A/HRC/31/51 week collecting water. In Nepal, girls spend an average of five hours per week on this task. In rural Africa and India, 30 percent of women’s daily energy intake is spent in carrying water. Depletion of land and water resources may place additional burdens on women’s labour and health as they struggle to make their livelihoods in a changing environment.68 67. The impact of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss on common property resources threatens household food security and livelihoods. Women who lack land tenure depend on common resources, for subsistence. This decreases the time available for food production and preparation, and threatens women’s safety, with consequences for household food security and nutritional well-being. 68. Impacts of decreased water quality as a result of climate change are also gender differentiated. Children and pregnant women are more physically vulnerable to waterborne diseases and their role in supplying household water and performing domestic chores makes them more vulnerable to developing diseases, such as diarrhea and cholera, which thrive in degraded water. Decreased water resources may also cause women’s health to suffer as a result of the increased work burden and reduced nutritional status. For instance, in Peru following the 1997–98 El Niño events, malnutrition among women was a major cause of peripartum illness.69 3. Challenges to women farmers 69. Insecure land tenure reduces rural women’s and men’s incentives to make long-term investments in soil rehabilitation and conservation, which are crucial to agricultural land management in era of climate change and resource scarcity. A reduction of agricultural productivity and more competition for productive land leave women with the more marginal and fragile lands. Tools are often reserved for men’s plots of land and women may not use technological adaptation techniques.70 In a Sub-Saharan African county, women, have limited access to irrigation or other farm technology, such as motorized tillers that would increase productivity and offset negative impacts of climatic shocks. 71 70. Crop failure caused by slow-onset disasters such as land degradation and drought has resulted in the increase of men’s out-migration in developing world. Women are often left behind to struggle to feed their families to take on men’s traditional roles and responsibilities. This increases women’s work, but does not grant women equal access to financial, technological, and social resources to lessen the burden. 4. Mitigation Strategies 71. A gendered approach to climate change adaptation and mitigation is necessary to combat the vulnerabilities women face because of existing social, economic and political inequalities. Mitigation activities aim to decrease greenhouse gas emissions through support for technology development and capacity building. These activities also provide important opportunities to improve women’s health and livelihoods by creating new opportunities for 68 69 70 71 16 The World Bank, FAO, IFAD, Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook, Washington, 2009 p. 455 – 456. Id at 143 – 145. S. Saulière, , Climate change and women farmers in Burkina Faso. Oxfam Research Reports, (2011), Retrieved from www.oxfam.com/grow. Beaman & Dillon The Diffusion of Agricultural Technologies within Social Networks: Evidence from Composting in Mali, http://womenandclimate.ifpri.info/files/2014/09/PN_2014_GCC_04_replaced_web.pdf, IFPRI e-library.