The resource kit presents an overview of gender and climate change in the context of policy, finance, adaptation plans, best practices, and advocacy tools. It argues for a new convergence in thinking and practice that aligns the efforts of governments, aid organizations, and the general public, to ensure that women contribute to and benefit from equitable climate solutions.

Learn how gender equality can reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts and how women are uniquely positioned to help curb the harmful consequences of a changing climate.

Download it now! Read the press release here.

To view the webcast of this WEDO side event at the Bonn Climate Change talks, please click here.

Gender, Climate Change & Human Security (pdf)

 A new Case Study: Gender and Climate Change in the Hindu Kush Himalayas of Nepal commissioned by WEDO and produced by Brigitte Leduc, Arun Shrestha, and Basundhara Bhattarai of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) accomplishes three things: it relays basic information about climate change in Nepal, it examines the conditions under which the women in Nepal live, and it makes recommendations for future action.
 
According to the study—which is part of a national advocacy pilot project undertaken by WEDO to mainstream gender into climate change policy-making and activity implementation in developing countries—gender is an integral part of environmental policy, and any viable climate change strategy in Nepal needs to be gender-sensitive.

The authors describe how climate change reveals and intensifies preexisting problems of gender inequity. As the case study makes clear, women in Nepal live in a society with cultural norms that largely privilege men—women have lower literacy rates, less access to political power, and as the primary collectors of water and fuel wood, are in a more vulnerable position than men to changing ecosystems.

As women are equipped with fewer resources to successfully adapt to changing ecosystems, it is imperative that gender policies be integrated into the official discourse surrounding climate policy. This document makes clear the importance of empowering Nepalese women and the communities in which they live to maintain control over their land and livelihoods. Read the case study here.

Existing conditions and discrimination determine who is most impacted by “natural” disasters. Women are the majority of the 1.3 billion people living in the deepest poverty worldwide, and people in poverty bear the brunt of climate change impacts. They are most dependent on the environment for livelihoods, food, fuel and medicine. Women often lead communities in conserving natural resources, adapting crops to changing soil and climatic conditions, and rebuilding following natural disasters. The feminization of poverty and gendered divisions of labor present clear differences in how climate change impacts women and men, and their respective capacities for coping with and adapting to climate’s changes. And while women tend to bear a disproportionate burden of adjustment to climate change, they contribute less than men to greenhouse gas emissions.

Investing in women is one of the most effective ways to advance sustainable development and fight climate change devastation. WEDO and Heinrich Boell Foundation partnered with Athena Peralta—a Manila-based advocate on ecology, economy and gender—to document the gender impacts of climate change on women in the Philippines and assess how decision-makers at the national-level are addressing gender roles and women’s rights, lives and livelihoods in climate finance policy.

The study concludes with proposals for ensuring women and gender are adequately addressed in national climate financing policies, programs and frameworks. These include:
• Create mechanisms that guarantee women’s equal access to negotiating, developing managing and implementing adaptation and mitigation financing
• Include disaggregated indicators on mitigation and adaptation funds for targeting and monitoring benefits to women
• Develop principles and procedures to protect and encourage women’s access to national adaptation programs and projects
• Conduct gender impact assessments of adaptation and mitigation strategies
• Implement the ‘polluter pays’ and ‘shared but differentiated’ principles
• Ensure mitigation strategies include both financing new, green technologies and development and enforcement of necessary regulations of greenhouse gas emissions

Written by Nadia Johnson,WEDO’s Social and Economic Justice Program Coordinator.

Gender and Climate Change Finance: A Case Study from the Philippines (pdf)

Case Study: Gender and Climate Change in Nepal

Case Study: Gender, Human Security and Climate Change in Bangladesh

Case Study: Gender, Human Security and Climate Change in Senegal

Case Study: Gender, Human Security and Climate Change in Ghana

Final Report: Gender & Climate Change Workshop, Dakar, June 2008 (pdf)