing disparity in land distribution. In Sub-Saharan Africa, women face high-levels of inequality, he noted.

Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly vulnerable to climate change because of its dependency on natural resources, high-levels of poverty and weak infrastructure, the World Health Organization ( WHO) says.

Hendra provided statistics of the most susceptible group: impoverished women in rural areas of the Sub-Saharan Africa.

Three quarters of extreme poverty affect women in rural areas, he said, adding that more specifically, "65 percent of rural livelihoods and small agricultural holders are women."

Although women have a substantial role in rural agriculture, they only own 10-20 percent of the farm land. Therefore, "women need to have more land resources," Hendra said.

As of now, the UN agency is advocating for an all-encompassing climate change approach, when it comes to Africa and the rest of the world.

Hendra said, "Any future climate change agreement or sustainable development goals (SDGs) really has to have women as a major part of the strategy."

To achieve this, UN Women is engaging political leaders and changing their outlook on climate change, he said.

"We are looking at much more understanding of how to not look at climate change as just an isolated issue, but really how gender equality and addressing inequality more broadly is important for effective action against climate change," he said while also pointing to the MDGs, a set of eight anti-poverty targets to be reached by its deadline of 2015.