Why Women Land Right Matters

 

Why women land right matters

oladosu Adenike speaking to DW News correspondent following one of our projects on access to organic fertiliizer to rural women. 

80% of those displaced by the climate crises are females and also around the world, 1.5 billion people are affected by land degradation. This displacement largely stems from environmental instability. Women’s land rights is a technique that we can use to reclaim our landscape. For every woman with a land right, they are capable of transforming it to the good of the society. Likewise, women’s land right is one of the solutions that could end child marriage; thereby strengthening a girl child education. There are facts established around the world where several environmental instability results in out of school children - as a result women and girls are used as a survival strategy. In the Sahel, there are more than 20 million child brides due to the fact that they are trapped in the middle of the climate crisis.

Rather than using women and girls as a survival strategy, instead giving the right to use and control resources such as land has a far and near reaching impact in strengthening livelihoods, more education with economic gains. Lack of access to resources is a key reason why women and girls are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. They do not have the direct right to own a land yet they are able to multiple productions – this tells us that women are the real custodian of our environment. Since these resources are becoming scarcer and take many distances to get it, this could make them trek in kilometers. In the process of searching for these materials, they can drop out of school or sexually abused. Hence, the more women are given the right to own land, the closer the distance they can go to source for such resources.

This is also a decade on ecosystem restoration; how do we restore our degraded landscape when women are taking the backstage? Nor how do we restore our ecosystem when women do not have the full rights to use and control our landscape? Today, women and girls are still bearing the brunt of the climate crisis and could be displaced from their livelihood because of the fragile rights to land. Women’s land right is a great empowerment to women and girls which is capable of strengthening girls’ education, prevention of conflict, no poverty, zero hunger, food security and in tackling the climate crisis. This is a gender sensitive approach in dealing with the defining issues of our time.

By Oladosu Adenike (oladosuadenike32@gmail.com), an ecofeminist, ecoreporter and a climate justice leader.