Climate change affects women’s and men’s assets and well-being differently—in terms of agricultural production, food security, health, water and energy resources, climate-induced migration and conflict, and climate-related natural disasters, – said Åsa Regnér, Assistant Secretary-General of the UN and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women at “Empowering women through the sustainable management of natural resources: Women as agents of change in tackling interlinked challenges related to climate change – sustainable land use, resilience and human security”.
In many contexts women’s dependence on and unequal access to land, water, and other resources and productive assets—compounded by limited mobility and decision-making power—mean that they are disproportionately affected by climate change. Women are key actors in building community resilience and responding to climate-related disasters.
This is a clear recognition that environmental actions and responses can only be sustainable and just if they take gender equality and human rights into account. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, underscored that gender equality and women’s empowerment are indispensable to the realization of all the SDGs. The Paris Agreement called on Parties to consider human rights, gender equality and women’s empowerment in all climate actions. “Let me end by emphasizing that we cannot have a discussion on climate change without addressing the deeply rooted inequalities that exist for half of the world’s population. Climate change is the challenge of our time, and it is our responsibility to create resilient communities that are able not only to bounce back from disaster, and to do so in a way that ensures inequalities are not heightened, and everyone has an equal voice in the sustainable future of their communities”, – concludes her speech Åsa Regnér, citing the findings of the recent UN Women report, ‘Turning Promises into Action: Gender Equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’tracks progress SDGs from a gender perspective and finds significant gender gaps, which require serious analytical work that sharpens our understanding of how to capture, measure and monitor meaningful change for women and girls in new and emerging areas, such as the gender implications of climate change.
