The impacts of human-induced global warming and climate change; sea-level rise, drought and heatwaves, severe storms and flooding, food security, conflict, disease and ecosystem damage are now well documented.
However, climate change impacts are not evenly distributed globally or regionally or even nationally. Even at the national level there are stark local differences.
Similarly, long-standing socioeconomic inequities among men and women are amplified by large orders of magnitude. Women have the highest exposure, are more vulnerable and, often have the least resources to cope or respond.
In Africa especially, the differential impacts of climate change on men and women are made more severe because of the inordinate dependence of hundreds of millions of families on natural resources – water, land, pasture and tree-based resources. Moreover, natural resource-based livelihoods are predominantly controlled or managed by women.
Recent data published by the World Bank shows that the female share of labour in crop production in Africa is up to 56 per cent. Overall, the labour burden among rural women is higher than that of men and includes a large proportion of unpaid care responsibilities such as cooking and childcare, and is compounded by limited off-farm employment opportunities for women and girls.
Invariably, the impact of climate change on livestock and crop production often have direct and far-reaching consequences on livelihood options for women and their families.
Often women have limited coping mechanisms and hence are less resilient to the impacts of climate change on their livelihoods. The United Nations' Global Humanitarian Overview 2019 observes that conflicts and natural disasters exacerbate gender inequalities, particularly against women and girls.
Similarly, in the 2019 Report on Women, Peace and Security, the United Nations secretary general called for the urgent need to examine linkages between climate and gender.
Hence, with successive United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports predicting an increase in the frequency and severity of natural disasters, gender-based violence risks becoming an even bigger issue if not addressed urgently.
Climate change is now recognised as a serious amplifier of gender-based violence. The CARE 2020 report 'Suffering in silence: The 10 most under-reported humanitarian crises of 2019' notes that all forms of gender-based violence against women and girls surge during disaster and conflict and, climate extremes exacerbate existing inequalities, vulnerabilities and negative gender norms.
In the Great Horn of Africa, especially among pastoralists, girls are compelled into early marriage in exchange for livestock as a strategy for re-stocking family livestock herds.
Despite the abundance of evidence showing that climate change has more devastating impact among women and girls, global policies and climate adaption actions remain largely gender-insensitive. Statements on gender equality and women empowerment in the COP26 Pact are innocuous, perfunctory and merely politically correct.
There is need for scaled-up differentiated financial resources, technology transfer and livelihood diversification options to ensure gender-responsive adaptation actions and resilience enhancing investments.
Moreover, urgent attention must also focus on addressing the dearth of gender-specific expertise on climate change and sustainable development at the global and national levels, especially in low-income countries.
The views expressed are the writer’s
