Climate change and gender-based violence: An invisible nexus?Analysis of ecological stress-induced GBV in the Sundarbans
The 50th regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council which took place from June 13 to July 8, 2022, in Geneva, Switzerland, had a special panel discussion exploring the relationship between climate change and violence against women. The panel shed light on how the majority of climate refugees and people displaced by climate crisis are women and how this exacerbates the risk of gender-based violence (GBV) in an already vulnerable and marginalized group. Quoting Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, “While they sleep, wash, bathe or dress in emergency shelters, tents or camps, the risk of sexual violence is a tragic reality of their lives as migrants or refugees”. Isn’t this a clear assertion of how climate change aggravates gender inequality and GBV? Yet, this nexus has been long excluded in climate policy, disaster management, and resilience-building agendas both at UNFCCC and national levels. UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency defines GBV as “harmful acts directed at an individual based on their gender. It is rooted in gender inequality, the abuse of power and harmful norms.” According to Braaf (2016), although some research has been conducted to identify the intersection between climate change and GBV, there exists a major gap. A concrete evidence-based investigation that aims to understand the deep-rooted sociocultural norms which trigger such violence in climate-vulnerable regions is lacking.
Located on the world’s largest delta of the Brahmaputra, Ganges, and Meghna rivers on the Bay of Bengal, the Sundarbans (literally, Sundar= beautiful; ban= forest) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the “largest single block of tidal, halophytic mangrove forests in the world”. Spanning over about 10,200 sq km, it is spread across India (about 40%) and Bangladesh (about 60%). Despite the global recognition of its ecological importance and obligations of conserving its unique biodiversity under international treaties, the Sundarbans is currently witnessing major climatic shocks. In recent years, this densely populated delta has slowly developed into a critical climate hotspot (submerging islands due to rising sea levels, intrusion of saltwater, coastal erosion, rising sea surface temperature, increasing frequency of super cyclones, etc.), putting at stake the lives of around 4.5 million islanders, whose livelihood largely relies on the natural resources (fishing, agriculture, crab and prawn seed collection, wood collection, wild honey collection. etc.). Severe cyclonic storm Aila in May 2009 and Cyclone Amphan in May 2020 were the two most devastating tropical cyclones hitting the islands of the Sundarbans, which exposed the ghastly impacts of climate change, not only on natural systems but also on vulnerable populations. ‘Survival of the fittest’- adhering to this mantra, the islanders of the Sundarbans ended up endorsing risky lifestyles to secure their livelihoods in the face of environmental shocks. For instance, due to resource damage after the cyclones, the women often had to walk mile after mile to fetch water, fuel, and food sources which increased their risk of sexual gender-based violence (SGBV).
The female islanders of the Sundarbans have long been victims of GBV due to the intersection of gender with other categories of social difference like race/ethnicity, caste, age, class, religion, education, etc. However, due to the ill effects of climate change, their vulnerability towards GBV has increased manifold, over the last few years. It is also interesting to note that Sundarbans’ population includes historically discriminated groups like Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, undocumented migrants, Muslims, and landless islanders. Therefore, the Sundarbans is a brilliant specimen to study how social power structures, environmental change, and gendered relations intersect to increase the vulnerabilities of GBV. Speaking of the manifold negative impacts of environmental degradation on human well-being, it is not a surprise that women and marginalized groups like religious and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, poverty-stricken people from the Global South and low-income groups from Global North are the ones who bear the worst impacts of the climate crisis despite having the lowest carbon footprint, owing to the “structural inequalities rooted in anachronistic and (white) supremacist norms of domination” (Dias, 2020). This article aims to discuss one such serious implication that climate change has on the security of women, namely GBV, with the Sundarbans as a case study.
GBV in Bangladesh and India
Bangladesh has long been considered a cradle of GBV. According to a WHO report (2018) on violence against women, Bangladesh had the highest lifetime and past 12 months Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) estimates among ever married/ partnered women aged 15-49 in the South-East Asia region. Globally, Bangladesh was assigned 4th rank in terms of physical and sexual IPV. A UN Women report mentioned 51.4% of Bangladeshi women aged 20-24 years old were married before age 18. In 2018, 23.2% of women aged 15-49 years reported that they had been victims of GBV (physical and/or sexual violence) by a current or former intimate partner. However, it was shocking to note that there was 54.1% missing data regarding Bangladesh’s country score. Although India’s statistics were much less compared to Bangladesh, there has been evidence of various forms of GBV in the country. According to UN Women, 27.3% of women aged 20-24 years were married before age 18 and in 2018, 18.4% of women aged 15-49 years reported that they had been victims of GBV (physical and/or sexual violence) by a current or former intimate partner. Unfortunately, 55.7% of data was missing, quite similar to Bangladesh. Regarding both countries, UN Women has officially acknowledged the major research gaps in key areas of gender and development including “the lack of comparable methodologies for regular monitoring” which is pivotal for addressing the gender data gaps.
Climate change and GBV in the Sundarbans
Horton (2012) highlights how “women and girls who adapt to climate change by walking longer distances to collect water or wood… or who seek shelter in refugee camps after climate-induced disasters are more exposed to various forms of violence, including rape and robbery.” Drawing from this, the impacts of climate change in an already vulnerable setting like the Sundarbans have deepened gender inequalities and in turn aggravated the most common forms of GBV already prevalent in the region, namely, domestic violence, child marriage, and human trafficking (Rezwana & Pain, 2020).
It is essential to note that these forms of GBV usually occur in the domestic sphere and are experienced by women in their everyday lives due to intersecting inequalities. However, they get systematically reinforced by the livelihood changes brought in by ecological crises. Owing to its domestic and regularised nature, these forms of GBV often go ‘invisible’ and underreported as most of the victims take it for granted as an expected fate of their composite realities. As a result, women constantly keep getting victimized in the name of enduring cultural traditions and are regularly advised to tolerate violence due to social stigma.
Child marriage and domestic violence
Child marriage is already a pressing issue in Bangladesh and India, as evident from the aforementioned statistics. In order to cope with the financial stresses of climate change, many families often resort to harmful GBV practices like child marriage. This not only violates the rights of the child but has serious tolls on the mental and physical health of the child bride who is often married off to a much older man. The child not only loses access to quality education but often ends up being an adolescent mother leading to serious health risks. An IUCN report highlighted how child marriage has become a ‘survival strategy’ in disaster-prone and poor areas like Bangladesh, which has the highest rate of child marriage in Asia, according to Human Rights Watch (2016).
“The groom’s family didn’t demand any money. We thought by marrying off our daughter, we would have one person less to feed.”, Rani Khatun’s mother told Al Jazeera during an interview. Rani Khatun, a child bride from the Sundarbans was married off by her family who was in acute financial distress after the super cyclones had massacred their lives. Like Khatun, several other minor girls from the Sundarbans regularly get entrapped into the vicious cycle of GBV, first, they are forced into child marriage due to climate-change-induced poverty, which in turn increases their vulnerability to domestic violence, another major form of GBV. According to Dankelman (2016), “...scarcity of food and basic provisions in the aftermath of weather-related disasters… can lead to feelings of powerlessness and societal and resource stresses. Such pressure on heads of households to provide for families can result in community conflict over resources and contribute to a marked increase in violent behaviors among men, including domestic violence and other forms of GBV.” This is a clear reflection of the toxic hyper-masculine culture that is deeply rooted in most patriarchal societies which “encourages sexual exploitation and abuse in the male-dominated response to disaster situations”.
A study published in the Journal of Biosocial Science found that more than two-thirds of the study’s respondents had encountered at least one natural disaster before being married off as a child which clearly indicates that climate change might be increasing the rates of child marriage in the Sundarbans region. “In the Sundarbans area, we saw the number of child marriages increase exponentially due to the pandemic and climate change effects”, exclaimed Subhasree Raptan from an NGO, Goranbose Gram Bikash Kendra, which works on the intersecting issues of child rights, human trafficking, and climate change, during an interview with The New Indian Express.
Trafficking in girls and women
Similar to child marriage, the trafficking of women and girls is another common form of GBV existing in South Asian societies since time immemorial. Although there is no systematic analysis of how climate change has exacerbated rates of human trafficking (Dankelman, 2016), some studies conducted in the Sundarbans highlighted a possible nexus between the two. Looking at the statistics of missing girls in West Bengal (the state where the Indian part of the Sundarbans exists), in 2020, the numbers rose to 6640 from 5986 in 2016, which can be linked to the agrarian and financial crisis caused by the May 2020 Cyclone Amphan. Although there is no breakdown of data specific to the Sundarbans (India), “the two districts that encompass the Indian side of the forest account for 32% of cases involving sexual offenses such as trafficking- despite being home to less than 20% of the state’s population.” It is important to note that this is just the tip of the iceberg because the majority of the cases do not even get reported due to the reluctance of the victim’s family to do so because of stigma. According to Milonari (2017), climate change-induced financial stress makes it easier for traffickers to trap young girls and women into forced prostitution and child labor. Another study (Das, 2017) stated 2009 had the highest number of women trafficking cases and tried to link this with the 2009 Aila cyclone.
Following the 2009 Aila cyclone, half of the male islanders migrated to cities in search of jobs, leaving behind the women to tackle the burden of running the household. This was mainly due to the gender restrictions of employment and the gendered dichotomy of domestic labor that exists in deeply patriarchal societies. Such victimhood of unpaid care increased significantly in the aftermath of the ecological disasters leading to the ‘feminization of survival, where a significant part of the survival strategies of households and communities essentially relies on the invisible social reproductive labor performed predominantly by women (Sassesn, 2000). However, due to the massive destruction of livelihood back in the Sundarbans, many of these women voluntarily migrated to the red-light districts of Kolkata, West Bengal (one of the largest red-light districts in Asia). “The number of women who moved to Kolkata’s red-light district increased by 20% to 25% in the aftermath of cyclone Aila. Many of these sex workers identified themselves as bhasha (environmental refugees)... Women who are forced to enter into prostitution in order to look after their family and children face social ostracism and the threat of sexual exploitation at the hands of their clients, and fall prey to sexually transmitted diseases like HIV/AIDS.”
How to connect the dots…?
After a thorough discussion of the possible linkages between climate change and GBV, the article argues that standard climate change policies are blindly focused on scientific and technological aspects in assessing the impacts of environmental degradation and fail to address the gendered impacts of the same. Apparently, since environmental programs already have their own priorities and limited resources, unless and until GBV is identified as a core issue, it will unlikely get the due consideration that it deserves. Therefore, a rights-based and gender-responsive approach that acknowledges the intersectionality of GBV and climate change is highly recommended in order to free societies from the vicious cycle (climate change induces financial stress → increases vulnerability to GBV→ violates security and rights of women → negatively impacts women’s participation and agency). Similarly, institutional and national disaster management policies, coping mechanisms, and recovery efforts must include strategies to prevent and respond to GBV as an essential part of resilience building in vulnerable regions. “Prioritising GBV … in this way, before, during, and after disasters, and explicitly recognizing their slow and sudden effects on women, will help to improve prevailing conditions in disaster-prone regions” like the Sundarbans.
The other recommendation is related to the powerless, voiceless, and helpless imagery of climate refugees constructed by popular media. In the current digital era, media representation of suffering plays a crucial role in how we perceive the world around us. The classic climate victim imagery tends to stereotype women of the Global South as passive victims. Such stereotypes of vulnerability are problematic because it largely undermines the agency and decision-making capacities of women from the Global South, the largest victims of climate change-induced perils like GBV. It perpetuates a negative stereotype affirming the ‘damsel in distress’ concept by reinforcing their inability to cope with the crisis without the assistance of development agencies from the Global North. For instance, after the 2009 Cyclone Aila, local NGOs and CBOs in the Sundarbans started disaster-risk reduction services. However, given the massive scale of economic losses, the intervention of Western international agencies, largely funded and staffed by the Global North, became more prominent in the region which reduced the representation of the locals. As a result, despite certain positive impacts of the Western interventions (in terms of community resilience building), it is problematic because “such programmes are usually designed to meet the requirements of donors or government (i.e. supply-driven), rather than focus on the demands and needs of beneficiaries (i.e. demand-driven)”. Therefore, instead of generalizing the women of the Global South as passive victims of climate change and GBV, their indigenous knowledge and survival accounts must be taken into consideration in the policies of rehabilitation and resilience building.
Although there is not much empirical literature available showing how climate change exacerbates GBV, the facts presented above hint at a strong correlation between the two. Therefore, there is a necessity for future in-depth research (country-based studies) to acquire accurate incidence data to better understand the structural and contextual parameters behind climate change and the GBV nexus. Sensitive victim-centered approaches must resort to which will take into account survivors’ experiences and their opinions on local power structures, traditions, gender cultures, social attitudes, and other contextual factors which aggravate their vulnerability to GBV in the face of climate-induced stresses.
The road forward?
A few weeks ago, the Belgian Advisory Council on Gender and Development’s COP27 side event, “Climate change and gender-based violence as a double threat to gender equality”, was held on November 16, 2022, with an aim of putting forward policy recommendations on the nexus between climate change and GBV. This definitely looks like a promising initiative to fill a major gap. Taking into account grassroots-level contexts and implementing policies to influence long-term transformations of societies from within might sound like a utopia, but not impossible to achieve. We need a feminist approach to climate change to ensure a people-centered attitude, focusing not only on the protection of the largest victims of the climate crisis but also their representation in decision-making. Instead of considering them as mere beneficiaries with no voice, they should be considered partners in resilience-building, taking into account the narratives of those who actually suffer to ensure a more inclusive, equal, and peaceful world. Along with international interventions, the initiatives of local women to cope with the gendered impacts of climate change must be recognized. It is high time that climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience-building strategies must put on gender-responsive lenses that aim to address GBV as a major ill-effect of the climate crisis.
References :
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About the author :
Shrinwanti is an Indian International Relations researcher and an intersectional feminist, currently based in Lisbon, Portugal. As a staunch advocate of human rights, her primarily focus is on exploring the intersectionality of gender and peace building. In particular, she is interested in exploring how this intersectionality is integral in responding to 'identity'-based violence, in turn informing policy changes for gender-responsive and stable peacebuilding. With an aim of transgressing colonial and patriarchal norms which have been systematically undermining the voices of the marginalised, she is keen to explore an intersectional peace approach as an alternate effective method for generating constructive long term solutions within a post-conflict society. She is an avid traveler who loves to explore new places and cultures.
