Effective Strategies for Addressing Gender Issues in Climate Change Policies and Programs

Climate change does not affect everyone equally. Women and girls, particularly in developing regions, often face disproportionate impacts due to their roles in agriculture, water collection, and caregiving. Yet, they remain underrepresented in climate decision-making processes. Addressing gender issues in climate change requires deliberate strategies spanning research, policy development, grassroots movements, and coordinated action across sectors. Here’s a comprehensive look at effective approaches that can create meaningful change.

The critical role of gender-disaggregated research and data 🔗

Understanding how climate change affects men and women differently begins with robust data collection. Collecting and analyzing data disaggregated by gender, age, and other social characteristics generates evidence essential for guiding inclusive policies and investments in climate adaptation, mitigation, and resilience building.

Research on women’s resilience, coping strategies, and control over resources reveals insights that can link local strategies to national policies aimed at reducing poverty and increasing food security. For instance, studies from Tonga demonstrated that women living with partners had to reduce food consumption more frequently than men when coping with climate impacts-11% compared to 7%. Such findings highlight why gender-specific data matters for crafting effective responses.

Unfortunately, significant gaps persist. Only 10 of the more than 90 Sustainable Development Goals with environment-related indicators have a gender dimension, and data availability remains limited for most countries. Closing these gaps requires dedicated investment in gender-environment data collection, analysis, and application.

What effective data collection looks like 🔗

Governments should incorporate gender perspectives into their national climate policies by carrying out systematic gender analysis, utilizing sex-disaggregated data, establishing gender-sensitive benchmarks, and developing practical tools for implementation. The UN recommends that such approaches become standard practice rather than optional add-ons.

Gender impact assessments of climate policies, programmes, and projects help ensure that mitigation and adaptation measures do not inadvertently worsen gender inequalities. These assessments should examine how proposed interventions affect women’s time burdens, access to resources, and participation in decision-making.

Policy development and political support 🔗

Gender mainstreaming ensures that gender considerations are embedded across all policies and programmes rather than treated as separate issues. The UNFCCC’s Gender Action Plan serves as the primary framework for integrating gender perspectives across climate actions-covering mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, capacity-building, and transparency.

The Paris Agreement includes overarching text addressing gender and climate change, and key decisions under the UNFCCC have progressively mainstreamed gender across different areas. Adaptation has seen the most progress, with 16 decisions incorporating gender considerations since early in the UNFCCC process. Mitigation, however, remains an area where gender is least mainstreamed, partly due to perceptions that gender concerns apply mainly to vulnerability contexts.

Making gender data available to policymakers 🔗

Gender-related data must reach policymakers in accessible formats to influence climate change policy effectively. This requires advocacy efforts and cross-sectoral coalition building that brings together climate experts, gender specialists, and government officials.

National gender and climate change focal points play crucial roles in coordinating positions on gender within delegations, facilitating communication between ministries dealing with climate and those handling gender issues, and advocating for gender-responsive climate plans in national communications and Nationally Determined Contributions.

Building broader movements for change 🔗

Women need to create and lead movements that specifically address gender issues in climate change. Hosting regular women’s caucuses during climate negotiations, disseminating information widely, and coordinating advocacy among women’s groups globally can strengthen influence during critical decision-making moments.

Lessons from the Chipko Movement 🔗

One of the most powerful examples of women-led environmental action is India’s Chipko Movement, which emerged in the Himalayan region during the 1970s. Rural women physically embraced trees to prevent government-backed logging, recognizing that deforestation directly threatened their access to water, fuel, and fodder.

The movement’s mass participation of female villagers became one of its most defining features. Women in Himalayan villages were most directly affected by environmental degradation because they collected fuel, fodder, and water daily. In 1974, Gaura Devi led 26 women from Reni village to stop loggers from cutting 2,000 trees-a defining moment that helped secure a 10-year ban on commercial logging in the area.

The Chipko Movement demonstrated that environmental causes were matters of survival for poor communities, particularly women. It brought forth a greatly increased understanding of divergent interests between local communities and state bureaucracies in managing resources, and revealed that interests of men and women within the same community could differ significantly.

Information sharing and sensitization 🔗

The outcomes of UNFCCC negotiations should be shared with all stakeholders to involve everyone in bringing gender concerns into climate discussions. Broader participation ensures more inclusive approaches to climate solutions and helps build understanding of how climate policies affect different groups.

Experts emphasize the importance of investing in gender statistics and data to support evidence-based climate actions. Women and youth groups need better access to resources and spaces where they can share their expertise and influence outcomes.

Current representation remains inadequate. While progress has been made-such as women comprising 45% of COP26 teams-senior public-facing roles continue to be dominated by men. This matters because research shows that in certain countries, 83% of women consider climate change a serious problem compared to only 56% of men.

Establishing coordinating bodies across sectors 🔗

Many organizations specialize in particular areas-energy, water, agriculture, biodiversity-but their knowledge often remains siloed. Creating coordinating bodies that bring together expertise across these sectors can address gender issues in climate change more comprehensively when engaging with governments and international bodies.

A UN expert group meeting report noted that women are change agents, leaders, and innovators in addressing climate threats. They bring different perspectives and experiences to political processes, natural resource management, adaptation, mitigation, and technology. However, their continued exclusion from relevant policy arenas delays the design of effective gender-responsive climate policies.

Financing gender-responsive climate action 🔗

Major climate financing mechanisms have made progress in mainstreaming gender. The Green Climate Fund, Global Environment Facility, and Adaptation Fund have all adopted gender policies and action plans. Gender analysis of all budget lines and financial instruments for climate change helps ensure gender-sensitive investments in adaptation, mitigation, technology transfer, and capacity building programmes.

Financing mechanisms must be flexible enough to reflect women’s priorities and needs. The active participation of women in developing funding criteria and allocating resources for climate initiatives is particularly important at local levels, where impacts are felt most directly.

Success stories and model initiatives 🔗

Learning from successful projects provides blueprints for replication and scaling. Two initiatives stand out for their lasting impact on both environmental conservation and women’s empowerment.

Kenya’s Green Belt Movement 🔗

The Green Belt Movement, founded by Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai in 1977 under the auspices of the National Council of Women of Kenya, has become a globally renowned environmental conservation organization. Since its founding, more than 51 million trees have been planted, and over 30,000 women have been trained in forestry, food processing, beekeeping, and other trades that help them earn income while preserving their lands and resources.

The movement began with just seven seedlings planted on World Environment Day in 1977. What made it transformative was its approach of combining environmental restoration with women’s economic empowerment. Trained to properly plant and cultivate seedlings, women both assisted reforestation and generated income for themselves by selling seedlings to the organization for redistribution.

Wangari Maathai recognized that rural African women deal with multiple daily stresses, spending significant time on tasks like finding food, water, and collecting firewood. Increased deforestation meant women had to travel further for resources, leaving less time for tending crops and caring for children. The Green Belt Movement addressed these interconnected challenges by empowering women to restore their environments while building their own capacities.

The Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal 🔗

Before the Chipko Movement gained its name, environmentalist Chandi Prasad Bhatt founded Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh (later renamed Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal) in 1964. This cooperative organization became the institutional foundation for the Chipko movement that would emerge nearly a decade later.

The organization worked to make local communities self-sufficient and helped them recognize the importance of safeguarding their natural environment for their livelihoods. The movement was pivotal in encouraging communities to plant trees, grow fodder plants for livestock, and build check-dams-demonstrating that conservation and community development could advance together.

Moving forward: an integrated approach 🔗

Addressing gender issues in climate change requires action at multiple levels simultaneously. No single strategy suffices-effective responses combine better data, stronger policies, grassroots mobilization, information sharing, and cross-sector coordination.

UN Women emphasizes that effective gender action plans must be transformative (tackling root causes of inequality), inclusive (engaging diverse stakeholders), adequately resourced, adaptable to national and local contexts, and measurable with clear indicators and accountability mechanisms.

The experiences of movements like Chipko and Green Belt show that women are not merely vulnerable to climate impacts-they are powerful agents of change when given the opportunity to lead. Their knowledge of local ecosystems, their stakes in sustainable resource management, and their capacity for community organizing make them essential partners in addressing the climate crisis.

What do you think? How can local communities in your region better integrate women’s knowledge and leadership into climate adaptation efforts? What barriers still prevent women from participating fully in climate decision-making, and how might they be overcome?

References

1. https://www.unicef.org/blog/tackling-gender-inequality-climate-changed-world
2. https://data.unwomen.org/features/why-we-need-gender-and-environment-data-agenda-cop28
3. https://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/climate_change/downloads/Women_and_Climate_Change_Factsheet.pdf
4. https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/explainer/2025/11/climate-change-gender-action-plan
5. https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/NGCCFP_Workshop_PolicyOverviewandTools.pdf
6. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chipko-movement
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipko_movement
8. https://www.fao.org/4/r0465e/r0465e03.htm
9. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/how-advance-gender-equality-climate-change-response
10. https://unfccc.int/files/gender_and_climate_change/application/pdf/egmreport.pdf
11. https://www.greenbeltmovement.org/
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Belt_Movement
13. https://www.learningtogive.org/resources/wangari-maathai-and-green-belt-movement
14. https://www.goldmanprize.org/blog/green-belt-movement-wangari-maathai/
15. https://earth.org/50-years-on-the-legacy-of-the-chipko-movement/