Women are more likely than men to be affected by climate change, studies show.
UN figures indicate that 80 per cent of people displaced by climate change are women.
Roles as primary caregivers and providers of food and fuel make them more vulnerable when flooding and drought occur.
The 2015 Paris Agreement has made specific provision for the empowerment of women, recognising that they are disproportionately impacted.
In central Africa, where up to 90% of Lake Chad has disappeared, nomadic indigenous groups are particularly at risk. As the lake's shoreline recedes, women have to walk much further to collect water.
"In the dry season, men go to the towns... leaving women to look after the community," explains Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, coordinator of the Association of Indigenous Women and People of Chad (AFPAT).
With dry seasons now becoming longer, women are working harder to feed and care for their families without support. "They become more vulnerable... it's very hard work," Ibrahim recently told the BBC's 100 Women initiative.
It is not just women in rural areas who are affected. Globally, women are more likely to experience poverty, and to have less socioeconomic power than men. This makes it difficult to recover from disasters which affect infrastructure, jobs and housing.
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, African American women were among the worst affected by flooding in Louisiana. As sea levels rise, low-lying cities like New Orleans will be increasingly at risk.
"In New Orleans, there was much higher poverty among the African American population before Katrina," says Jacquelyn Litt, professor of women's and gender studies at Rutgers University.
"More than half the poor families in the city were headed by single mothers," she told BBC News.
"[They] are reliant on interdependent community networks for their everyday survival and resources. The displacement that happened after Katrina essentially eroded those networks. It places women and their children at much greater risk."
In the immediate aftermath of extreme events, emergency shelters can be inadequately equipped to support women. The Superdome, in which evacuees were temporarily housed after Hurricane Katrina, didn't have enough sanitary products for the women accommodated there.