Politics
By Adam Andrzejewski for RealClearInvestigations
Top line: The United States Agency for International Development plans to award up to $1.5 million in grants to U.S. universities to study the relationship between “gender and climate change” in Pakistan.
Main aspects: USAID is asking universities to submit three-page research proposals that will establish guidelines for a new water, climate and gender fund for Pakistan.
The fund will potentially be used to make climate and water management policies more “gender sensitive” and to address the “gender impacts of natural disasters,” among other objectives.
The project is part of the US-Pakistan Green Alliance, a new partnership formed early last year. The deal recently helped complete a $150 million dam renovation and a $4.5 million project to improve fertilizer efficiency.
Background: USAID has already addressed similar issues by contributing more than $5 million to the Climate Gender Equity Fund, a partnership with private companies like Amazon that pushes for “gender equity in climate finance” in Africa. The fund’s goal is to raise a total of $60 million from the public and private sectors.
USAID also boasts a massive payroll. The agency had 4,364 employees as of 2022, and nearly all made at least $100,000, according to public records analyzed by OpenTheBooks.com. Over 1,500 employees earned more than $150,000.
OpenTheBooks also previously reported that USAID is among the top funders of foreign aid in the federal government. Nearly half of the $47 billion the United States spent on foreign aid in 2018 came from USAID. The agency sent another $41.5 billion in aid in 2022, according to its website.
Supporting quote: “The impacts of climate change are not gender neutral,” USAID Administrator Samantha Power said of the issue overall.
“Together we can break down these silos between gender and climate, recognize the crucial role women must play in climate change mitigation and adaptation, empower them to lead and, in so doing, ensure that our fight against this crisis is more effective. Climate change is sexist; our response should not be.”
Summary: Individually, gender inequality in developing countries and climate change may be among the world’s most pressing issues. But perhaps there is a better use of grant funds than studying the relationship between the two, especially considering the funds that have already been spent on this.
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Distributed with permission from RealClearWire.
