"While we don't position AquaBloom as a 'gender product,' we do see it as a practical tool that can help make access to productivity gains more equitable," AquaBloom Founder and Chief Executive Officer Michelle Arsjad told CG.
There's a whole lot going on around the world: This weekly brief from Climate, Gendered isn't intended to be exhaustive but rather your chance to spend just a few moments on a handful of items with the potential to disproportionately impact over half the global population — plus, the ideas that might make a difference.
Last month, CG heard from Human Rights Watch researcher Skye Wheeler about the potential global health impacts of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's rollback of mercury regulations. She noted that removing coal industry restrictions "puts the burden" of managing concern for prenatal exposure to the neurotoxin "on the pregnant person." On Monday, Reuters reported that "a coalition of health and environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the EPA "for repealing federal standards for coal-fired power plants that limited mercury and other harmful air pollutants."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Thursday that it would aim for the first time to designate microplastics and pharmaceuticals as drinking water contaminants, adding them to its draft Contaminant Candidate List. The Safe Drinking Water Act mandates that the agency publish a revised list every five years.
"The agency is publishing the draft of the sixth version of the list, which opens a 60-day public comment period," the Associated Press reported. "It expects to finalize the list by mid-November."
Some have praised the inclusions as "an important first step" that should be recognized. Others have called them "a distraction from the real harm that these very same agencies are doing to public health."
The anti-abortion group Students for Life, meanwhile, announced its "national comment collection campaign" in response. The group aims, as it has for some time, to encourage the public to call on the agency to include mifepristone — which can be used to end a pregnancy — on the list, despite the absence of scientific evidence that mifepristone has any meaningful impact on water supplies. Read more…
As climate stresses threaten food systems and agricultural economies, researchers are exploring innovative methods for strengthening crop yields. One woman's goal to bolster struggling Indonesian farmers and coastal communities with sustainable solutions brought her to an ocean-based solution: seaweed.
"I didn't start from a technology idea — I started from a mismatch in the system," AquaBloom Founder and Chief Executive Officer Michelle Arsjad told CG via WhatsApp.
"In Indonesia, seaweed farmers are some of the lowest-income producers, while crop farmers are under increasing pressure from climate stress and declining productivity. Meanwhile, there was already research showing that tropical seaweed contains bioactive compounds that help plants cope with stress. So we asked a simple question: What if we could connect these two parts of the system?" Read more…
Heavy rainstorms in Hawai'i have created conditions that increase the risk of exposure to leptospirosis. The bacterial disease can infect both animals and humans while posing specific risks to pregnant people.
"Flooding events like the recent Kona Low storm can dramatically increase exposure risk by spreading contaminated soil and water across a broad area," the state's Department of Health and the Hawaiian Humane Society said together in a news release, per the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Two Kona Low storms — a type of seasonal cyclone — hit the state in March, dumping an estimated 2 trillion gallons of water on the archipelago and causing significant flooding. While recent years have been drier, some experts believe climate change may be exacerbating the storms that do occur. Read more…
More than 8 percent of the world's preterm births, in a study looking at 2018 numbers, may be associated with a chemical used to make plastics more flexible.
"Our findings highlight that reducing exposure, especially in vulnerable regions, could help prevent early births and the health problems that often follow," study lead author Sara Hyman said in a news release this week.
The research, led by scientists at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, suggests that di-2-ethylhexylphthalate — or DEHP — may be linked to approximately 1.97 million preterm births in 2018 alone, as well as the deaths of approximately 74,000 newborns.
The researchers hope their work further establishes the foundation for future studies to refine our knowledge of these chemicals and the extent to which they may contribute to preterm births worldwide — but with special attention to areas facing disproportionate impacts.
"Burden was estimated to be disproportionate in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa," the co-authors wrote in their report. "Implementing regulatory measures to limit exposure to phthalates as a class could help reduce the global [preterm birth] burden, particularly in areas with high [preterm birth] risk, limited regulations, and growing plastics industries."
Compounding the human and planetary health concerns is the fact that the majority of plastics are made from polluting fossil fuels. Read more…
One goal at Climate, Gendered is to bring a spotlight to the reality that proliferating pollution, increasing temperatures, rising seas, extreme weather, habitat loss, and more can uniquely and disproportionately impact girls, women, trans communities, and nonbinary people — especially those from communities of color, Indigenous people, disabled people, immigrants and displaced people, people experiencing poverty, and residents of low- and middle-income countries. We're also interested in the climate crises and concerns that can disproportionately affect men and boys.
This work cannot be done alone or in silos. We appreciate your feedback and observations. And please feel encouraged to share one way you noticed this week that climate and gender connect — and share CG with a friend.
"Until these gaps are closed, Kenya risks remaining trapped in a cycle of rebuild, recover, repeat," Susan Onyango and Hellen Wanjohi-Opil of the World Resources Institute told CG about response to devastating floods.
Dolores Huerta's recent accounts may help to highlight still-lacking protections against gender-based violence in farmworker and environmental advocacy spaces.
"The climate crisis is reinforcing gender inequality and risks setting back years of progress in girls' education and protection," Keya Khandaker of Plan International told CG. "It shouldn't be portrayed solely as an environmental issue."
"The climate crisis is not gender-neutral, nor is it child-neutral," Olubusayo Ruth Akinola of the African Union told CG in an exchange about a new report and how integrating climate disaster response with child marriage prevention could help end the practice.
