‘Women, children more likely to be affected by climate change’

Islamabad : Women and children were the most vulnerable among the whole population and can get affected by the impacts of climate change which needed to be controlled by taking stringent measures.

“Women and children disproportionately and with a greater frequency are affected through heat waves, droughts, floods, air pollution, food scarcity, disease, and disasters,” the spokesperson for Ministry of Climate Change Muhammad Saleem said while talking to this agency.

He said that Pakistan was one of the top ten countries badly affected by the adverse impacts of climate change.

Climate change, he said, was a planetary phenomenon that would impact all countries, but its effects were being shaped by pervasive and entrenched gender inequality.

Muhammad Saleem highlighted that the future environment was extremely challenging, though not entirely grim, because, women and children were demonstrating extraordinary resilience to the adverse impacts of climate change all over the world.

Besides, he said, they were spearheading global climate action movements, championing clean sources of energy, and building alternative models of community that focus on resilience, sustainability, and cooperation.

Gender inequality hampers women’s capacity and potential to be actors in climate action.

These gender inequalities that also involve access to and control over resources, including access to education and information, provision of equal rights and opportunities, and access to decision-making processes, outline what women and men can do and cannot do in a particular context of climate change, the climate change ministry official added.