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Cross-Chapter Box GENDER | Gender, Climate Justice and Transformative Pathways
Authors: Anjal Prakash (India), Cecilia Conde (Mexico), Ayansina Ayanlade (Nigeria), Rachel Bezner Kerr (Canada/USA), Emily Boyd (Sweden), Martina A Caretta (Sweden), Susan Clayton (USA), Marta G. Rivera Ferre (Spain), Laura Ramajo Gallardo (Chile), Sharina Abdul Halim (Malaysia), Nina Lansbury (Australia), Oksana Lipka (Russia), Ruth Morgan (Australia), Joyashree Roy (India), Diana Reckien (the Netherlands/Germany), E. Lisa F. Schipper (Sweden/UK), Chandni Singh (India), Maria Cristina Tirado von der Pahlen (Spain/USA), Edmond Totin (Benin), Kripa Vasant (India), Morgan Wairiu (Solomon Islands), Zelina Zaiton Ibrahim (Malaysia).
Contributing Authors: Seema Arora-Jonsson (Sweden/India), Emily Baker (USA), Graeme Dean (Ireland), Emily Hillenbrand (USA), Alison Irvine (Canada), Farjana Islam (Bangladesh/ UK), Katriona McGlade (UK/Germany), Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong (Ghana), Nitya Rao (UK/India), Federica Ravera (Italy), Emilia Reyes (Mexico), Diana Hinge Salili (Fiji), Corinne Schuster-Wallace (Canada), Alcade C. Segnon (Benin), Divya Solomon (India), Shreya Some (India), Indrakshi Tandon (India), Sumit Vij (India), Katharine Vincent (UK/South Africa), Margreet Zwarteveen (the Netherlands)
Key Messages
- Gender and other social inequities (e.g., racial, ethnic, age, income, geographic location) compound vulnerability to climate change impacts (high confidence).
- Climate justice initiatives explicitly address these multi-dimensional inequalities as part of a climate change adaptation strategy (Box 9.2: Vulnerability Synthesis: Differential Vulnerability by Gender and Age in Chapter 9).
- Addressing inequities in access to resources, assets and services, as well as participation in decision making and leadership is essential to achieving gender and climate justice (high confidence).
- Intentional long-term policy and programme measures and investments to support shifts in social rules, norms and behaviours are essential to address structural inequalities and support an enabling environment for marginalised groups to effectively adapt to climate change (very high confidence) (Equity and Justice box in Chapter 17).
- Climate adaptation actions are grounded in local realities so understanding links with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 is important to ensure that adaptive actions do not worsen existing gender and other inequities within society (e.g., leading to maladaptation practices) (high confidence). [Section 17.5.1]
- Adaptation actions do not automatically have positive outcomes for gender equality. Understanding the positive and negative links of adaptation actions with gender equality goals, (i.e., SDG 5), is important to ensure that adaptive actions do not exacerbate existing gender-based and other social inequalities [Section 16.1.4.4]. Efforts are needed to change unequal power dynamics and to foster inclusive decision making for climate adaptation to have a positive impact for gender equality (high confidence).
- There are very few examples of successful integration of gender and other social inequities in climate policies to address climate change vulnerabilities and questions of social justice (very high confidence).
Gender, Climate Justice and Climate Change
This Cross-Chapter Box highlights the intersecting issues of gender, climate change adaptation, climate justice and transformative pathways. A gender perspective does not centre only on women or men but examines structures, processes and relationships of power between and among groups of men and women and how gender, particularly in its non-binary form, intersects with other social categories such as race, class, socioeconomic status, nationality or education to create multi-dimensional inequalities (Hopkins, 2019). A gender transformative approach aims to change structural inequalities. Attention to gender in climate change adaptation is thus central to questions of climate justice that aim for a radically different future (Bhavnani et al., 2019). As a normative concept highlighting the unequal distribution of climate change impacts and opportunities for adaptation and mitigation, climate justice (Wood, 2017; Jafry et al., 2018; Chu and Michael, 2019; Shi, 2020a) calls for transformative pathways for human and ecological well-being. These address the concentration of wealth, unsustainable extraction and distribution of resources (Schipper et al., 2020a; Vander Stichele, 2020) as well as the importance of equitable participation in environmental decision making for climate justice (Arora-Jonsson, 2019).
Research on gender and climate change demonstrates that an understanding of gendered relations is central to addressing the issue of climate change. This is because gender relations mediate experiences with climate change, whether in relation to water (Köhler et al., 2019) (see also Sections 4.7, 4.3.3, 4.6.4, 5.3), forests (Arora-Jonsson, 2019), agriculture (Carr and Thompson, 2014; Balehey et al., 2018; Garcia et al., 2020) (see also Chapter 4, Section 5.4), marine systems (Mcleod et al., 2018; Garcia et al., 2020) (see also Section 5.9) or urban environments (Reckien et al., 2018; Susan Solomon et al., 2021) (see also Chapter 6). Climate change has direct negative impacts on women’s livelihoods due to their unequal control over and access to resources (e.g., land, credit) and because they are often the ones with the least formal protection (Eastin, 2018) (see also Box 9.2 in Chapter 9). Women represent 43% of the agricultural labour force globally, but only 15% of agricultural landholders (OECD, 2019b). Gendered and other social inequities also exist with non-land assets and financial services (OECD, 2019b) often due to social norms, local institutions and inadequate social protection (Collins et al., 2019b). Men may experience different adverse impacts due to gender roles and expectations (Bryant and Garnham, 2015; Gonda, 2017). These impacts can lead to irreversible losses and damages from climate change across vulnerability hotspots (Section 8.3).
Participation in environmental decision making tends to favour certain social groups of men, whether in local environmental committees, international climate negotiations (Gay-Antaki and Liverman, 2018) or the IPCC (Nhamo and Nhamo, 2018). Addressing climate justice reinforces the importance of considering the legacy of colonialism on developing regional and local adaptation strategies. Scholars have criticised climate programmes for setting aside forestland that poor people rely on and appropriating the labour of women in the Global South without compensatory social policy or rights; where women are expected to work with non-timber forest products to compensate for the lack of logging and for global climate goals, but where their work of social reproduction and care is paid little attention (Westholm and Arora-Jonsson, 2015; Arora-Jonsson et al., 2016). A global ecologically unequal exchange, biopiracy, damage from toxic exports or the disproportionate use of carbon sinks and reservoirs by high-income countries enhance the negative impacts of climate change. Women in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) also endure the harshest impacts of the debt crisis due to imposed debt measures in their countries (Appiah and Gbeddy, 2018; Fresnillo Sallan, 2020). The austerity measures derived as conditionalities for fiscal consolidation in public services increases gender-based violence (Castañeda Carney et al., 2020) and brings additional burdens for women in the form of increasing unpaid care and domestic work (Bohoslavsky, 2019).
Gendered Vulnerability
Land, ecosystem and urban transitions to climate resilient development need to address gender and other social inequities to meet sustainability and equity goals, otherwise, marginalised groups may continue to be excluded from climate change adaptation. In the water sector, increasing floods and droughts and diminishing groundwater and runoff have gendered effects on both production systems and domestic use (Sections 4.3.1, 4.3.3, 4.5.3). Climate change is reducing the quantity and quality of safe water available in many regions of the world and increasing domestic water management responsibilities (high confidence). In regions with poor drinking water infrastructure, it is forcing, primarily women and girls, to walk long distances to access water, and limiting time available for other activities, including education and income generation (Eakin et al., 2014; Kookana et al., 2016; Yadav and Lal, 2018). Water insecurity and the lack of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure have resulted in psychosocial distress and gender-based violence, as well as poor maternal and child health and nutrition (Collins et al., 2019a; Wilson et al., 2019; Geere and Hunter, 2020; Islam et al., 2020; Mainali et al., 2020) (Sections 4.3.3 and 4.6.4.4) (high confidence). Climate-related extreme events also affect women’s health—by increasing the risk of maternal and infant mortality, disrupting access to family planning and prevention of mother to child transmission regimens for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive pregnant women (UNDRR, 2019) (see also Section 7.2). Women and the elderly are also disproportionately affected by heat events (Sections 7.1.7.2.1, 7.1.7.2.3, 13.7.1).
Extreme events impact food prices and reduce food availability and quality, especially affecting vulnerable groups, including low-income urban consumers, wage labourers and low-income rural households who are net food buyers (Green et al., 2013; Fao, 2016) (Section 5.12). Low-income women, ethnic minorities and Indigenous communities are often more vulnerable to food insecurity and malnutrition from climate change impacts, as poverty, discrimination and marginalisation intersect in their cases (Vinyeta et al., 2016; Clay et al., 2018) (Section 5.12). Increased domestic responsibilities of women and youth, due to migration of men, can increase their vulnerability due to their reduced capacity for investment in off-farm activities and reduced access to information (Sugden et al., 2014; O’Neil et al., 2017) (Sections 4.3, 4.6) (high confidence).
In the forest sector, the increased frequency and severity of drought, fires, pests and diseases, and changes to growing seasons, has led to reduced harvest revenues, fluctuations in timber supply and availability of wood (Lamsal et al., 2017; Fadrique et al., 2018; Esquivel-Muelbert et al., 2019). Climate programmes in the Global South such as REDD+ have led to greater social insecurity and the conservation of the forests have led to more pressure on women to contribute to household incomes, but without enough supporting market access mechanisms or social policy (Westholm and Arora-Jonsson, 2015; Arora-Jonsson et al., 2016). In countries in the Global North, reduced harvestable wood and revenues have led to employment restructuring that has important gendered effects and negatively affects community transition opportunities (Reed et al., 2014).
Integrating Gender in Climate Policy and Practice
Climate change policies and programmes across regions reveal wide variation in the degree and approach to addressing gender inequities (see Table SMCCB GENDER.2). In most regions where there are climate change policies that consider gender, they inadequately address structural inequalities resulting from climate change impacts, or how gender and other social inequalities can compound risk (high confidence). Experiences show that it is more frequent to address specific gender inequality gaps in access to resources. Regionally, Central and South American countries (Section 12.5.8) have a range of gender-sensitive or gender-specific policies such as the intersectoral coordination initiative Gender and Climate Change Action Plans (PAGcc), adopted in Perú, Cuba, Costa Rica and Panamá (Casas Varez, 2017), or the Gender Environmental policy in Guatemala that has a focus on climate change (Bárcena-Martín et al., 2021). However, countries often have limited commitment and capacity to evaluate the impact of such policies (Tramutola, 2019). In North and South America, policies have failed to address how climate change vulnerability is compounded by the intersection of race, ethnicity and gender (Radcliffe, 2014; Vinyeta et al., 2016) (see also Section 14.6.3). Gender is rarely discussed in African national policies or programmes beyond the initial consultation stage (Holvoet and Inberg, 2014; Mersha and van Laerhoven, 2019), although there are gender and climate change action strategies in countries such as Liberia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia (Mozambique and IUCN, 2014; Zambia and IUCN, 2017). European climate change adaptation strategies and policies are weak on gender and other social equity issues (Allwood, 2014; Boeckmann and Zeeb, 2014; Allwood, 2020), while in Australasia, there is a lack of gender-responsive climate change policies. In Asia, there are several countries that recognise gendered vulnerability to climate change (Jafry, 2016; Singh et al., 2021b), but policies tend to be gender-specific, with a focus on targeting women, for example in the national action plan on climate change as in India (Roy et al., 2018) or in national climate change plan as in Malaysia (Susskind et al., 2020).
Potential for Change and Solutions
The sexual division of labour, systemic racism and other social structural inequities lead to increased vulnerabilities and climate change impacts for social groups such as women, youth, Indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities. Their marginal positions not only affect their lives negatively but their work in maintaining healthy environments is ignored and invisible in policy affecting their ability to work towards sustainable adaptation and aspirations in the SDGs (Arora-Jonsson, 2019). However, attention to the following has the potential to bring about change:
Creation of new, deliberative policymaking spaces that support inclusive decision making processes and opportunities to (re)negotiate pervasive gender and other social inequalities in the context of climate change for transformation (Tschakert et al., 2016; Harris et al., 2018; Ziervogel, 2019; Garcia et al., 2020) (high confidence).
Increased access to reproductive health and family planning services, which contributes to climate change resilience and socioeconomic development through improved health and well-being of women and their children, including increased access to education, gender equity and economic status (Onarheim et al., 2016; Starbird et al., 2016; Lopez-Carr, 2017; Hardee et al., 2018) (Section 7.4) (high confidence).
Engagement with women’s collectives is important for sustainable environments and better climate decision making whether at the global, national or local levels (Westholm and Arora-Jonsson, 2018; Agarwal, 2020). The work of such collectives in maintaining their societies and environments and in resisting gendered and community violence is unacknowledged (Jenkins, 2017; Arora-Jonsson, 2019) but is indispensable especially when combined with good leadership, community acceptance and long-term economic sustainability (Chu, 2018; Singh, 2019) (Section 4.6.4). Networking by gender experts in environmental organisations and bureaucracies has also been important for ensuring questions of social justice (Arora-Jonsson and Sijapati, 2018).
Investment in appropriate reliable water supplies, storage techniques and climate-proofed WASH infrastructure as key adaptation strategies that reduce both burdens and impacts on women and girls (Alam et al., 2011; Woroniecki, 2019) (Sections 4.3.3, 4.6.44).
Improved gender-sensitive early warning system design and vulnerability assessments to reduce vulnerabilities, prioritising effective adaptation pathways to women and marginalised groups (Mustafa et al., 2019; Tanner et al., 2019; Werners et al., 2021).
Established effective social protection, including both cash and food transfers, such as the universal public distribution system (PDS) for cereals in India, or pensions and social grants in Namibia, that have been demonstrated to contribute towards relieving immediate pressures on survival and support processes at the community level, including climate effects (Kattumuri et al., 2017; Lindoso et al., 2018; Rao et al., 2019a; Carr, 2020).
Strengthened adaptive capacity and resilience through integrated approaches to adaptation that include social protection measures, disaster risk management and ecosystem-based climate change adaptation (high confidence), particularly when undertaken within a gender-transformative framework (Gumucio et al., 2018; Bezner Kerr et al., 2019; Deaconu et al., 2019) (Cross-Chapter Box NATURAL in Chapter 2, Sections 5.12, 5.14).
For example, gender-transformative and nutrition-sensitive agroecological approaches strengthen adaptive capacities and enable more resilient food systems by increasing leadership for women and their participation in decision making and a gender-equitable domestic work (high confidence) (Gumucio et al., 2018; Bezner Kerr et al., 2019; Deaconu et al., 2019) (Cross-Chapter Box NATURAL in Chapter 2, Sections 5.12, 5.14)
New initiatives, such as the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program, represent an integrated approach to resilience that promotes coordination among social protection, disaster risk management and climate change adaptation. Accompanying measures include health, education, nutrition and family planning, among others (Daron et al., 2021).
Climate Change Adaptation and SDG 5
Adaptation actions may reinforce social inequities, including gender, unless explicit efforts are made to change (Nagoda and Nightingale, 2017; Garcia et al., 2020) (robust evidence, high agreement). Participation in climate action increases if it is inclusive and fair (Huntjens and Zhang, 2016). Roy et al. (2018) assessed links among various SDGs and mitigation options. Adaptation actions are grounded in local realities, especially in terms of their impacts, so understanding links with the goals of SDG 5 becomes more important to make sure that adaptive actions do not worsen prevalent gender and other social inequities within society (robust evidence, high agreement). In the IPCC 1.5°C Special Report, Roy et al. (2018) assessed links between various SDGs and mitigation options, adaptation options were not considered. The current SDG 13 climate action targets do not specifically mention gender as a component for action, which makes it even more imperative to link SDG 5 targets and other gender-related targets to adaptive actions under SDG 13 to ensure that adaptation projects are synergistic rather than maladaptive (Section 16.3.2.6, Table 16.6) (Susan Solomon et al., 2021; Roy et al., Submitted).
This assessment is based on a systematic rapid review of scientific publications (McCartney et al., 2017; Liem et al., 2020) published on adaptation actions in nine sectors from 2014 to 2020 (see Table SMCCB GENDER.1) (Roy et al., Submitted)(Roy et al., Submitted)(Roy et al., Submitted)and how they integrated gender perspectives impacting gender equity. The assessment is based on over 17,000 titles and abstracts that were initially found through keyword search and were reviewed. Finally, 319 relevant papers on case studies, regional assessments and meta-reviews were assessed. Gender impact was classified by various targets under SDG 5. Following the approach taken in Roy et al. (2018) and (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2019), the linkages were classified into synergies (positive impacts or co-benefits) and trade-offs (negative impacts) based on the evidence obtained from the literature review which is finally used to develop net impact (positive or negative) scores (see Table Cross-Chapter Box GENDER.1 and Supplementary Material).
Table Cross-Chapter Box GENDER.1 | Inter-relations between SDG5 (gender equality) and adaptation initiatives in nine major sectors
Please refer to page 2715 to see Table Cross-Chapter Box Gender.1.
Potential net synergies and trade-offs between a sectoral portfolio of adaptation actions and SDG 5 are shown. Colour codes showing the relative strength of net positive and net negative impacts and confidence levels. The strength of net positive and net negative connections across all adaptation actions within a sector are aggregated to show sector-specific links. The links are only one-sided on how adaptation action is linked to gender equality (SDG 5) targets and not vice versa. 22 adaptation options were assessed in ecosystem-based actions, 10 options in technological/infrastructure/information, 17 in institutional and 13 in behavioural/cultural. The assessment presented here is based on literature presenting impacts on gender equality and equity of various adaptation actions implemented in various local contexts and in regional climate change policies (Table SMCCB GENDER.2).
Adaptation actions being implemented in each sector in different local contexts can have positive (synergies) or negative (trade-offs) effects with SDG 5. This can potentially lead to net positive or net negative connections at an aggregate level. How they are finally realised depends on how they are implemented, managed and combined with various other interventions, in particular, place-based circumstances. Ecosystem-based adaptation actions and terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems have higher potential for net positive connections (Roy et al., 2018) (Table Cross-Chapter Box GENDER.1 and Supplementary Material). Adaptation in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems has the strongest net positive links with all SDG 5 targets (medium evidence, low agreement). For example, community-based natural resource management increases the participation of women, especially when they are organised into women’s groups (Pineda-López et al., 2015; de la Torre-Castro et al., 2017) (Supplementary Material). For poverty, livelihood and sustainable development sectors, adaptation actions have generated more net negative scores (limited evidence, low agreement) (Table Cross-Chapter Box GENDER.1). For example, patriarchal institutions and structural discriminations curtail access to services or economic resources as compared with men, including less control over income, fewer productive assets and lack of property rights, as well as less access to credit, irrigation, climate information and seeds which devaluate women’s farm-related adaptation options (Adzawla et al., 2019; Friedman et al., 2019; Ullah et al., 2019) (Supplementary Material).
Among the adaptation actions, ecosystem-based actions have the strongest net positive links with SDG 5 targets (Table Cross-Chapter Box GENDER.1, Table SMCCB GENDER.1). In the health, well-being and changing communities’ sector, this is with robust evidence and medium agreement, while in all other sectors there is medium evidence and low agreement. Net negative links are most prominent in institutional adaptation actions (Table Cross-Chapter Box GENDER.1). For example, in mountain ecosystems, changes in gender roles in response to climatic and socioeconomic stressors is not supported by institutional practices, mechanisms and policies that remain patriarchal (Goodrich et al., 2019). Additionally, women often have less access to credit for climate change adaptation practices, including post-disaster relief, for example, to deal with salinisation of water or flooding impacts (Hossain and Zaman 2018). Lack of coordination among different city authorities can also limit women’s contribution in informal settlements towards adaptation. Women are typically under-represented in decision making on home construction and planning and home-design decisions in informal settlements, but examples from Bangladesh show they play a significant role in adopting climate-resilient measures (e.g., the use of corrugated metal roofs and partitions which is important in protection from heat) (Jabeen, 2014; Jabeen and Guy, 2015; Araos et al., 2017; Susan Solomon et al., 2021).
Towards Climate-Resilient, Gender-Responsive Transformative Pathways
The climate change adaptation and gender literature call for research and adaptation interventions that are ‘gender-sensitive’ (Jost et al., 2016; Thompson-Hall et al., 2016; Kristjanson et al., 2017; Pearce et al., 2018a) and ‘gender-responsive’, as established in Article 7 of the Paris Agreement (UNFCCC, 2015). In addition, attention is drawn to the importance of ‘mainstreaming’ gender in climate/development policy (Alston, 2014; Rochette, 2016; Mcleod et al., 2018; Westholm and Arora-Jonsson, 2018). Many calls have been made to consider gender in policy and practice (Ford et al., 2015; Jost et al., 2016; Rochette, 2016; Thompson-Hall et al., 2016; Kristjanson et al., 2017; Mcleod et al., 2018; Lau et al., 2021; Singh et al., 2021b). Rather than merely emphasising the inclusion of women in patriarchal systems, transforming systems that perpetuate inequality can help to address broader structural inequalities not only in relation to gender, but also other dimensions such as race and ethnicity (Djoudi et al., 2016; Pearse, 2017; Gay-Antaki, 2020). Adaptation researchers and practitioners play a critical role here and can enable gender-transformative processes by creating new, deliberative spaces that foster inclusive decision making and opportunities for renegotiating inequitable power relations (Tschakert et al., 2016; Ziervogel, 2019; Garcia et al., 2020).
To date, empirical evidence on such transformational change is sparse, although there is some evidence of incremental change (e.g., increasing women’s participation in specific adaptation projects, mainstreaming gender in national climate policies). Even when national policies attempt to be more gendered, there is criticism that they use gender-neutral language or include gender analysis without proposing how to alter differential vulnerability (Mersha and van Laerhoven, 2019; Singh et al., 2021b). More importantly, the mere inclusion of women and men in planning does not necessarily translate to substantial gender-transformative action, for example in National Adaptation Programmes of Action across sub-Saharan Africa (Holvoet and Inberg, 2014; Nyasimi et al., 2018) and national and sub-national climate action plans in India (Singh et al., 2021b). Importantly, there is often an overemphasis on the gender binary (and household headship as an entry point), which masks complex ways in which marginalisation and oppression can be augmented due to the interaction of gender with other social factors and intra-household dynamics (Djoudi et al., 2016; Thompson-Hall et al., 2016; Rao et al., 2019a; Lau et al., 2021; Singh et al., 2021b).
Climate justice and gender transformative adaptation can provide multiple beneficial impacts that align with sustainable development. Addressing poverty (SDG 1), energy poverty (SDG 7), WaSH (SDG 6), health (SDG 3), education (SDG 4) and hunger (SDG 2)––along with inequalities (SDG 5 and SDG 10)—improves resilience to climate impacts for those groups that are disproportionately affected (women, low-income and marginalised groups). Inclusive and fair decision making can enhance resilience (SDG 16; Section 13.4.4), although adaptation measures may also lead to resource conflicts (SDG 16; Section 13.7). Nature-based solutions attentive to gender equity also support ecosystem health (SDGs 14 and 15) (Dzebo et al., 2019). Gender and climate justice will be achieved when the root causes of global and structural issues are addressed, challenging unethical and unacceptable use of power for the benefit of the powerful and elites (MacGregor, 2014; Wijsman and Feagan, 2019; Vander Stichele, 2020). Justice and equality need to be at the centre of climate adaptation decision-making processes. A transformative pathway needs to include the voice of the disenfranchised (MacGregor, 2020; Schipper et al., 2020a).
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