Women: The vital link in the battle for our planet-By Nazli Dakad

“My request to world leaders is that our environment remain in good shape. My call to the developed world is that they should care when it comes to us. We want a future where we can live peacefully with our children.”

Helena Bilkish, a 34-year-old Bangladeshi woman, made this emotional request to the Environmental Justice Foundation photographers when they asked women in Bangladesh about the impact of climate change on their lives. Due to rising sea levels, frequent cyclones, and other climate disasters, women like Bilkish live in fear that their lives will be upended when their homes wash away.

Women are more impacted…

Though it is common knowledge that low-income individuals and island-nations are significantly harmed by climate change, one large group is often overlooked: women. The reality is that women✎ EditSign and children are 14 times more likely than men to die or be injured due to a climate disaster. Not only are their lives, belongings, and education upended by unpredictable climate disasters, rates of gender-based violence often go up following disasters. As we move forward from the Conference of Parties 26 (COP26) that just took place in Rome earlier this month, delegates must look beyond largely apolitical climate change topics like renewable energies and focus on women.

Although climate change solution research groups like Drawdown have pointed to the immense potential of increasing women’s education and access to health services to combat the climate crisis, these “women’s issues” are often put on the back burner due to their political nature. Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), a leading organization on the intersection of gender and climate, reported only 64 of the 190 National Climate Plans they analyzed even referenced gender in 2016. It is time for nations to act on two critical elements of combatting the climate crisis: the disproportionate impacts of climate change on women and the potential of women to lead on climate solutions.

…so women should drive decisions around solutions.

Research points to the efficacy of women leaders in addressing the progressing climate crisis. Most notably, a higher percentage of women in parliament often corresponds to stricter environmental policy and an increased likelihood of setting aside protected land areas and ratifying international environmental treaties. The United Nations Development Programme✎ EditSign even referenced these studies nearly ten years ago.

Women leaders across the globe are using their platforms to call attention to the crisis, highlight the lack of gender diversity in the climate fight, and bring more women to the decision-making table:

Christiana Figueres, an architect of the monumental Paris Agreement, exemplifies “stubborn optimism” while combating the climate crisis. Figueres has voiced that young women leaders are the source of her optimism. She retweeted Xiye Bastida, a Mexican climate justice activist, who spoke in front of the Biden Leader Summit on climate to demand more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals from the Biden Administration ahead of COP26.

In the Central Pacific, Hilda Heine, the first woman President of the Marshall Islands, organized the first virtual climate summit (Climate Vulnerable Forum) and a summit in 2017 convening women leaders in the Pacific. In a Guardian piece, Heine wrote, “women aren’t making enough of the decisions, and the decisions aren’t yet doing enough for women.”

Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, an indigenous rights leader and member of the Mbororo pastoralist people in Chad, wrote about the importance of gender parity in combating climate change in 2021. Ibrahim called out the focus on men in international negotiations and argued most of the conversation around gender is “just ticking a box.” She says, “let women take the lead and see the progress that can be made in averting catastrophic climate change.” Nations must listen to these women and center both women’s voices and leadership at all levels of climate decisions.

The solution is straightforward: incorporate gender-just climate solutions into national climate plans, listen to women climate leaders, and empower and remove barriers so that more women take the lead on climate at all levels of decision-making.