Women and girls represent over half of the Mekong region’s population, and it is about time that their role received adequate attention.
This March we commemorate International Women’s Day (8th), the International Day of Actions for Rivers (14th) and World Water Day (WWD on 22nd). These annual events and the WWD theme this year “Nature and Climate Change” is a timely reminder of the inter-connection between water and climate change. The world has been experiencing the extreme impacts of climate change not least here in the Mekong region.
As a woman development practitioner, working with Oxfam on water governance in the Mekong, these March events are a timely reminder to me and us all of the inter-dependencies between women, rivers and water and pose the challenge whether enough attention is being paid to the inclusion and leadership of women and their game-changing role in water stewardship and river protection?
In January 2020, I attended a national consultation workshop on the proposed and contested mainstream Luang Prabang, hydropower, dam project on the lower Mekong River, in Laos. Of the over thirty participants, there were three women formally invited: a senior woman government officer, a local NGO Director, and me. Five community women from downstream Northeastern provinces in Cambodia were additionally invited to the consultation by Oxfam and our partners.
On the one hand I am appreciative that the organizers thought to invite any women -this is a change in practice- but why were so few women included? Where were the women who ensure family livelihoods from the river, where were the indigenous women who understand the river ecosystem and conservation better than anyone else and where were the young women water professionals?
Sadly, this is not an unusual scenario for water resource practitioners.
The field is perceived as highly technical and a predominantly male-dominated sector. When it comes to the governance of water resources, at whatever level (local, national, regional) we see the same under-representation of women. This cannot be right in 2020.
This is not a gender argument alone. The inclusion of relevant stakeholders must be the key principle for good governance. For Oxfam, water governance means who is and who is not at the decision-making table when resource allocation is being decided as these matters if there is to be equitable access to and control over resources that will have an impact for future generations.
1997 VnExpress.net