CNN’s ‘ongoing series on gender inequality’ (funded by Bill Gates’ $3.6m grant) reports: ‘A warmer climate is changing gender roles’ – ‘How climate change in Himalayas is changing the role of women’ – ‘I have to ask my husband for literally everything’

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/asequals/climate-change-himalayas-yak-women-as-equals-intl-cmd/

By Bikash Kumar Bhattacharya for CNN – August 10, 2024

West Kameng, India — Dressed in a black sweatshirt and pink chugba – a traditional long gown – Tashi Lhamo, 53, cuts a striking figure. Sitting in her kitchen, smoke from the firewood billowing in her face, she tells CNN: “Now that’s all I do most of the time: cooking.”

Twenty years prior, Lhamo’s daily routine was very different. She spent her days tending to her yaks in the pastures atop the mountains of Arunachal Pradesh, the easternmost state of India. As she remembers the names of her favorite yaks (Karjamu, Pema, Dokpa…) Tashi nostalgically adds: “It was an entirely different life. It was freezing cold in the mountains. We would keep moving up the mountains with the yaks as summer set in and my routine wasn’t confined to any specific daily work as a woman (in the way) it is now.”

“I was my own boss. I could sell churpi [yak cheese] if I needed any money. Now I have to ask my husband for literally everything. It’s like yak calves asking their mothers for milk,” she says with a sigh.

The Brokpa traditionally earn their livelihood by selling yak products: milk, cheese, fur and meat. They also farm in their villages. But over the past few decades, climate change has significantly affected Brokpa pastoralists, forcing many to give up yak rearing.

Over 20 years ago, Tashi Lhamo and Phuntsu were among the first yak herders in their community to transition into a sedentary lifestyle by settling in Rama Camp, a farming village tucked away in a picturesque valley at the foothills of Lubrang. “We moved down here because it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep yak. We decided to try our luck here,” they tell CNN.

…

Temperatures are rising in the Indian Himalayan region where yaks are reared. The situation is even more acute in the eastern Himalayas, where Arunachal Pradesh is situated, with records of higher temperatures in the eastern than in the western Himalayan region.

…

But if it is hard to change the expectation that a woman’s place is in the home and not in local politics or in the workforce, with temperatures projected to continue to rise, it is just as hard to change the warming climate that forced Tashi Lhamo along with her family and thousands of others who’ve abandoned western Arunachal Pradesh’s imposing mountains and given up the way of life that has existed for thousands of years.

#

CNN’s climate reporting funded by Bill Gates!

CNN: “In October 2020, CNN announced that the series would expand with a new three-year grant of US $3.6m from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.” …

“Will the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have any influence on CNN’s journalism?”

CNN: No. As Equals’ journalism will be completely editorially independent. All of the output from the series will be held to CNN’s high standards and will be fair, accurate and responsible.

As with other grant-funded journalism, we will regularly report to the funder, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to demonstrate that CNN is spending the money in line with the purpose for which it was intended.