Women need more adaptation funding in Bangladesh.

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Women need more adaptation funding in Bangladesh.
 

– Reported, January 24, 2013

 

Within the overall aim of poverty alleviation, development efforts have included credit and self-employment programmes. In Bangladesh, the major beneficiaries of such group-based credit programmes are rural women who use the loans to initiate small informal income-generating activities. A non-unitary household preference model is suggested to test the hypothesis that women’s empowerment through participation in these programmes results in greater control of resources for their own demand for formal health care. The analysis controls for endogeneity due to self-selection and other unobserved village level factors through the use of a weighted two stage instrumental variable approach with village level fixed effects. The findings indicate a positive impact of women’s participation in credit programmes on their demand for formal health care. The policy simulations on the results of this study highlight the importance of credit programmes as a health intervention in addition to being a mechanism for women’s economic empowerment.

Despite being disproportionately affected by climate change, women and girls are getting relatively little attention and money in Bangladesh’s climate adaptation initiatives, activists and negotiators say.

The Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund, financed with Tk 25 billion ($305 million) from the national budget, has financed only one project focused on women out of 109 climate adaptation and mitigation projects, they say.

“Climate change adaptation itself is a new issue for us. We have to tackle many aspects in fighting climate change,” he said. So far, women have not received much funding but “we will definitely finance such projects if the government bodies or NGOs submit proposals,” he said.

Mehedi said that as a result of worsening salt intrusion into drinking water sources, many women in the southwest coastal zone of Bangladesh are drinking water with three times the safe level of salt. Studies show they experience a range of health problems including reproductive issues such as eclampsia, miscarriage and stillbirth 20 times higher than in other areas of Bangladesh.

“Despite their high vulnerability, women and their safety get less attention from state functionaries,” Mehedi said. Coastal women in particular, are vulnerable to climate impacts, he said.

Water scarcity is one problem. Some women in coastal areas now have to travel eight to 10 kilometers from their villages to collect drinking water, and on the way some are subjected to sexual harassment and attacks.

CREDITS:
http://www.trust.org/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/     

 

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