“It breaks my heart to see girls dropping out of school due to climate change and migration,” says a didi from Dhanelikanhar village in Kanker, Chhattisgarh. “This generation was supposed to do better.” It has been 30 years since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a landmark international agenda outlining an action plan for gender equality across 12 dimensions such as education, health, economics and politics. It has helped India focus attention on gender perspectives in policies, pass the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act and the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) or POSH Act, and push for the economic empowerment of women. Yet, the implementation of these laws often falls short, resulting in a gap between fundamental rights and women’s lived experiences.
An important integration
Gender inequality and the climate crisis are one of the greatest challenges of today, which the quote above highlights. It also shows the need to integrate ‘gender and climate’ especially for rural communities. The inadequacy of a robust climate lens in the Beijing India Report 2024 (India’s Report on Beijing+30) is a significant opportunity — integrating gender and climate considerations is not just an imperative for achieving gender equality but is also essential for India’s sustainable and resilient future and human rights.
Existing inequalities, especially in India’s rural areas, leave women and girls with less access to resources and decision-making power. They are often concentrated in the agrarian economy. The link between climate change and issues among women due to extreme heat exposure, malnutrition caused by droughts, food insecurity, and displacement leading to a higher rate of hysterectomies, infertility and menstrual health concerns is an area of concern. Heat stress and/or extreme precipitation affect/s agriculture productivity, human productivity and ecosystem functionality, causing price fluctuations, loss in income, distress migration, damaged infrastructure and hampered services for women. It results in nearly 33% losses in income, especially from non-farm livelihood streams.
If we look at climate policies and finance, they are primarily directed towards clean energy, green transport and energy efficiency. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, approximately 6% of climate policies mention women, 1% mention people living in poverty and 6% mention farmers. At the household or family level, the increased burden of unpaid care work (water collection, fuel gathering) due to climate-related resource scarcity affects women. The daily workload of women in India exceeds eight hours, with a staggering 71% unpaid work hours, according to a new report from Arsht-Rock. It warns that without efforts to combat climate change, the time women spend on unpaid tasks could reach 8.3 hours a day by 2050.
In India, over 50% of pregnant women are anaemic, which is an underlying cause or contributing factor to maternal deaths in India. The lack of consistent access to food affects women’s health, as those experiencing food insecurity are 1.6 times more likely to suffer from anaemia when compared to their food-secure counterparts. In India, which has the highest rate of intimate partner violence among the countries in the study, there was a clear correlation between temperature rise and abuse: for each rise in degree Celsius, physical violence rose by 8% and sexual violence by 7.3%.
The role of women in adaptation
Women play a vital role in climate adaptation and mitigation. Their traditional knowledge of sustainable agriculture and natural resource management is crucial in safeguarding the ecosystem in rural areas. Rural indigenous women are primarily responsible for preserving traditional climate-resilient seeds suitable for local climatic conditions. These need to be harnessed in the local decision-making processes and leadership in women-led climate initiatives. Women are responsible for half of the world’s food production and have organically adapted to climate change by using sustainable agriculture. There are many formal and informal women collectives that have shared workloads, have worked on increasing productivity, and are the first responders in disasters and safeguarding the local ecosystems. For women in urban areas, waste management and pollution could be the priorities, but for indigenous women, the three ‘M’s, i.e., Mahua (forest-based livelihoods), Mao (safety and security due to conflicts over resources) and Migration (distress migration and the related challenges and support required), could be priorities.
The Beijing India Report (or India’s Report on the Implementation of Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in the context of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the Adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action) has an inadequate climate-gender connection, which must be rectified. It must include a robust climate lens with a focus on having gender-responsive climate action, developing indicators and data related to the gendered impacts of climate change and also building insights.
There needs to be a special focus on climate budgeting, which generally results in two things — greenwashing and using women as conduits to redirect resources. Hence, it is necessary to design and use gender-audited and gender-responsive climate budgets. Women in rural areas must have platforms to empower them in climate decision-making. A need for climate support hubs, especially for disaster support, health and women’s safety services, awareness of migration risks, and protection of sexual and reproductive rights is strongly felt by women.
Facilitating community climate consultations that are inclusive of women, and promoting women’s leadership in both green energy initiatives and local political leadership on climate action are crucial. By investing in women’s education and capacity in climate action and promoting women-led climate initiatives, the consequences of gender invisibility can be turned around. Human-animal conflict also needs to be explored with a gender lens. More aggressive data and research dedicated to climate and gender is needed on the gender-climate nexus in India. Closing the gender gap in agricultural resources could significantly increase food production, with potential gains of 20%-30% in farm yields and the capacity to feed 100 million to 150 million more people.
At the policy level, a gender responsive National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC) and a percolation to the grass-root level needs to be ensured. A special focus on strengthening disaster preparedness and response with a focus on vulnerable women, leveraging public services, addressing trafficking risks, and reaching out to geriatric women are crucial. There need to be immediate and aggressive policies on livelihood diversification by promoting non-farm livelihoods and skilling opportunities for women to adapt to the impacts of climate change on agriculture.
Private sector participation is important
Green funds must focus on fostering women-led and women-supportive innovations, having technological interventions, and ensuring women’s participation in a green economic transition, by developing green businesses, products and services. More funds must be redirected to human capital at the forefront of climate adaptation and mitigation space, especially in climate-vulnerable areas, to build resilience. The role of the private sector is important as it will help in investing in climate-related projects that specifically empower women, promote gender-inclusive practices and processes, and provide access to climate-resilient technologies and services that benefit women disproportionately affected by climate change impacts.
There need to be co-operative partnerships between government, civil society, research institutions, the private sector, citizens and international organisations. In all these the emphasis must be on knowledge sharing, regular communication, consultations, capacity exchange, recognition of champions and best practices, and collective advocacy to empower women as leaders in building climate resilience for a more just and sustainable future in India.
Neeraja Kudrimoti is an Associate Director of Climate Action at Transform Rural India, and a catalytic leader in climate action, rural development, public policy and grassroots transformation
Published – April 12, 2025 12:16 am IST