Shore up: Is climate crisis gender-neutral?

Bharathi, a 61-year-old woman, sustains herself by selling fish. She commences her day by waking up early, preparing food for her ill daughter, and diligently arranging her baskets for the day ahead. Joining forces with her fellow fish-selling friends, she embarks on a journey for an hour and a half to Mangalore Harbour to procure fish for the day’s sales. Their next destination is the Ullal marketplace about 14 km away, where they sell fish. As the sun sets, Bharathi decides to call it a day. By 9.30 pm, she returns home, tired and disheartened by the meagre profits garnered from an entire day of hard work.

Born into a family of eight siblings, Bharathi’s early life was marked by poverty, which denied her the chance for proper education or specialised training. Now, facing the crisis brought on by the dearth of marine products like the Indian oil sardine (Sardinella longiceps), a pelagic fish plentifully seen in the coastal waters of Karnataka. Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute data confirms that the Indian oil sardine, a significant resource in terms of both quantity and consumer preference, experienced a shift to the 11th rank in 2021, with a mere 0.87 lakh tonnes being harvested (constituting 2.86% of the national total). Bharathi finds herself helpless, yearning to earn as much as to cure her paralysed daughter, but the absence of requisite skills and education impedes her efforts. The lack of formal education has entrapped women like Bharathi in a cycle of destitution and dependency, limiting their capacity to support themselves and their families.

As I travelled through the Arabian Sea coast, I stepped into Manju’s worn-down house echoing with her baby’s cries at Chellanam fishing village in the Ernakulam district of Kerala. The seawater invaded her house while the waves crashed against it on the outside. Manju shared that the encroachment of the sea had left her and many other families with no choice but to leave their homes and pursue other occupations. Because her own house seemed unsafe for the newborn, she had to go live at her cousin’s house in the city to give birth to her second daughter. As the shoreline grows cramped due to encroachment, Manju finds herself living in confinement, with little privacy to tend to her personal needs. The lack of adequate sanitation facilities poses a significant health risk, making her vulnerable to infections and other ailments.

Moving south of the shoreline, in Poonthura, a fishing village in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, Clara endures an entirely different form of struggle. Trapped in an abusive relationship, she faces the dark reality of domestic violence, a menace that knows no geographic boundaries. The encroachment-driven stress exacerbates the already fraught dynamics at home. As the community faces an uncertain future, it’s important to provide safe spaces and support systems for women like Clara. The Vizhinjam project, scheduled to be commissioned in 2019, witnessed violent protests as fishermen in the area opposed the project, alleging that the port could adversely affect their livelihood. “I have lived on this shore all my life. It used to be a tranquil place where the waves brought happiness and earnings to my community. Now it looms over us, casting a shadow on the lives of its inhabitants,” Clara says. A 2020 study conducted by Cambridge researchers revealed that climate-induced stresses lead to mental health strains, economic challenges, and food insecurity, subsequently amplifying vulnerabilities in social infrastructure. This, in turn, has been implicated in a spectrum of gender-based violence, encompassing physical and sexual assault, forced marriages, trafficking, and psychological maltreatment. The extent and magnitude of climate change impacts have only grown more than the estimations in these assessments. 

On another corner of the Kanyakumari shore, sitting in her distant relative’s house, Mary recounts her deep-rooted connection to the shore and explains how the changing tides of the sea and the seasons shape her life’s story. The encroachment of the sea had left her grappling with a severe lack of income sources, pushing her to rely heavily on their distant family members for support. Yet, this web of dependence was fraught with fragility, a tightrope walk of sustenance that seemed unsustainable in the long run. Attempts made by women like Mary to explore alternative occupations away from the traditional fishing grounds turned out to be futile. The lack of necessary qualifications or skills acted as an anchor, preventing them from sailing towards new jobs. Meanwhile, the twin spectres of rising sea levels and encroaching developmental activities cast an ominous shadow over the land that held their ancestry’s roots. The stress and related issues experienced by women often stem from a fear of losing their sense of identity and struggling to find a purpose in life beyond their familiar shore. For them, the rising sea is a physical danger and a constant force that challenges the very fabric of their existence.

These experiences of women underscore the urgency of acknowledging the dangerous interplay between climate change, societal dynamics, and gender-based marginalisation. As ocean levels rise and marine resources reduce, the plight of fisherwomen intensifies, disrupting their already-limited role within coastal activities. In 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change presented a nuanced understanding of ecosystem vulnerability to policymakers, emphasising that the impacts of climate change exhibit significant variations between men and women. These disparities stem from the interplay of intersecting factors like socio-economic development, unsustainable land and ocean utilisation, marginalisation and inequalities that have been present throughout history, and governance issues. Effectively tackling climate change demands a shift from viewing it solely as an ecological concern to recognising it as deeply entwined with social and gender dimensions. UN Women emphatically asserts that the “climate crisis is anything but gender neutral.”

(The author is a research scholar at the University of Oxford.)

(*All names have been changed on request.)