Abstract
This chapter examines climate change and variability emergency disaster risks on agricultural food security of the local communities in Africa with a focus on gender equality lens in Uganda. Ugandan women contribute up to 75% of domestic food production and yet they are often overburdened with reproduction, household management, gender-specific discrimination, and adverse climate change effects like agricultural droughts, flash flooding, violent windstorms, or water stress. To ensure sustainable food security in the face of climate change vulnerability risks, the role of women is vital. Communication strategy to promote local climate information service (CIS) delivery system has been developed by the local government district planners in the park areas, but there is a lack of capacity to raise public awareness of the gender equality for the empowerment of women and girls for sustainable food security through agriculture production in Uganda for enhanced livelihood assets.
TopGender Equality In Climate Change Emergency
A gender equality issue involves three main elements: gender discrimination, gender gaps and gender oppression. Gender issues affect access to and control over resources, benefits and opportunities within every sector. Gender equality issues affect the success and sustainability of development plans and programmes within all sectors. In Africa, key gender issues are: family life, employment, decision making, education, health, and agriculture. Public communications campaigns should be guided by informed ethical, theoretical and gender concerns. The key targets and indicators of SDG 5 on gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls are expected to speed up progress in the African regional climate change adaptation and mitigation policies. These obviously assume gender parity as elaborated on in the UN SDG 5 and the relevant targets (UN, 2015).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Gender Roles: Are the archaic, illegal, unconstitutional cultural norms, attitudes, or practices, which discriminate against women or girls on the basis of their biological sex, to deny them access to equal opportunities, or benefits of social, economic, environmental, and political rights.
Food Security: Is the status of access to sustainable quality and quantity of the personally desired type of predictable supply of nutritious food from anywhere, daily and annually for the present and future needs at the household, community, district, county, national, regional, and global levels without any level of social, economic, environmental, legal, or political barriers or restrictions.
Livelihood Asset: Is a basic need that supports a normal social, economic, and ecological resource that are essential for human life at individual, household or family, and local community level.
Climate Variability: Is any unusual adjustment, alteration, deviation, or irregular change from the normal or means or average annual climate record or season of a state or a place over several weeks or months from the usual pattern as experienced by a state or a place within the country.
Small-Holder Farmer: Is a small-scale peasant (poor farmers) who practices subsistence farming or agriculture on a small plot of land using manual labor based on rudimentary technology mainly for household food supply and for small cash at the early days of good harvest periods.
Agriculture: Is the traditional or scientific farming methods that involve the production of crops or plants, animals, or livestock, as well as fisheries for subsistence or basic livelihood by a small-holder farmer or for large scale investment for big cash or trade by a commercial farmer.
Climatic Change: Is the usual pattern of change from the normal or mean or average annual climate record or season of a state, country, district, or a place; to the next recorded pattern as experienced by the community, district, sub-region, county, state or a place within the state from dry season to wet season as experienced in the case of Ugandan bi-modal climate patterns today.
Community: Refers to a specific cluster of human settlement in urban (city, municipality, town, trading center), peri-urban (suburb), or rural (village) locations that are often inhabited by related or unrelated people with similar or different socio-economic demographic backgrounds.
Gender Equality: Is the natural attitude and practice of sharing benefits, resources, opportunities, or challenges on the fair or equal assessment of abilities or potential of men, women, boys, or girls in all social, economic, environment, legal, administrative, technical, scientific, and political fields.
Weather: Is the current persistent or intermittent prevailing status of a local, regional, or national short-term atmospheric conditions of the time or hours, day (s), or week that is characterized by temperature, vapor, drizzle, rainfall, visibility, sunshine, cloud, wind, snowing, or humidity.
Climate: Is the predictable average record or information of state or pattern of every day's weather or prevailing condition of a country, state, or region over a period of at least 30 years as the seasons, such as, for example, the bi-modal climatic change of dry and wet seasons as in Uganda.
Climate Change: Is the quantitative statistical record of a long term adjustment of regular annual two climatic wet and wet seasons, in Uganda, which occurs in districts or nationally over a long period of over 30 years as a result of natural and human drivers with a focus on human activities.
Household: Is a social infrastructure unit of human settlement, habitation, or accommodation, which normally hosts or houses individuals, relatives or non-relatives, or members of a nucleus family that may be headed by men, women, or children, as practically experienced in Uganda today.