LONDON: Women will suffer most from the devastation of climate change, as lawlessness triggered by disasters and food shortages make them vulnerable to rape and other violence, acclaimed dystopian novelist Margaret Atwood said on Friday. Some women and girls are forced to sell sex to survive, and others are raped in times of conflict and catastrophe growing more frequent due to climate change, the 78-year old Canadian author said at a London conference. “Of course, those kind of events give rise to civil unrest, wars, resource wars, battles for water,” said the author of the 1985 novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”“Women under those situations will suffer disproportionately, and their children,” she said. In war conditions, rape is used a military tactic,” Atwood said at the conference on women and climate change hosted by Invisible Dust, an arts and science organisation. Atwood said she was optimistic for the future but warned that many people have grown complacent about the impacts of climate change.

Source: New Strait Times June 01, 2018 18:11 UTC