WOMEN HARDEST HIT BY CLIMATE CHANGE

CLIMATE CHANGE IS WORSE FOR POOR WOMEN
THEY ARE HARDEST HIT BY EXTREME WEATHER

LONDON (BBC News) - Women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, bearing the disproportionate burden of a warming planet, according to a report released by the United Nations Population Fund. "Poor women in poor countries are among the hardest hit by climate change, even though they contributed the least to it," said Executive Director of the Population Fund (UNFPA), Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. They are the most likely to be affected by problems associated with rising seas, droughts, melting glaciers and extreme weather, they have been largely overlooked in the debates surrounding how to address these problems - an issue that needs to be rectified, Obaid said. As the most affected, women should be taken into account by policies, programs and treaties organised in the global fight against climate change. The report has also shown that women are more likely than men to die in natural disasters - including those related to extreme weather - with this gap most pronounced where incomes are low and status differences between men and women are high.

The poor are more likely to depend on agriculture for a living, and therefore risk going hungry or losing their livelihoods when droughts strike, rains become unpredictable and hurricanes move with unprecedented force. The poor also tend to live in marginal areas, vulnerable to floods, rising seas and storms. The UNFA report also shows investments that empower women and girls - particularly education and health - bolster economic development and reduce poverty and have a beneficial impact on climate change. Girls with more education, tend to have smaller and healthier families as adults. Women with access to reproductive health services and family planning, have lower fertility rates that contribute to slower growth in greenhouse-gas emissions in the long run.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

Who is a woman here may not be a woman there in that higher realm; who is a man here may not be a man there. The body is only a dress. The soul has its mental dress, and according to that, we wear this physical dress, the flesh dress. Sexual identity means the flesh and the mind. In the soul, who will represent which type of sexual identity there, is uncertain at present here in this plane. But women there in the higher realm have a higher prospect, a brighter prospect in the spiritual world. In the spiritual realm, those souls that are female - who have attained that formation of the soul's realization - hold a better and higher position than men. Here in the plane of exploitation, men hold the better position. But there, in the plane of submission and surrender, the female form of mind is more rewarding than the male's form of mind.

Śrīla Bhakti Raksaka Sridhara Maharaja
“Subjective Evolution of Consciousness”
Chapter Nine: ‘Spiritual Evolution‘