A path to implementation: Gender-responsive climate change strategies

Abstract

Climate change is one of the most urgent priorities on the global agenda. The impacts are already being felt, with every country in the world grappling with the challenges of mitigating the causes and—especially for developing countries and vulnerable populations—adapting to its effects. Increasingly, the evidence reveals that the impacts of climate change are not gender-neutral.Women and men experience climate change differently and their capacity to cope with it varies. The 2007 UNDP Human Development Report cautions that gender inequalities intersect with climate risks and vulnerabilities, concluding that climate change is likely to amplify and exacerbate existing patterns of gender disadvantage. Thus, women’s historic disadvantages, their limited access and control over decisionmaking, environmental and economic resources, and their restricted rights, make them more vulnerable to climate change.