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Introduction: The Ballad of The Bear
They say, "The bear has forty ballads to sing, all on wild pears". Same goes for us. We must now talk about everything that has happened and will happen (and yes, the situation of women too!) in relation to the threat of global climate meltdown. An exaggerated proposal? Not really.
The general panorama: Greta – Chomsky - Atwood
That's what the 15 year old Swedish activist girl "Striker Greta" says: Greta Thunberg went on a school strike and sat in front of the Swedish parliament building every single day for three weeks until the general elections, and handed out leaflets that asked: "How am I supposed to feel safe when I know that we are facing the most acute crisis in the history of mankind? When I know that if we don't act now, everything will soon be too late?". Greta was only 8 years old when she became aware of the risk of catastrophe; she says when she first heard about global warming she thought: This can't be true. It can't be something so serious as to threaten our very existence!
Why did she think that? "Because (...) if it was really happening, we wouldn't be talking about anything else."
Striker Greta continued her activities after the elections; speaking before a crowd of 10 thousand people at the largest climate action ever held in Finland, she called for civil disobedience to fight the climate meltdown. Furthermore, she has become a source of inspiration for Australia's secondary school students who are planning to stage the most striking mass demonstration in the country's history at the end of this month.
Let's also add that it is mostly the girls who are heading the planned climate actions in Australia.
"Greta on Strike" - Lesson 2: Lessons on Civil Disobedience by Ditching Classes
Climate Riot Spreads Across The World!
This 15-year-old girl is not alone: 90-year-old celebrated thinker and activist Noam Chomsky too is exactly of the same opinion. In a striking interview he recently gave to Democracy Now! radio/tv the professor said:
"We can't overemphasize the fact that we're in a unique moment of human history. In fact, we have been, ever since 1945. (...) It was not known in 1945 that we were not only entering the nuclear age, but entering a new geological epoch, what geologists call the Anthropocene (...) We also entered into what's now called the sixth extinction, a rapid extinction of species, which is comparable to the fifth extinction 65 million years ago when an asteroid, huge asteroid, hit the Earth, we know.
"[That is] a sharp escalation and destruction of the environment, not only global warming, carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases, but also such things as plastics in the ocean, which are predicted to be greater than the weight of fish in the ocean not far in the future.
"So we're destroying the environment for organized human life. (...) Anybody who's looked at the record, which is shocking, would have to conclude that it's a miracle that we've survived this long. Humans beings, right now, this generation, for the first time in history, have to ask, 'Will human life survive?' And not in the far future will organized societies—those are the issues we should be concerned with. These are—everything else pales in significance in comparison with this."
Yes. Everything else pales in significance in comparison with this! The first warning was thus issued by the secondary school student activist girl Greta. The second warning came from the author of more than 100 books, emeritus professor and activist Noam Chomsky. And now it's the turn for the heartbreaking warning by the poet-writer-inventor and activist Margaret Atwood.
78-year-old Canadian author Margaret Atwood in her famous novel The Handmaid's Tale which has been adapted into an acclaimed TV series, depicted the reality of climate change in a dystopian future where women are deprived of all rights and turned into breeding machines "manufactured" for men. For years now, she has been openly saying that the story of her post-apocalyptical dystopia will eventualize in a much worse reality.
In a two-day event organized in early June this year at the British Library, she had the opportunity to articulate in detail and thoroughly discuss her warnings of crucial import once again. According to Atwood the situation is very clear. Contrary to the general belief this isn't merely climate change – it is "everything change"!
And the women? "Women will be directly and adversely affected by climate change." Atwood explains this catastrophic "scenario" in the "cold", sharp and clear language of the scientist rather than the poetic language of the litterateur:
"More extreme weather events such as droughts and floods, rising sea levels that will destroy arable land, and disruption of marine life will all result in less food. Less food will mean that women and children get less, as the remaining food supplies will be unevenly distributed, even more than they are."
Atwood, further stating in stark words that climate change "will also mean social unrest, which can lead to wars and civil wars and then brutal repressions and totalitarianisms", concludes with the following basic observation: "women do badly in wars – worse than in peacetime".
Under Her Eye: Women and Climate Change
Margaret Atwood: women will bear brunt of dystopian climate future
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Climate change – Everything change – Fate change
"Everything change" outright means "fate change" for hundreds of millions of young girls across the world! In an amazing reportage he published in The Guardian last year on child brides in poor African countries, investigative journalist Gethin Chamberlain slapped the issue on our faces already in the title of his article: "Why climate change is creating a new generation of child brides?"
"Everyone has their own idea of what climate change looks like" says Chamberlain. "For some, it's the walrus struggling to find space on melting ice floes on Blue Planet II. For others, it's an apocalyptic vision of cities disappearing beneath the waves. But for more and more girls across Africa, the most palpable manifestation of climate change is the baby in their arms as they sit watching their friends walk to school." And this is the reality for an ever-increasing number of girls.
"Many experts are warning [that this] is a real and growing crisis: the emergence of a 'generation of child brides' as a direct result of a changing climate.
"The Brides of the Sun reporting project, funded by the European Journalism Centre, set out to try to assess the scale of the crisis. (...) And time and again, (...) the child brides and their parents told an increasingly familiar story. In recent years they had noticed the temperatures rising, the rains becoming less predictable and coming later and sometimes flooding where there had not been flooding before. Families that would once have been able to afford to feed and educate several children reported that they now faced an impossible situation." And the families whose incomes have plummeted cannot find any other solution but to marry off their daughters once they turn 13.
"In 2015 the United Nations Population Fund estimated that 13.5 million children would marry under the age of 18 in that year alone—37,000 child marriages every day—including 4.4 million married before they were 15." 37 thousand "child brides" per day! It is estimated that in one country alone (Malawi)"30% to 40% of child marriages (...) are due to the floods and drought caused by climate change".
According to the World Bank and Save the Children organizations, one in every three girls in developing (i.e. poor) countries are married before the age of 18! A daunting number, but there is worse: According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), if the present trend continues the number of "child brides" in Africa only will at least double and reach 310 million by 2050!
More than 20,000 underage girls marry illegally each day, claims study
UNICEF's 2018 report reveals that the figures are going from bad to worse: for instance the number of child marriages per day is now 39,000. According to the report, there are 700 million women across the world who were married before the age of 18. These women were not only deprived of their childhood, but they are also socially isolated and deprived of familial and friendly relations as well as material and immaterial resources. Education and employment possibilities are almost nonexistent. Furthermore, the situation of present and future generations looks even worse: It is calculated that in the coming 12 years the present number of 700 million child brides will increase to 950 million, nearly 1 billion. 1 billion child brides!
Child Marriages: 39,000 Every Day
The current state of affairs looks bleak. An example: South Sudan, where the ever increasing climate change crisis led to drought and famine which in turn left the country in the throes of civil war, is now ravaged by what is dubbed as "battle for cattle". Girls are forced to leave school and become child brides who are exchanged for cattle. More than half of the girl children are forced to get married before they reach 18 and nearly 10 percent are married off by the age of 15. Activists who have spoken to Chamberlain in another interview on the same issue warn the world that these percentages are on a rapid rise.
The number of cattle given in exchange for one child bride is not stated but one of the girls gives an approximate figure: 90. Give 90 cattle and get the bride. "[She] was married at 15 to a man aged 29. Her father, a soldier, had been killed by a gunman and the family needed the 90 cows from her marriage in order to survive. 'The main reason was hunger. I am seeing a lot of my friends being married now because of the hunger,' she says."
This child bride is now 21, a young mother. "There is nothing she will be able to do to stop her husband [from] selling their daughter for cows when the time comes." And then with great wisdom she summarizes in a few sentences the social, cultural and ecological framework that determines the male female relations and male violence:
"'It is my husband's choice', she says. 'In my husband's house everything is by force – there is no request. If I refuse there will be a problem. My husband will beat me'."
South Sudan's battle for cattle is forcing schoolgirls to become teenage brides
Let's return to the "climate change and a new generation of child brides" reportage for the last time. In one of the striking, touching and distressful pictures "embellishing" the article, the girl dressed in colorful garments sits in front of her poor, adobe home shyly smiling at her daughter on her lap who looks at her with a big smile. The caption reads: "Majuma Julio, now 17, married at 15 and has a daughter nearly two: 'I don't blame anyone. The weather just changed'."
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Turkey's Child Brides and Pregnant Child Refugees
The statistics related to the child brides in Turkey in the UNICEF 2018 report reflect yet another bleak situation. In Turkey 15 percent of the girl children are married before the age of 18. According to these figures on child marriages, Turkey ranks 115th among 197 countries in the world, that is, it lags behind 114 countries. (Better than South Sudan, but worse than Myanmar for instance.)
Child Marriages: 39,000 Every Day
Except for the specific but determining issue of "child brides" and climate change, this article has not touched upon more general and vital issues such as gender equality, empowerment of women and girls, equal opportunities for women and girls, and elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence. If I may touch upon one single point:
According to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals Report 2018, there has been a decrease in some forms of discrimination against women and girls, and a 40 percent decrease in child marriage in Southeast Asia between 2000 and 2017. Nevertheless, structural changes remain largely insufficient. Another more important and even fatal shortcoming is that the Sustainable Development Goals Report completely excludes the dramatic deterioration in the social, cultural and economic situation of women and girls due to climate change. This shortcoming seems a serious negligence indeed, particularly considering the 2018 report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which issued a "climate alarm" warning that we have only 12 years to limit the climate change catastrophe.
The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2018
Finally, it could be helpful to make a brief note of a dramatic news report dated May 2018 on the situation of pregnant children—the vast majority of whom are Syrian refugees—in Turkey: According to the report by Barış Terkoğlu of ODA TV, it was revealed upon a complaint that in the year 2017 there were 392 cases of child pregnancies in a research hospital in Istanbul which were not reported to the law enforcement authorities; the relevant office of the chief prosecutor launched an investigation into the case only after the scandal broke out.
Yet this was not the first but the second scandal! Earlier, 115 pregnant children were brought to another hospital in Istanbul in the course of five months which were again not reported to the law enforcement authorities. According to the daily Birgün newspaper, the social worker who unearthed the scandal had said, "This is only the tip of the iceberg; the situation is the same everywhere across the country".
Social worker who unearthed the scandal: This is only the tip of the iceberg
And is this also related to the climate crisis? Unfortunately, we have to answer "Yes, very much so!". One of the main reasons behind that horrible civil -and regional- war that displaced more than half of the Syrian population was the drought arising out of climate change and the internal migration caused by the drought. The disappointment and revolt of the youth who were compelled to migrate due to the endless drought later transformed into a wildfire of war spreading across the entire region.
A Talk with Professor Harvey Weiss on Climate and Civilization
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Let's Look at it from the Other Side: We Can Still Change Fate
In spite of the developments whose extremely destructive consequences have become manifest, we should not overlook the important and encouraging changes. Academician, writer and activist Andrew Simms, who campaigns for The Rapid Transition Alliance against climate change and the resulting destruction, thinks that changing this bitter fate is possible.
In his article published in The Guardian early last month, Simms analyses the winds of change across the world. In these days when it is believed that many societies are dominated by anomie the opposite may also be observed he says and asserts that new and profound social norms are emerging rapidly and that this transformation might be life saving.
"The latest science tells us that nothing short of rapid, transformative change in our infrastructure and behaviour can prevent the loss of the climate we depend on," the author says. He hopes and asks "after smoking and drink-driving, could climate change provide the next big behaviour-change challenge" to engage in a tough struggle to defeat climate change which appears before us as a much bigger danger than smoking or drink-driving.
Simms observes that we are in an age of realizing rapid cultural changes in social attitudes and behaviors. One of his most interesting examples of that change is the women's #MeToo movement which rapidly expanded and soon blocked that arrogant hegemony of the rich & powerful men. (The other example is the unstoppable rise of the vegan diet in many countries.)
"The speed of #MeToo gives me hope," says Simms, "We can still stop climate change".
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Writer Margaret Atwood is right: this is not Climate Change, this is Everything Change.
Alright then – Let's change everything! (ÖM/ŞA/APA/EK/IG)
* Images: Kemal Gökhan Gürses
