Climate Change and Vulnerable Communities: Examining Disparities in Rural Areas.

As the impacts of climate change intensify, vulnerable communities, particularly those in rural areas, face disproportionate challenges. Drawing insights from research by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, this blog delves into the disparities experienced by rural poor, women, and youth in the face of climate change. We explore the intersecting factors of wealth, gender, and age that contribute to varying levels of vulnerability in these populations.

Rural people and their climate vulnerabilities are barely visible in national climate policies. In the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and national adaptation plans (NAPs) of the 24 countries analyzed in this report, only 6% of the 4 164 climate actions proposed mention women, 2% explicitly mention youth, less than 1% mention poor people and about 6% refer to farmers in rural communities.

Wealth-related disparities, extreme weather events affect to significant reduction in incomes of poor rural households. Poor rural households lose 2.4 % of their on-farm incomes, 1.1% of the value of the crops they produce, and 1.5% of their off-farm income relative to non-poor households. In an average year, poor households lose 5% of their total incomes due to heat stress, and 4.4% due to floods, relative to non-poor households.

Gender disparities, a day of extreme temperature or extreme precipitation is associated with a 1.3% and 0.5% reduction, respectively, in the total incomes of female-headed households, relative to that of male-headed households. This translates into an annual income gap of 8% due to heat stress, and of 3% due to floods, compared with male-headed households. . In case of floods, female-headed households intensify their agricultural activities by acquiring more livestock and spending more on their agricultural systems.

Women take on an additional work burden compared to men when extreme weather events occur, but also lose more income opportunities. With floods and droughts, women tend to work significantly more on their own farms compared to men, while the opposite is true for heat stress, which causes women to dedicate relatively more of their time to work away from their farms.

Age-based disparities, households headed by young people are better able to access off-farm employment opportunities in the face of extreme weather events than older households, which makes their incomes less vulnerable to such events. A day of extreme precipitation or extreme heat is associated with a 0.6 or 1% increase, respectively, in the total incomes of young households. Young households increase their total income by 3% due to floods, and 6% due to heat stresses, compared to older households.

This finding reinforces the overall finding that young rural households are generally better able to adapt to climate stressors than older households, and that they do this by exploiting off-farm income sources.

With that, we tend to ask: how can we ensure equitable access to resources and opportunities for rural communities, women, and youth impacted by climate change?

Stay tuned!