Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said that women as the main victims of climate change are demanding greater participation in tackling these risks and more bold steps are needed to empower them, especially in developing resilience.
She said it is important to create a position for women in the decision-making process to address their vulnerabilities due to climate change.
Sheikh Hasina made the remarks at a high-level panel discussion titled 'Women's Climate Leadership Event - COP 26: Women and Climate Change' in Glasgow on Tuesday (November 2).
The Prime Minister called upon the women leaders to take bold and specific steps at the COP-26 conference for global solidarity to build a tolerant community in the face of the adverse effects of climate change where both women and men can participate equally.
Sheikh Hasina said the world's most vulnerable and marginalized people are most affected by the adverse effects of climate change due to a number of socio-economic and cultural factors. Most of them are women and girls.
She said structural inequalities in human society; inherent social norms are having an unbalanced impact of climate change on women.
Noting that women generally do not have equal access to wealth around the world, Sheikh Hasina said that in many societies they do not have the power to make decisions and they are often engaged in low paid and unpaid jobs and activities.
She said that for all these reasons, women are more affected by climate change than men. Noting the importance of acknowledging the extreme vulnerability of women in the response to climate change, the Prime Minister said her government is committed to ensuring women's participation in all areas of sustainable development in tackling the effects of climate change.
Later in the panel Q&A session, she said it was important to ensure women's participation in the decision-making process to address the risks of climate change.
Sheikh Hasina further said that Bangladesh has already ensured women leadership in the decision making process from the parliamentary level to the grassroots level.
She said the Bangladesh National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA) has extensively included women as part of adaptation solutions. Our government has developed the National Climate Change and Gender Action Plan to ensure gender equality in policies, strategies and measures related to climate change.
Most importantly, she said, our government has introduced Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB), allocating about 30 per cent for women in mainstream women's development in all policy and decision-making processes.
Referring to the scientific fact that women are more tolerant than men, Sheikh Hasina said that in difficult situations of natural calamities, women are the first to take care of their families.
She said her government has ensured equal participation at the grassroots level, from policy-making to climate change disasters. "There are 76,000 volunteers involved in the Climate Disaster Preparedness Program, 50 percent of whom are women," she said, adding that our disaster preparedness program has succeeded in reducing the number of deaths due to disasters.
The Prime Minister said women should be included in the role of driver in every initiative from planning to resource allocation and implementation.
She said funding for gender sensitive adaptation and mitigation measures would be key issues in this regard.
On the issue of climate change, Sheikh Hasina called for "raising the voices of women around the world to ensure equal access to money to meet the needs and priorities of women".
Sheikh Hasina said, "We are going to implement 'Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan' in the name of Father of our Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman." The plan will bring women from climate risk to tolerance and from tolerance to climate prosperity into the mainstream.