Introspecting Gender Concerns in National Action Plan for Climate Change of India

Introduction

The increased anthropogenic activities of the mankind have visibly altered earth’s surface temperature across continents posing a threat to human survival. International and national empirical research both point at environmental damages emanating from unsustainable activities. According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2001), ‘projections suggest that the global average surface temperature is expected to increase by 1.4 degree Celsius’ and, ‘will continue to change atmospheric composition throughout the 21st century’. The various evident climate risks include: sea level rise, melting snow caps, delayed winters, increasing average surface temperature, etc. Such changes have a potential threat of impacting food production with sporadic or heavy precipitation and unsuitable temperature, damaging coastal settlements with sea level rise, and increasing incidences of diseases like malaria.

It is critical to take note that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, the two most essential treaties which identify with worldwide endeavours to battle climate change do not feature the words ‘gender’ and ‘women’. Most of the debates about climate change have revolved around relative obligations of countries in restricting the emission of ozone-depleting gases and financing endeavours to move to low carbon energy and other green technologies system.

The discussion around the issue has been overtly overloaded with technicality. It misses the complexities of structured gendered vulnerabilities. Climate change retains an overtone of gender neutrality. In the purview of the tailored omission, legislation and execution of vulnerability and adaptation-related policies remain a lopsided affair.

In response to these gaps, this paper in the Indian context aims to study the gendered manifestation in green federal policy discourse at union level. The paper critically engages with the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) in deliberating over gender concerns in climate change governance. The article attempts to reason out the cause for apparent masculinisation of NAPCC and provides few possible policy suggestions for integrating gender concerns in the federal climate policy.

This desk review of India’s Climate policy, NAPCC, provides the defence to the relevance of gender analysis in the face of dominant tendencies to see humanity as homogeneous, science as apolitical, and gender justice as a luxury that cannot be chosen over survival (MacGregor, 2010). The theoretical postulates emerging from the study can be used as a comparative tool to evaluate the climate document of other nations through a gender lens.

Missing Gender—A Curious Silence

In 2005, the United Nations Conference on Disaster raised gender issues in climate change and adaptation and subsequently produced a Hyogo framework for taking requisite action. The conference recommended that all disaster management policies, planning and decision-making processes, including those related to risk assessment, early warning, information management, education, and training should also be assessed in terms of gender perspective (ISDR, 2005). It was from this interposition that gender and human security issues had found a place in the development policies and programmes of different governments on climate change even if in a limited scope. The reason for this restricted mention is due to gender biases in planning which predominantly reinforce gender inequalities. In the decision-making process, voices of men are prioritised over women, rendering women and their concerns virtually invisible in the policy-making arena. Cynthia Enloe (1990), a standpoint feminist, in her work precisely points at the overpowering tendency of the state over women institutions to maintain masculinity in work and governance. Given climate change-related stress, this kind of situation can accelerate the vulnerability of women to the absolute extremes. ‘Women’s limited access to resources, restricted rights, widespread patriarchal structure, limited mobility and muted voice in decision-making, makes them highly vulnerable to climate change risks’ (Singh, 2012). For instance, drought or flood due to global climate change can further cause difficulties for women in health, sanitation, the continuation of paid labour, attendance at school by young girls, potential violence, etc. The women particularly of the marginalised population are doubly burdened. They not only share caste, class division with their male counterparts but additionally bear the burden of socially constructed gender image. ‘All these combine to make some women more vulnerable in particular locations, situations and time since they face the different condition of vulnerability than men’ (Singh, 2012). Many scholars (Masika, 2002; Nelson & Stathers, 2009; Rossi & Lambrou, 2008) have similarly argued that to understand gender-differentiated vulnerability, their exposure to risk and the ability to recover, it is necessary to look into the power relations and differential access to resources.

However, while underscoring gender vulnerability, it is also important to note that, ‘focusing solely on vulnerabilities may be misleading, since women often have untapped skills, coping strategies and knowledge that could be used to minimise the impacts of the crisis, environmental change, and disasters’ (Lambrou & Piana, 2006). In fact, ‘any potential environmental policy should take cognizance of women as key players’ (ibid, 2006), since they are majorly perform the role of a natural resource manager. However, scant regard has been given by policymakers to integrate their concerns and capacities into mainstream policies. Consequentially, the absence of women from effective decision-making spaces results in the overall lower participation of women in the green federal governance structure.

National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC)

India is a case subscribing to quasi-federalism wherein environment is perceived to be overtly centrally tilted as any environmental subject not listed in Schedule VII, is the Centre’s prerogative (T.N. Godavarman vs. Union of India). However, in the Indian scenario, where vast asymmetries exist in the conditions, challenges, and capacities of states and institutions to deal with environmental stress, the need for diverse and flexible approach is even more significant (Srivastava & Dhar Chakrabarti, 2012). Thereby, climate change which has spill-over effects with cross border impacts, requires a policy initiative at multiple levels in a systematised and consonant manner.

The NAPCC of India which was finalised in 2008 with eight sectoral missions to identify, ‘measures that promote India’s developmental objective while also yielding co-benefits for addressing climate change effectively’ (GoI, 2008) seems to be in coherence with 2006 India’s National Environment Policy (NEP). NEP with the thrust on Decentralisation and Subsidiarity Principle, suggests for, ‘…ceding or transfer of power from a central authority to state or local authorities, in order to empower public authorities having jurisdiction at the spatial level at which particular environmental issues are salient, to address these issues’ (GoI, 2006). Climate change thus also offers an ideal case for cooperative federalism. The constitutional arrangement bestows the Centre with the powers related to international trade agreements, conventions. However, the states also have a critical role to play as executors, innovators, and initiators in climate policy and environmental decision-making since some environment related subjects like water and agriculture fall under their ambit. Despite the Centre hinting at cooperative federalism, it remains a matter of concern and investigation as to how gender which cuts across the layers of governance structure remains a missing proposition from climate policy of India?

Gender and National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC)

At the very outset, gender blindness entrenched in the policy formulation can be located by reading the composition mandated to formulate NAPCC. NAPCC which is a result of a high-powered, male-dominated Council headed by Prime Minister does not have in its council, representatives from Ministry of Women and Child Development, practitioners working at ground level or women-centric NGOs. Thus, the technical and managerial approach of the missions has no room for ‘bottom-up’ approach or understanding best practices from women who could be the harbingers of change.

In fact, women and environment are not key focus in India’s 11th and 12th Five-Year Plans (FYPs), which was the platform through which NAPCC Missions were executed. Therefore, it is imperative to implore the 11th and 12th FYPs to understand the gender biases ingrained in the climate policy document.

Gendered 11th and 12th Five-Year Plans (FYPs)

In 2007, a comprehensive report of the subgroup on gender and agriculture documenting women’s work with natural resources was submitted to Planning Commission. Consequently, it was expected that the 11th FYP will highlight the gender concerns as stated in the report. On the contrary, the 11th FYP, a platform through which NAPCC missions were set for implementation, lacks a focus on women and environment. The chapter dedicated to the environment and climate change in 11th FYP is oblivious to gender concerns and is marred with complexities. For example, India’s GDP does not factor, the time spent in subsistence farming by women, who constitute the majority of small, marginal farmers and agriculture labourers. This is despite the ‘system of national accounts 1933’ guideline which suggests that production of goods for sale or personal consumption can be incorporated to calculate the national economy.

Another stark paradox present in both the 11th and 12th FYPs is of group provision as the only recourse to tap the credit facility. The 11th FYP in its brief section on gender equity states:

…credit has grown at unprecedented rates (30% per annum) to other sectors but not to small and marginal landholders and (to) women who lack collateral security. Besides issues such as rights to land, it is now well recognised that the poor are best empowered if they function as a group rather than as individuals. (GoI, 2010)

Further, the 12th FYP in its volume II on economic sectors mentions that:

future government land distribution should be to groups of landless and women farmers rather than to individuals. This could take the form of long-term lease which would expire if the group broke down, for which it would be necessary to legalise tenancy at least for this purpose. (GoI, 2013, p. 21)

This article does not refute the importance of group rights but is sceptical of the unequivocal prescription by almost all the working groups in 11th and 12th FYPs focusing on capacity building of women through group formation only. It does not extend the subsidy to the individuals. On the contrary, a transformative policy is expected to instead make cultivators (women) the legal owners of the land they cultivate and empower women in their own right and not just as part of any successful group. The group provision as stated in 11th and 12th FYPs somewhat limits the scope and deepens the divide to acquire technology in an individual capacity to adapt to the climate change stress.

While on the one hand, the problem is of faulty rights approach in the 11th and 12th FYPs, the criticality increases all the more when the gender notion of rights is altogether missed in the policy measures for forest and water resources. As a result, while, ‘local men and women have definite rights over local forests, they are not in practice the real managers, despite the government’s Joint Forest Management Programme (JFM)’ (Kapoor, 2011). JFM though understood to be gender-responsive with 33 per cent reservation to women in the Executive Committee/Management Committee is not gender transformative. Explanation drawn from various studies conducted on JFM solicits that the government just principally ticks gender box which is parallelly understood ‘as being women centric’, with no aim to understand the gender relations operating at household and community level. The rights language by the government is, thus, manoeuvred and highly inconsistent with its real objective. This is reflective in water mission too. It just mentions rights without any further elaboration and recognition of the need for women to enjoy these rights (Kapoor, 2011). This perhaps explains why the National Adaptation Missions also steer clear of the ‘rights’ language and are not reflective of gender sensitivity.

A Gendered Analysis of the National Action Plan for Climate Change

Examining India’s key climate document NAPCC (GoI, 2008) in the context of gender, the only particular mention of gender is in section 1.1 of the technical document which says:

The impacts of climate change could prove severe for women. With climate change, there could be increasing scarcity of water, reduction in yields of forest biomass, and increased risks to human health with children, women and elderly in a household becoming the most vulnerable. With the possibility of the decline in the availability of food grains, the threat of malnutrition may also increase. All of these would add to the deprivation that women already encounter and so in each of the adaptation programmes, special attention should be paid to gender.

While the meaningful citation of women and gender in this fifty-six-page document is absent, even the detailed NAPCC’S sectoral missions are mute or at minimally concerned. For instance, in 500 plus pages NAPCC’s sectoral Water Mission document, the words gender and women are not even referred. As a result, the gender gap which is prevalent in India’s water policy and implementation is expected to persist with climate change water mission. On the same lines, National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change which emphasises on the need to ‘assimilate traditional knowledge systems’ does not address the knowledge that is gender differentiated. This Strategic Knowledge Mission could have been used for recognition of knowledge that women possess; using that knowledge to influence land/water/forest-related adaptation policies; and developing new gender-just indicators for climate proofing.

With the above cited illustrations, it is evident that climate change adaptation missions ignore the central role that women need to play in being part of the solution—by being part of the vertical decision-making apparatus.

The NAPCC document in its understanding of the relationship between nature and women is visibly influenced by the Rio convention of 1992 and the Beijing women’s platform for the action of 1995. Both of them were based on a feminist essentialist reassertion of 1970s, connecting nature and women through biological and spiritual attributes and hence making environmental conservation as essentially women’s sisterly duty. Thus, it is not wrong to project that NAPCC document seemingly rests on an assumption about the gendered division of labour, where women are responsible for all domestic labour which includes natural resource management. The rural women by virtue of the household services they do, possess indigenous knowledge which can help in environmental management. However, in the absence of paid labour and appropriate inclusion in decision-making process, it can negatively impact women with double burden in caring for both household and environment. This mistaken assumption that women are mainly responsible for conservation activities as part of their duty poses two important concerns. First, it further reinforces the sexist idea about women and their role in environment conservation and second, it majorly leaves men from the task of environmental conservation.

Additionally, the problem with NAPCC literature can be further understood in the context of one of the guiding principles of the NAPCC, which reads, ‘protecting the poor and vulnerable sections of society through an inclusive and sustainable development strategy, sensitive to climate change’. Thereby, NAPCC literature justifies attention to the vulnerable section including women by combining poverty and vulnerable population into a single phenomenon rather than seeing them in separate brackets. Yet, both are distinct axes of differentiation. Further, the caricatured image of women in policy drafts as ‘stand-alone women in chest high waters’ is faulty wherein the gender relation is translated as akin to women’s study rather than as a study to decode power relationship and its associated vulnerability.

Gender Budgeting in National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC): A Missed Opportunity

As per the 2009–2010 budget estimate, NAPCC’s adaptation expenditure has surpassed 2.6 per cent of the GDP in meeting adaptation efforts to climate variability. This investment is in the sectors of agriculture, water resources, health and sanitation, forests, coastal zone infrastructure and extreme weather events. The study analyses few of the underlying concerns in the adaptation budgeting that manifests gender omission. First, these adaptation missions would be implemented through programmes and schemes that are already in operation. However, the absence of specific adaptation programmes in the sectors means that adaptation efforts come only as part of the package. This further translates into lack of additional funds for undertaking adaptation tasks. In a nutshell, even without climate change, the operation and investments in these sectors would have been there. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) budget, for example, is counted as part of an adaptation budget ‘which in general is a poverty alleviation programme and can be used for environmental regeneration activities’ (Kapoor, 2011). In this context, gender-specific concerns require both apportioned budget and focus on adaptation measures. Further, the techno-managerial approach in these sectors makes gender component virtually absent in the NAPCC missions.

The State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC) which is an iterative reflection of NAPCC in respective state units lacks a focussed concern on ‘Gender-Responsive Budgeting. ¹ Gyan Ranjan Panda and others (2015) in their analysis of gender budget on climate change adaptation in four Indian states (Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh), mention that ‘most of the allocations in gender budgets fall within poverty alleviation category. Sectors like disaster management and forestry are not reported under Gender Budgeting’. The low budget allocation in agriculture and allied activities wherein women majorly constitute the working force is also a cause of concern. Gender budgeting in India remains a limited exercise, which is yet to address the concerns of climate change vulnerability, specifically, on women. It mainly is an ex post facto reporting exercise rather than a process of engendered planning (Kapoor, 2011).

Questioning National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) Gender Neutrality

The study documents some empirical evidence drawing from secondary literature and author’s field narratives as to how these federally manifested adaptations and mitigation strategies, bereft of sensitivity on gender dynamics, may disadvantage men and women, even, though they seem to work well at household and community level. A work by Deepa Joshi (2011) in the Uttarakhand region unfolds how an adaptation project created and strengthened the constructed vulnerabilities especially among women of the Harijan community. Dalit women were not allowed to access the benefit of government adaptation water project since the location of the project site was within the vicinity of a temple. Henceforth, the project benefits did not percolate down to all the projected beneficiaries as per the policy line, but rather access to water was locally defined by ‘pollution of caste’. This added to the pre-existing vulnerability making the peripheral section of people precarious to the climate change stress. Another instance drawn from Jalaun district, Uttar Pradesh (drought-affected area) is an inciting narration of gender blindness prominent in NAPCC discourse. In a focus group discussion conducted in May 2012 by the author in Malhanpura village of Jalaun district, women narrated their struggle in managing wood for lighting chulha (small earthen brick stove) at their homes. As noted through them, the reserved forest is approximately located at a distance from the village, where these women go to cut wood which is a prohibited and punishable act. Phoolwati, an agricultural labourer told:

With drought affecting our village on year-to-year basis, we are not left with sufficient fuel sources from the field. The expensive gas cylinders are generally not within our reach. There is also the shortage of cow dung since we have to free our domestic animals with the paucity of fodder to feed them. Thus, we march towards the unsafe jungle (reserved forest) in the midnight to cut trees and sometimes even cut snakes. We often injure ourselves with animal attacks. Sometimes the forest inspectors catch us and molest us. But we cannot raise our voice since we have to get hold of that essential thing ‘wood’ for burning chulhas to feed our families. Risk has become normal in our lives. (Singh, 2017)

Both the illustrations depict the inability of the government in comprehending gender-based structured vulnerabilities. It explains the existence of an inherent vacuum and omission of such ground realities in government policy legislation and execution. The study of NAPCC design suggests that while it is in compliance with the spirit of cooperative federalism, with national and state governments working in harmony, it fails, however, to grasp the gender complexities functional at all levels of governance. This demolishes the gender neutrality claim inbuilt in the public policy rhetoric and instead manifests masculinity as an expression integral to public policy. Further, whatever limited initiatives are undertaken by the government in the bracket of gender are scattered since multiple policy efforts undertaken for empowerment are not cohesive with each other. Missing the most vulnerable section has only made the document and its planned exercise impuissant to various factors. For instance, an outright dependence on expensive western technology rather than drawing lessons from an unaccounted traditional knowledge is not financially viable.

How has NAPCC Acquired an Apparent Masculinisation?

To explain an apparent masculinisation of NAPCC document, the article put forward two overtly masculinist approaches discussed below, i.e. Ecological Modernisation Approach; and Environmental Security Approach.

Policy Suggestions

Amid the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment act, the third tier structure with greater devolution of power to them has become a prominent face of governance. The article thus proposes effective devolution of green governance beyond union and sub-national on subsidiarity stance at the level of the third tier. The proposed policy suggestion draws its argument from the empirical work of Hust (2002) in Odisha and a MIT study done by Chattopadhyay and Duflo (2001) in West Bengal. Both the studies have measured the impact of the feminisation of governance at the local level as an outcome of the renewed decentralisation in their respected case areas. The thrust of their study proposes that any informed policy should account for the gender imbalance and put a requisite recourse to it in policy measures.

If the climate concerns are effectively channelised and governed through local institutions, wherein women constitute thirty-three per cent of seat share, climate policy is then likely to attend to the concerns and rely on wisdom possessed by women. Additionally, the study also proposes devolution of climate initiatives through Self-Help Groups or any such community participation group. It is the closest unit for its women member participants who are engaged in the management of natural resources for their livelihood. It also has the potential to cap the structured limitations of other tiers of governance. ²

In view of the suggestive measures, an appropriate caution must be observed that the devolution of authority through decentralisation is in principle with effective gender mainstreaming. This is to counterbalance women as ‘chiefvictim-caretaker’ proposition (Onta & B.P Resurrection, 2011, p. 3) and design an appropriate response strategy by unravelling the gendered differentiated impact of climate change. Otherwise, the whole possibility of ushering a change reflecting equity will become an optical illusion if agencies in duty to gender mainstream a policy accept subordination of women and violence against them as part of the routine culture.