As a woman, to be born and bred in Africa means you are at the forefront of the Climate Crisis. Temperatures are rising, species are going extinct, lands are becoming increasingly infertile and desert encroachment is spreading at an alarming rate. Like a wave in high-motion, disastrous floods are inundating homes in coastal Africa and sand dunes are breaking over Northern Nigeria and other countries of the Sahel. The continual heating of our planet, known as Global Warming, and the erosion of our biodiversity is an outcome of capitalist hunger for excess growth, profits, and resource ownership.
The climate crisis is not just an ecological problem; it is at the core of the biggest and most complex societal problem of mankind with strong roots in capitalism, extractivism, colonialism and neocolonialism; exacerbating injustices of class, race, and gender inequality. Unfortunately, discourse around the root causes of climate change is shrouded in short sighted remedies and dominated by market forces, carbon offsets, techno fixes and biotechnology solutions. The resultant “Climate warriors” that these neocolonial structures and discourse have birthed continue to make sure the history and injustices of the climate crisis, and the real solutions that will stop ecocide, restore our ecosystems, and respect the rights of Mother Earth are not brought to light.
While climate breakdown is global and affects every human being on earth, its impacts are disproportionately felt by women in the continent of Africa. Now, women are the subsistence farmers of the world as they always have been. Women represent most small-holder farmers in Africa, and they produce 80% of the food people consume. This makes them highly economically dependent on access to fertile land. Coupled with their limited access to power and money and little understanding of their rights and possibilities for action, climate change puts women, especially in Africa, at the frontline.
They have depended on access to communal natural resources more than men and have been more penalized by their privatization. They are also the most committed to the defense of these resources. For women, farming in the current climate chaos has become more and more less feasible and pushes women even further to the margins of society. Emem Okon of Kebetkache Women Development & Resource Centre, at the opening session of the 8th Edition of the Niger Delta Women Day of Action for Environmental Justice, said “Oil pollution have caused severe fertility issues among women in the Niger Delta, women experience early menopause and these are causing problems because when a woman does not have a child they are traumatized by both families and the society.”
The 2022 Africa Climate and Gender Review shows that African women are fourteen times more likely to die or be severely impacted during a climate disaster. Already, in today’s world, women make up 80% of climate refugees. As the world grapples with these impacts, environmental justice organizations like the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Kebetkache Women Development & Resource Centre, WOMIN Africa and other grassroot movements of women in Africa continue to assume key roles and responsibility for the oversight of their own environment and helping to reclaim their lands, livelihoods, and homes. These organizations are playing a key role in healing territories, defending communities and livelihoods against powerful corporations causing climate change. They are standing as the main social forces against the complete commercialization of nature and marginalization of women, building local and international solidarity.
In Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Kenya and across other countries in Africa, in the face of rising food prices and land unavailability, women have mobilized together, bought plots of public lands and planted corn, beans, cassava, okra, waterleaf, cassava along roadsides, in parks, around riverbanks etc. to keep their families alive. In the Niger Delta, Nigeria, women have replanted trees in degraded mangrove forests, joined hands to chase away loggers. In opposition to oil firms, drilling operations, the building of dams, and the privatization of water, they have organized uprisings and set up blockades. By doing this, Niger Delta women have developed a systemic coordination and international solidarity with other women and men across the continent who are fighting the same battle against the commodification of nature brought about by oil companies and their corporate state partners.
This year’s celebration of International Women’s Day is a renewed opportunity for us to get women's voices heard and their role recognized in the environmental justice struggle. All of us must join forces with African women to demand for environmental and climate justice if we are to successfully respond to the climate crisis. Focusing on the need to Accelerate Action emphasizes the importance of taking swift and decisive steps to achieve gender equality. It calls for increased momentum and urgency in addressing the systemic barriers that women face, both in personal and professional spheres.
Following the conversations on oil resumption in Ogoniland, the women of Ogoni is recommending that the government puts a stop to any planned attempt to resume oil activities in Ogoniland. It should rather concentrate on redeeming the ecological disaster in the area, decommissioning aged oil infrastructure, replacing the lost livelihood of the people and securing justice for the countless Ogoni’s waiting for closure.
So, together, lets Accelerate Action to speed up the rate of progress in Africa and the Niger Delta.
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