Urban poor women and climate change in India: Enhancing adaptive capacity through communication for development

Abstract

Women form a disproportionately large share of poor in countries all over the world. Climate change brings with it drought, floods, deforestation and scarcity of natural resources making the lives of poor women in developing countries much harder since they have to struggle much more to fulfill their roles and responsibilities. It is therefore imperative that efforts be made for the adjustment in systems to minimize the negative effects of climate change and enhance the adaptive capacity of the poor especially women, to climate change. The present study has been conducted to raise the level of awareness and knowledge of urban poor women, change their attitude and behavior to deal with climate change and thereby enhance their adaptive capacity, through the use of systematic and strategic communication, on a statistically defined sample from five major regions of Delhi, India. A Communication for Development (C4D) module was administered to 150 women, each group comprising of 15–20 women, in selected slums across the five regions of Delhi. The impact assessment of the 2-day communication intervention revealed that there was maximum change in awareness and knowledge followed by change in attitude of women to various aspects of climate change. The change in behavioral intent of women was however limited and not statistically significant due to the lack of reinforcing and enabling factors. Overall, there were significant gains in the scores of awareness, knowledge, attitude and behavioral intent (AKAB) of women towards climate change adaptation and mitigation. Our study has conclusively shown that C4D approaches when effectively planned and delivered can be used to enhance significantly the climate literacy as well as the adaptive capacity of urban poor women to climate change.