This event will address the links between gender and climate change, and their importance for effective climate policy-making.
Climate change disproportionately affects women. As primary energy, water and food providers and managers for their households, women are the first to feel the stress of desertification, water stress or biodiversity loss. They are the ones who are forced to travel longer distances to gather biomass fuels or harvest water exposing themselves to harassment, sexual assault, and rape. Women are also 14 times more likely to die during a natural disaster.
While fighting to adapt to a changing climate and depleted resources, women are faced with many obstacles resulting from discriminatory legislation and/or traditional social norms. These include unequal rights to land, poor representation at decision making-level in key sectors such as water allocation and energy provision, exclusion from technical agricultural training, male bias in terms of nutrition, and so forth.
The interlinkages of gender and climate change do not concern solely the disproportionate effects of the latter on women, they also lie in the negative impact of gender inequality on climate adaptation and mitigation, including decreasing agricultural productivity and fisheries mismanagement.
To what extent are the consequences of ongoing environmental changes gender-differentiated?
How could reducing gender inequality affect our climate response?
What actions could be taken for a more sustainable future that would position women and men as equal agents of change?