Women & Climate Change

Climate Finance Flowing, But for Many, the Well Remains Dry

By Desmond Brown
For more than 10 years, Mildred Crawford has been “a voice in the wilderness” crying out on behalf of rural women in agriculture.

Floods Wash Away India’s MDG Progress

By Priyanka Borpujari
The northeastern Indian state of Assam is no stranger to devastating floods. Located just south of the eastern Himalayas, the lush, 30,000-square-km region comprises the Brahmaputra and Barak river valleys, and is accustomed to annual bouts of rain that swell the mighty rivers and spill over into villages and towns, inundating agricultural lands and washing homes, possessions and livestock away.

Nepal Landslide Leaves Women and Children Vulnerable

By Naresh Newar
Living in a makeshift tarpaulin shelter, which barely protects her family from the torrential rainfall or scorching heat of this remote village in southern Nepal, 36-year-old Kamala Pari is under immense stress, worrying about her financial security and children’s safety.

Women Warriors Take Environmental Protection into Their Own Hands

By Amantha Perera
Aleta Baun, an Indonesian environmental activist known in her community as Mama Aleta, has a penchant for wearing a colourful scarf on her head, but not for cosmetic reasons.

Mexico’s Climate Laws Ignore Women

By Emilio Godoy
The rural communities of San Miguel and Santo Tomás Ajusco, to the south of Mexico City, are preserving 3,000 of their 7,619 hectares of forest in exchange for payment for environmental services. But the inequality in the communities is far from ecological.

Rural Costa Rican Women Plant Trees to Fight Climate Change

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
Olga Vargas, a breast cancer survivor, is back in the countryside, working in a forestry programme in the north of Costa Rica aimed at empowering women while at the same time mitigating the effects of climate change.

A Honduran Paradise that Doesn’t Want to Anger the Sea Again

By Thelma Mejía
At the mouth of the Aguán river on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, a Garífuna community living in a natural paradise that was devastated 15 years ago by Hurricane Mitch has set an example of adaptation to climate change.

Sun Shines on Forest Women

By Stella Paul
Chintapakka Jambulamma, 34, looks admiringly at a solar dryer. It’s the prized possession of the Advitalli Tribal Women’s Co-operative Society- a collective of women entrepreneurs that she leads.

Gender Counts in the Aftermath of Disaster

By Jewel Fraser
The rise in natural disasters in the Caribbean due to climate change has led to increased suffering for both men and women, much of it as a consequence of socially constructed roles based on gender, experts say.

Women Advance in Distant Islands

By Catherine Wilson
Women’s political representation in the Pacific Islands region is globally the lowest at 3.65 percent, compared to the world average of 18 percent. Leadership is still widely perceived as ‘men’s business’ and voting is heavily influenced by nepotism and money politics. However, Rhoda Sikilabu, minister for community affairs in Isabel Province in the Solomon Islands is demonstrating that women leaders can drive development progress and win voter support.

Driving Home the Link Between Gender and Climate Change

By Silvia Giannelli
Tuesday was Gender Day at the COP19 climate summit in Warsaw, and many of the events that took place in the National Stadium focused on the topic of gender and its relation with climate change, and tried to shed a light on problems that require action from policy-makers.

Women Find a Green Midas Touch

By Naimul Haq
On a hot and humid day in northwestern Bangladesh, Anisa Begum sits with a group of 25 homemakers, explaining how to use natural fertilisers to increase grain yield.

Technology and Innovation Aim at Greater Food Security

By Cydney Hargis
In the face of global climate change and currency devaluation, improved strategies are being used to combat high international poverty and malnutrition rates, and to increase global food security. 

Women’s Time Has Come

By Claudia Ciobanu
Closing the gender gap between women and men on agriculture and food security could free over one hundred million people from hunger. 

Digging Deep for New Conflict

By Pierre Klochendler
If Herod the Great was a controversial figure of his time, 2,000 years on the controversy isn’t about his legacy; it’s about who holds the rights to excavate and preserve his artefacts.

Women Fight Climate Battles

By IPS Correspondents
From Zimbabwe to El Salvador, women in poor countries suffer the brunt of climate change, but also learn to recover from disasters, to adapt and even to find opportunities in the new weather conditions.

Taking the Knowledge of Doha Back to Kenya’s Rural Communities

By Mantoe Phakathi
The skyscraper Qatari capital city of Doha is a far cry from Cecilia Kibe’s home in Turkana district, a remote area in Kenya inhabited by mostly nomadic communities and pastoralists hit hard by the effects of climate change.

Women Hit Hard by Natural Disasters

By Malini Shankar
In the aftermath of a natural disaster, women are often the most vulnerable. Particularly in rural areas, women suffer disproportionately from inadequate shelter and poor sanitation facilities and are often tasked with rebuilding shattered homes.

Q&A: Disaster Resilience Starts with Grassroots Women

By Julia Kallas
Women and girls can be powerful agents of change, but they are disproportionately affected by disasters because of social roles, discrimination and poverty.

Malawi’s Heroines of the Floods

By Mabvuto Banda
For many women in Malawi’s disaster-prone southern district of Nsanje, resilience is essential to survive the cyclical flooding.
Indigenous women in rural Peru have to walk longer and longer distances to find firewood. Credit: Elena Villanueva/IPS

Rural Women in Peru Cope “Where Life Is Very Sad”

By Mariela Jara
When the crops in her rural highlands community in southern Peru were covered with a thick layer of ice one night, Felícitas Quispe, 43, organised her neighbours to make an effort to keep people from starving to death.
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