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At the recent climate conference in Copenhagen the Global Gender Coalition Alliance lobbied for all areas of the future climate treaty to reflect the special concerns of women. One of the members of the coalition, Angelina Mensah, of the Environmental Protection Agency of Ghana is the country's expert on gender and climate change. She explains to Emily Benson why climate change is a gender issue.

Mensah: Women, especially in the rural areas are people who gather the fuel and fetch water. They actually cater for the children and the men as well and therefore, if their farm is not working, if their farm produce are not growing very well, then that means the whole family goes hungry. If they have to go several miles to gather fuel or water, then it makes other economic sectors, you know, delay. And therefore, that is why climate change is a gender issue.

Benson: Some of the problems that you've been describing are going to affect both men and women. So again, why is it an issue specifically for women rather than for both sexes?

Mensah: It is an issue for women. For example, we have an adage that says, "Water is life".  And from time immemorial people have lived around river banks and lakes and seas. However, these seem to be drying up and this is making the women walk several miles to gather the water and water especially also if it's not potable, if it is not gathered in a manner which is healthy, it creates a lot of health impacts. For example, in Ghana water is causing Guinea worm infestation, malaria, meningitis, schistosomiasis and all manner of diseases. And these diseases, strangely enough -- for example in meningitis, if somebody dies in an area in northern Ghana, the woman is branded as a witch.  And this is a climate induced disease. And the woman is branded as a witch and they are put in witches camps, and if you go to northern part of Ghana, you see several of those women, who through no fault of  theirs, are in these camps, with no access to any livelihoods, they have children who are not going to school and they've been branded witches, because of climate change impact. And then when you look at also malaria, which is actually taking a toll on Ghana, most of the people who go to these clinics are women and children. If even it's the man that goes, it's the woman that accompanies them. In most of the hospitals and clinics, you see women actually sleeping overnight, to be able to take care of their dependents who are in the hospital. They wake up in the morning, washing their things, they wake up in the morning looking for water to boil and then to give to the people who are patients in the hospital. And so it's very critical here for women as vulnerable to some of these issues -- not all women anyway - but the rural women and the women who are marginalized in most African countries.

Benson: So what kind of mechanisms or what kind of policies are going to help and protect women from suffering some of these impacts of climate change that you've been describing, in particular the health impacts?

Mensah: There is also this issue: in the northern sector of Ghana, we share a border with Burkina Faso. And so if there's torrential rains, they have to open up their dam, the Bagré dam, and this actually floods some of the farms, and the huts and then the land of the people. What happens in the case of that, the men actually come and live along the banks of where the dam has been opened and they can then farm, but the women are told to go further inland. In the process the men end up marrying other women to the detriment of their wife and children. Now, with all this in mind, we can make policies, we can enact laws, but then if we do not embark on an intensive education, we do not embark on dialoguing, because some of the societies are quite patrilineal and what they understand is that it's a man's world. So dialoguing is key here and education, so that with time, they will understand that, listen, the woman is a breadwinner, the woman maybe is the secondary breadwinner, the woman may be the one who is taking care of the children and there's the need for partnership in this kind of climate issue, which has come to everybody in the country or in the world.

PRES: Angelina Mensah of the Global Gender Coalition Alliance, speaking to Emily Benson in Copenhagen.

Duration: 3'59"