Gender justice: stories of gender, science & development from around the world

Climate change

In this podcast, Rowan Douglas of Willis Group insurers, assesses his industry’s response to extreme weather events.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/q-a-climate-change-and-assessing-financial-risk.html

Q&A: Climate change and assessing financial risk

In this podcast, Anders Ladekarl of the Danish Red Cross says new methods are needed to explain climate change.

http://www.scidev.net/global/communication/multimedia/q-a-moving-beyond-climate-doomsday-narratives.html

Q&A: Moving beyond climate doomsday narratives

In this podcast, experts explain why higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may worsen malnutrition.

http://www.scidev.net/global/nutrition/multimedia/climate-change-may-increase-hidden-hunger.html

Climate change may increase ‘hidden hunger’

Lucia Grenna heads a World Bank unit that specialises in climate change-related communication. In 2011, she set up a communication initiative called Connect4Climate, which has grown into a major global partnership of organisations and individuals committed to climate change action. Her task, she says, is “to listen to and to engage unusual audiences” and to make people realise that the term “climate change’’ in itself does not have a message.

http://www.scidev.net/global/communication/multimedia/q-a-lucia-grenna-and-her-connect4climate-initiative.html

Q&A: Lucia Grenna and her Connect4Climate initiative

In lead to December’s 20th UN Conference of Parties on climate change, scientists and policymakers are reflecting on the future of climate science. Many are questioning whether the existing mechanisms that feed scientific evidence into international politics are working well enough.

In this interview Ilan Kelman argues that, despite its important work, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with its consensus-based approach, is no longer suited to the new challenges posed by climate change.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/climate-science-beyond-the-ipcc.html


What’s next for climate science beyond the IPCC?

[LIMA] Gender is an important item on the agenda at the UN’s COP 20 climate meeting under way in Peru. Issues on the negotiating table include the goal of boosting women’s participation to improve the gender balance both in the talks and parties connected with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process.

In this podcast, Lakshmi Puri, deputy executive director of UN Women, the UN body for gender equality and women’s empowerment, explains the links between gender and action against climate change. She also describes the progress made in acknowledging that climate change will affect women differently to men, as well as the need for gender equality in decision-making bodies.

Puri also outlines her expectations from Lima and her views on how to implement the gender agenda, including the need to plug the gender gap in data collection and analysis.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/support-women-climate-action-gender.html

Q&A: Support women to be ‘agents of climate action’

The contrast between the passionate ideals of the UN International Day of Peace this week (21 September) and the tragic reality of world politics in the closing months of 2015 couldn’t be starker. In 2014 180,000 people were killed in conflicts – over three times the number killed in 2010. In June the UN reported that 60 million people are now displaced from their homes — more than at any point since records began. Of the 19 million refugees, half are children. These are brutal, shameful statistics — each number representing a life destroyed or damaged, a family blown apart. Today, "strenthening the ideals of peace, within and among all nations and peoples" — as the UN said 21 September should be used for back in 1981 — feels more beyond our grasp than ever. 

In this audio interview, we speak to Ray Acheson, director of Reaching Critical Will, a disarmament research and advocacy programme at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the oldest women’s peace organisation in the world. She talks about the link between deadly technologies, the global arms trade and the wars now raging around the world, and the importance of public and political recognition of the connections between weapons sales and the growing refugee crisis.   

Acheson discusses the gendered impacts of weapons — from the role of small firearms in sexual and gender-based violence, to the ways nuclear radiation affects women and men’s bodies differently. She explains how social constructions of gender and gender roles can “reinforce the sense of men as militants, reinforcing violent masculinities, and undermining women.” And she explains why it so important to get more women around the table during peacebuilding discussions — not only to promote gender equality and break down essentialist ideas of masculine and feminine characteristics, but also to ensure the practical knowledge women often have about the mechanics of their communities feed into and shape agreements to build a more socially relevant, robust, and lasting peace.   

http://www.scidev.net/global/conflict/multimedia/women-deadly-tech-war-refugees.html


Women should be at the heart of peacebuilding talks

HIV is no longer the death sentence it used to be. With early diagnosis and treatment, people infected with the virus can now live long and relatively normal lives, and can avoid passing it to their children through pregnancy or breastfeeding. Access to free antiretroviral treatment remains far from universal — only half of those who need it get treatment — but it is improving. 

But the idea of HIV as a death sentence persists, with devastating effect, as filmmaker Tom Gibb explains in this interview for today’s World AIDS Day. Gibb makes films for the Medical Research Council and World Health Organization that aim to make health research in Sub-Saharan Africa accessible to medics, policymakers and funders.  

Another strand of his filmmaking explores how interactive drama workshops and film screenings help reduce HIV stigma and change behaviour among rural people in Malawi and Zimbabwe, as he explains here. Gibb has also teamed up with Together as One, a Harare-based youth group, to test out a filmmaking technique that aims to immerse viewers in the experiences of a young woman in Zimbabwe living with HIV. The resulting film, Chiedza’s Song — Growing up with HIV in Zimbabwe, has its UK premiere this evening at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.


Immersive film seeks to end HIV stigma

The Zika crisis unfolding in Latin America calls for the lessons learnt from the Ebola epidemic to be put into practice. 

When it comes to field response, aid agencies must recognise the importance of culturally sensitive public health information delivered by trusted messengers. 

Anne Bennett is the director of Hirondelle USA, a non-profit organisation that supports radio development in countries emerging from conflict or facing humanitarian crises. 

In this audio interview, she says that “top-down messages with a government stamp” often lack credibility in public health crises because they show a poor understanding of the everyday challenges people face. 

Take the directive from five Latin American governments telling women to avoid getting pregnant for two years, for example. “While that message might be sound biomedical advice,” Bennett says, “it’s entirely impractical for most women, especially women from vulnerable communities who don’t have access to family planning … and [where] there are high levels of sexual violence.” 

This is where community radio stations can step in, Bennett says. These stations are “trusted agents”, ideally placed to deliver information in local languages that takes into account both public health guidelines and cultural realities. 

The interview was recorded at the World Radio Day 2016 celebrations organised by SOAS Radio and the Communication for Development Network at SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom, on 15 February. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/communication/multimedia/local-radio-zika-crisis-ebola.html

The power of local radio in the Zika crisis

What are the language barriers facing refugees and what tools can help bridge these linguistic gaps? Rebecca Petras of Translators Without Borders talks to Imogen Mathers. 

Bridging the language gap in the European refugee crisis

In the face of an earthquake or cyclone, what would you do first? Most people, I imagine, would rush to a place of safety, find out what was going on, and make contact with their families. But what if you didn’t know the language of those around you or understand emergency bulletins broadcast or appearing on billboards, television or mobile screens?   

This is what happens to many of the world’s 60 million people displaced living in countries prone to environmental disasters or conflict,  as well as for local people who do not speak the language of government and public broadcasts. 
When crises strike, it’s not just the emergency itself that affects people: actually understanding what is going on and where to get help is a challenge. 

The breakdown in communication between aid workers and affected people following the Haiti earthquake of 2010 prompted the global translation NGO Translators Without Borders to form their ‘Words of Relief’ crisis project. The team have spent the past two years analysing the information needs of people in crises, designing tech-based tools to aid communication, and training up internet translation engines to recognise more obscure languages like Nepali, Dari and Pashto. 

Their deputy director, Rebecca Petras, tells us more in this interview. 


Tech tools break down language barriers in emergencies

SciDev.Net podcasts look at key global development issues and the ways in which science can have a positive impact on equitable and sustainable development and poverty reduction. 