The climate crisis is affecting gender equality – in a negative sense. Of 119 countries, only 38 are taking measures to mitigate the gender-specific effects of the climate crisis. This is shown by a recent study by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
“The climate is setting us back in the fight for gender equality,” says Angela Baschieri, policy advisor at UNFPA and responsible for climate issues. She helped formulate the report. “Our concern is that climate policy recognizes the different impacts on women and takes them into account when shaping policy.”
Women and people who can become pregnant are particularly hard hit by the effects of the climate crisis. Some examples:
The effects are diverse – but only a third of countries are addressing this problem. UN Secretary-General António Guterres also criticizes this: “Women and girls everywhere are exposed to the greatest threats and the greatest harm. […] And everywhere women and girls are largely excluded from the spaces in which decisions are made.”
The study was published by UNFPA on Tuesday in collaboration with Queen Mary University of London. It is the first publication to focus on climate action on whether states also have plans for the sexual and reproductive health of their populations.
Only 38 states include access to contraception or maternal and newborn health services in their climate plans. And only 15 relate to violence against women.
Role models in the birth area can be, for example, Paraguay, the Seychelles or Benin. These countries have noted that their health systems need to be made more climate-resilient so that women and pregnant women have safe health care.
El Salvador and Sierra Leone also have concrete plans to address the problem of gender-based violence. And Vietnam is the only country that admits that child marriages increase in times of crisis. A study from Bangladesh in 2019 came to the conclusion, among other things, that in years with months-long heat waves, up to 50 percent more girls between the ages of 11 and 14 were married. However, the vast majority of states do not address this problem.
In addition to the present study, a report from Climate Adapt comes to a comparable result. Climate Adapt is an EU platform for knowledge transfer. It says that many cities in Europe do not sufficiently integrate vulnerable groups into their climate adaptation plans, such as sick, elderly or pregnant people. They would be less able to protect themselves and would not be sufficiently taken into account in many plans.
In the UN report, researchers therefore appeal to governments. “We know that climate change disproportionately affects women and is not gender neutral,” said UNFPA policy advisor Angela Baschieri. “So we need to address those gaps and impacts.”
The federal government has also recognized the problem. For example, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development explicitly supports projects that promote gender equality in combating the climate crisis.
The UN Population Fund is calling for more of these collaborations worldwide. The research situation on gender issues in relation to the climate crisis should also be expanded. In addition, more resilient health systems, more funding and broader representation of women and other affected groups would be needed.
Sources: United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA), UNFPA 2, National Library of Medicine, National Library of Medicine 2, “Guardian”, Nature, Population and Environment, International Social Work, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
