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inance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has said that it is urgent for Indonesia to develop a financing strategy for climate resilience (The Jakarta Post, Sept. 25). In addition to her statement, we propose to include women in the concept of a financing strategy for climate resilience in Indonesia.

Why women? Many cases show that women suffer more from the impacts of climate change than men. For example, one impact of climate change pertains to clean water access, with many areas experiencing drought while others experience floods and landslides.

That phenomenon has caused a domino effect — particularly affecting food security as a result of harvest failure, thus decreasing production in agriculture and fisheries. Harvest failure also poses a high risk of increasing poverty among women in Indonesia.

According to the latest national workforce survey (Sakernas BPS 2016), 13.7 million women, or 30 percent of the female workforce of 45.5 million, work in agriculture, forestry or fisheries.

Ironically, women who suffer the most have yet to be given a significant role in programs related to climate change.

Indicators in the National Action Plan for Climate Change Adaptation (RAN API) as well as local planning documents still lack mechanisms to include women as key actors.

Documents merely mention women as victims but not as key actors who can play a direct and active role.

Furthermore, women have limited roles in making decisions related to managing natural resources within the household.

Nevertheless, a study published this year by Kemitraan (Partnership for Governance Reform) in three regencies — Central Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara, East Sumba in East Nusa Tenggara and Kolaka in Southeast Sulawesi — showed that women have spectacular resilience to any natural impact.

Similar to other locations, most women in these regencies, particularly at the village level, have the responsibility to provide food and clean water for their families. During the long dry season, the burden for women to provide food and clean water becomes greater.

This can be seen in East Sumba, where the land becomes unproductive during long droughts and where harvests failed in June 2016 because of the praying mantis bug. Women are also seen playing many roles in East Sumba during the hunger season — the third season besides the rainy season and dry season — which occurs every year during the transition from the dry season to the rainy season.

This hunger season is when they run out of food stocks, such as corn and rice, while crops they have planted have yet to be harvested.

Consequently, women go to the forests and try to find ubi gadong — a type of cassava that is poisonous when incorrectly processed — as an emergency way to provide food. To avoid dependence on ubi gadong, supply of which is also decreasing, women have requested that such plants be cultivated to support them with food in times of scarcity.

However, that request was rejected and not included in the local development priorities at the village level or regency level.

Women are also at the forefront in providing clean water during droughts. They spent more time and must walk long distances to access clean water to meet household needs. Limited access to clean water also negatively affects women’s reproductive health.

In other areas, women can become key actors in enhancing adaptability to climate change. The PNPM Green Study (Putriraya, 2014) conducted in Bahoi, Tinongko, Tandegesan in the regencies of Minahasa and North Minahasa in North Sulawesi, found that women play an important role in adaptation efforts at the village level.

For instance, in village development planning meetings (musrenbangdes), women have raised a request to plant mangroves in coastal areas after sea water began to enter their homes. However, that request was rejected, because men prioritized the building of fish ponds.

Women also have a significant role in renewable energy. A good example of this is their direct involvement in biogas and solar panel programs in the eastern part of Indonesia.

Those facts support the view expressed by Brockhaus and Djoudi (2011) that women have in their natural instinct a greater capacity of adapting to climate change than men.

Their responses are more concrete and tend to be immediate in order to protect their families and homes and particularly to ensure that their children have sufficient food.

Meanwhile, men tend to think of adaptation in a more long-term perspective for the village and in a more political perspective or tend to be more pragmatic by avoiding it, i.e. migrating to another place.

Indonesian women are not alone in their experiences. Similar conditions are faced by women in other parts of the world. For example, a study by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 141 countries in the period of 1981-2002, and another by Basundhara Bhattarai (2015) in Nepal showed that the different roles and responsibilities in society as well as the imbalanced access to natural resources cause women to face worse impacts of climate change than men.

Given such evidence, it is urgent that these cases be considered and voiced by Indonesia’s delegation to the Conference of Parties (COP 23) in Bonn, Germany, which is now underway, so that the active role of women in climate change can become a priority in collective action.

These concrete cases show that women can always survive and adapt to face any problem. Similar to Wonder Woman, who cannot die from generation to generation, the spirit of women in the adaptation to climate change will remain alive forever.

The only question is, will the government leave them alone in the fight or collaborate with them to create an effective mechanism of resilience to climate change?
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The writer is the executive director of Kemitraan-Partnership for Governance Reform.