Why to tackle the climate crisis we must also tackle gender inequality
Richard Betts is an Associate Partner in Climate Change and Associated Services at EY in the UK. All views are his own.
To tackle the climate & ecological crises, the greatest threats that humanity has ever had to face, there is a need for unprecedented collaboration where we strengthen existing partnerships and alliances and forge new ones. Faced with global systemic risks such as the climate crisis, we need systemic solutions. This means that to be effective we need all the “system actors”, all stakeholder groups, to be engaged so that they can contribute to the solutions. In previous eras, governments when faced with a national crisis, often in times of war, assembled coalitions to help tackle the threat of the day more effectively – as the British Prime Minister, Lord Grenville, did in 1807 when he convened a national unity government, “Ministry of all the talents”, to help defeat the threat of a Napoleonic invasion. Back then, though, it was a government made up of men from the privileged land-owning upper echelons of British society. The point is not to celebrate war but to ensure we learn lessons from our accumulated knowledge and collective experience so that we can maximize our chances of dealing effectively with today’s existential crises. In early November, representatives from Governments from around the world will assemble in Glasgow for COP 26 (United Nations Climate Change Conference). COP 26 is an extremely important opportunity for world leaders to come together and to commit to bold climate action. The last few years have underscored how with unprecedented climate-induced disasters from Canada and California to Germany and Greece and from South America and Siberia to Australia and the Arctic, that the global climate crisis has already started and that it is accelerating. Hence, we cannot afford to waste COP 26. We need urgent action now and we all have a role to play.
But to tackle the global climate crisis, as well as the other interconnected crises of today, we need alliances of “all the talents” where all of humanity, as well as the non-human life with which we share the Earth, can contribute with their different talents to tackling these great crises. Climate change is after all a global crisis, which is a risk to all people, and all other species all around the world and hence we will have no chance of tackling it effectively if we don’t effectively engage with, and leverage, all our respective talents. Therefore, to tackle climate change we must also tackle inequality. Taking gender quality as an example, while the need is extremely clear, systemic barriers at present are hindering women from effectively preparing for, and responding to, climatic impacts. Indeed, UN figures from 2018 indicated that 80% of people displaced by climate change were women and children[1], whilst another report from 2013 reported that women and children were 14x more likely to die in natural disasters[2].
How can tackling gender equality help us to tackle climate change?
Firstly, among solutions for tackling climate change, empowering women and girls in developing countries was ranked second on a report by Project Drawdown[3], a US not-for-profit that researches the most effective ways to reduce planet-warming emissions amongst solutions that are already available. Project Drawdown also estimates that improving girls’ education and family planning would reduce carbon emissions by 85 billion tons by 2050. Clearly, the primary benefits of supporting women and girls is to help create a fairer and more equal society where everyone can contribute and reach their potential. Similarly, it is not about people in rich countries, where emissions are highest, telling people elsewhere to stop having children. But, at the same time, supporting family planning can in addition to helping achieve women’s empowerment and well-being, also achieve significant side benefits such as tackling climate change and reducing environmental pressures. For example, through having access to education, family planning and birth control, women can then decide when and how many children to have. With this access, studies by Project Drawdown have shown that women have less children and have them later in life and a slower population growth relieves stress on ecosystems, allowing resources to recover from overuse without compromising local food access[4].
As Project Drawdown also explains, education increases the resilience of women and girls to climate disasters[5]. Due to traditional gender roles, legal inequality and financial barriers, women often face unique risks as climate change intensifies natural disasters and leads to increased water scarcity in many areas, meaning that women and girls in rural areas of many developing countries must spend longer collecting water instead of earning money or going to school[6]. On a more positive note, in developing countries in particular, women are often the managers and key users of natural resources so are often at the forefront of developing innovative solutions that can also help tackle climate change[7].
Recent studies on another systemic event, the C-19 pandemic, have shown how countries with female leaders have tended to handle the lockdown better by locking down earlier, helping to save lives as evidenced by the significantly lower number of deaths in countries with women leaders[8]. Making the connection with climate change, research from a large sample of countries, has demonstrated that female representation has led countries to adopting more stringent climate change policies and that female political representation may be an underutilized tool for addressing climate change[9].
Attempts to ensure climate justice and lasting solutions without including the voices of half of the world’s population are clearly doomed to fail. More positively, however, companies that recognize climate change as a gendered issue can play an important role developing solutions for climate resilience with a focus on women. Indeed, there are already many promising initiatives and countries have recognized the importance of involving women and men equally in UNFCCC processes and in the development and implementation of national gender-responsive climate policies, which has resulted in the first ever UNFCCC Gender Action Plan[10]. But now is the time to really accelerate action on tackling the climate crisis, gender inequality and on the other interconnected global crises.
To sum up, to meet the most ambitious target of the Paris Climate Change Agreement, by limiting global temperature increases to a maximum of 1.5C, it is critical that the needs, perspectives, and ideas of women, as well as of men, are actively included in climate action so as to create just, effective, and sustainable solutions. To effectively tackle the climate crisis, we must also tackle gender and social inequality. We must strive for the full and equal participation and leadership of women in climate policy, in climate mitigation and adaptation and with a balanced representation of men and women leading on tackling climate change. This will also require more solutions for gender-sensitive climate finance to be implemented internationally at scale given that climate change affects many men and women differently. Only by leveraging all our talents will we have any chance of tackling the global climate and ecological crises.
[1] Climate change 'impacts women more than men' - BBC News
[2] Women and children 14 times more likely to die during disasters (thejournal.ie)
[3] Women’s empowerment is key to reducing climate change - Earth Day
[4] Table of Solutions | Project Drawdown
[5] Health and Education | Project Drawdown
[6] Women’s empowerment is key to reducing climate change - Earth Day
[7] Women and Natural Resources in Peacebuilding | UN Women – Headquarters
[8] Female-led countries handled coronavirus better, study suggests | Coronavirus | The Guardian
[9] Gender and climate change: Do female parliamentarians make difference? - ScienceDirect
