Our first Earth Sisters receive training on climate change and GBV
As you can see in these images, our first cohort of Earth Sisters have been undergoing training on climate change and gender-based violence topics.
Supported by the German Federal Foreign Office in Erbil, our important new project aims to upskill and increase the capacity of women and girls in Duhok city on various climate change issues and their known links to gender-based violence.
It’s part of our core Climate Change pillar, which we launched earlier this year in recognition of the growing need for climate action in Iraq.
Once all 50 Earth Sisters have completed the training element, they will lead a range of their own initiatives to raise community awareness about key environmental issues affecting the region. These initiatives will of course be facilitated and supported by the Lotus Flower itself.
Our six-month Earth Sisters project is especially important since the Global Environmental Outlook in 2019 ranked Iraq as the fifth most vulnerable country to the effects of climate change. As cited by the World Bank, the country faces the impacts of large population growth, multiple wars, climate changes and poor land planning, while higher temperatures and decreasing rainfall re also having an impact. Additionally, there are predictions that Iraq could suffer a 20% drop in water resources by 2050, coupled with a doubling of the population to 80 million.
And as UN Women stated in a report in February 2022, climate change is a ‘threat multiplier’, which escalates social, political and economic tensions in conflict-affected settings, meaning that “women and girls face increased vulnerabilities to all forms of gender-based violence, including conflict-related sexual violence, human trafficking, child marriage, and other forms of violence.
Ultimately, our Earth Sisters will serve as local ambassadors to increase community awareness of the escalating climate emergency, and promote sustainable solutions and badly-needed environmental adaptations.
We’ll be sure to share more updates as the project impact grows…
