Brazilian cities that wish to be climate-resilient cannot ignore the gender lens

Picture taken by Naiara Nunes, 2019

By Luis Iglesias and Naiara Nunes, researchers at EmpoderaClima

Supported by Natália D’Alessandro, consultant at WayCarbon.

If you want more information about WayCarbon, or if you want to read this article on their blog, go to: https://blog.waycarbon.com/

According to the research “Profile of the Women Mayors in Brazil (2017-2020)”, conducted by the Alzira Institute, only 11.7% of the 5.568 thousand city halls in the country are run by women - which represent 51% of the population -, despite having more political experience before the election and having a better education compared to male mayors.

However, it’s important to note that women’s involvement in these spaces is essential to give a closer look to gender issues on the public management, as well as to foment programs that can turn into more effective public policies. In that regard, the research data gets even more interesting when we take a look at the following statistics:

- 69% of the city halls led by women have specific actions for this audience;

- 65% of the women mayors claim to have knowledge about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), from the UN 2030 Agenda;

- 61% of the women mayors claim to have knowledge about the Paris Agreement.

“Considering the diversity, territorial dispersion and size of the cities governed by women mayors, it’s a high percentage”, the study says.

Therefore, by converging the feminist and climate agendas, we can understand cities as privileged spaces to observe these dynamics and suggest efficient solutions to both women and the environment. In Brazil, urban planning has been gaining more space in discussions about the right to the city and the making of more democratic processes of urban governance. 

This is the case of three brazilian cities that we selected and which already took measures on this matter: Belo Horizonte, Recife (both on risk analysis and vulnerabilities), and Salvador (through an action plan to combat climate change).

In Belo Horizonte’s vulnerability analysis, four types of impact were identified, which will be the current and future focus for the adaptation and mitigation plans regarding climate change: flooding, landslide, dengue, and heat waves. On the other hand, Recife had risk analysis pointing to possible flooding, weather drought, heat waves, transmissible diseases, landslides, and sea level rise. Moreover, the document states that the capital of Pernambuco will be one of the cities most affected by climate change in the world.

There are disproportionalities in the way of dealing with the impacts of climate change on cities, as shown in both documents of Recife and Belo Horizonte regarding the less economically favored people. As we know, however, women are also part of a frontline group on this issue. Therefore, to assess the risk of the population to some climate threat, we need indicators related to gender factors.

 For example, the presence of women with higher education records is correlated with greater capacity to handle vector outbreaks in a family household, executing the preventive measures, and properly taking care of the sick, thus being a positive influence factor on the risk adaptation capacity.

The city of Salvador, on the other hand, presented its Adaptation and Mitigation Plan to Climate Change (PMAMC, in Portuguese) in 2020. Considered one of the world’s most participative climate action plans, the PMAMC brings, among its future visions, the perspective of an inclusive Salvador. All the Plan’s actions were evaluated under a social benefit perspective such as health, well-being and climate justice, this last criteria being considered the most relevant. Therefore, the measures presented in the document also aim to reduce the socioeconomic disparities and increase essential services assistance to the most vulnerable populations. This perspective is especially relevant when we consider a context in which nearly 80% of the population has a two minimum wage income (IBGE, 2010) and almost 900.000 thousand people live in subnormal agglomerates.

Ahead of the anticipated challenges that Salvador will face, which include floods, severe storms, proliferation of disease vectors, landslides, coastal erosion, sea level rise, among others, a keen look is necessary to promote resilience and damage mitigation to everyone, and especially, to the large portion of inhabitants from the capital of Bahia who lives in risk areas.

That being said, in order to create new strategies and improve the ones that already exist, it’s necessary to include members of the “soteropolitana” society, especially women, who represent 53.3% of the population (IBGE, 2010).

First, climate action planning must foresee certain dynamics of everyday life that affect, for economic and social reasons, mostly women. As an example, we can cite the user experiences with the urban mobility services: the “caution mobility”, as designated by Inés Sánchez de Madariaga, Professor of urban planning at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, is one of the factors that shapes how women use means of transportation, since they often assume the responsibility of taking care of elderly, child and sick relatives.

According to professor Madariaga, in a conversation with the author of “Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men”, the fact that the transportation sector contains male-dominated professions, including the engineers who build urban roads, makes so that the focus of mobility is on the work. However, women’s experience takes different proportions, since it’s not only about work, but also about care, and they have to move through non-main roads and off rush hours, factors that are not the focus of the transportation policies.

Picture taken by Luis Iglesias, 2018

The understanding of the existing gender gaps in the cities’ urban plannings is essential and is connected to the projects of climate resilience, given the need to promote the use of collective services for an equitable access to the city. The use of public transportation, for example, promotes less single vehicles, and consequently, a reduction on pollution agents emission, the great causers of respiratory diseases that feedback the care mobility cycle. 

However, factors such as safety and access interfere in promoting women's use of public transport and other modes, like bicycles. A 2017 research about the cyclist’s profile in the city of São Paulo revealed that around 90% of the users of this mode are men, indicating that bike lanes promotion policies must consider the difficulties of gender inclusion.

Urban planning focused on adapting the cities to tackle the incoming climate challenges needs to go beyond sectorization of spaces and private uses of cities to embrace inclusion, equity, social justice and sustainability, to women, black people, indigenous people, people with disabilities, and the elderly, after all, cities should be for everyone.

The Athens Charter (1933), a paradigm to urban planning for years on end, stated that the four basic functions of the city were summarized in the sectorization of residential, production, leisure and transportation spaces - a living example being the city of Brasília, capital of Brazil. As it so happens, this model doesn’t include working classes and service providers, also exemplified by the planning of the brazilian capital, which relegated to its constructors the occupation of the surrounding areas without basic infrastructure.

In addition to women, another group which deserves proper attention are transgender people. As we previously exposed in an EmpoderaClima original article, the transgender population is mostly concentrated in coastal cities, which puts them at great risk due to sea level rise and storms. They are even more prone to discrimination at shelters, as verified during the Katrina hurricane, in 2005, in the United States.    

The current redesigns of the cities that wish to survive and prosper in face of what’s coming cannot repeat outdated patterns that simplify urban life without considering its dynamics, and mainly without embracing those who were structurally sent to risky areas.

A sustainable city, in light of the New Urban Agenda (2016), advocates that public spaces must focus on integration, access, collective use, pedestrian-oriented planning and the understanding that a city is an ever evolving structure that should reflect its population.

In that regard, the mitigation of social risks and the inclusion of women, people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQIA+ community and ethnic plurality are essential for cities to become spaces for everyone.

The social vulnerability of today is not dissociated from the climate vulnerability of tomorrow. The absence or insufficiency of initiatives, in the present, aimed at reducing disparities, will reflect on the capacity for development and recovery in the face of climatic events in the near future. Therefore, it’s crucial to have a plural integration between the people and the decision making agents on the creation of plans targeting climate change adaptation.