#SheLeadsInCrisis: Stand with Women on the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis
Around the world, women and girls are hardest hit by the impacts of the climate crisis. We cannot overcome the unprecedented challenges facing humanity with half of the population left on the sidelines.
Building on our reputation as a leader in gender-just humanitarian and climate action, over the next three years CARE will encourage and equip its offices and partners around the world to participate in meaningful, coordinated, and consistent actions pushing for more ambitious and gender-just solutions to the climate crisis and humanitarian emergencies at global, regional and national levels.
#SheLeadsInCrisis Campaign Brief
Women and girls are bearing the burden of the climate crisis. Within communities, women already disadvantaged are bearing the brunt of worsening droughts, floods, fires, and storms. Climate change is exacerbating unequal relations between women and men that have existed for generations. Women must be a central part of the response to the climate crisis. Climate justice starts with her.
CARE’s Key Demands for Climate & Gender Justice
Join CARE in calling on policymakers to put women and girls’ unique needs and priorities at the center of every response to climate change by:
- Make sure climate finance reaches women and women’s organizations on the frontlines of the climate crisis: Scaling up public finance for climate action for developing countries, while directing at least 50% of investments towards adaptation and ensuring that at least 85% of those funds target gender equality
- Increase participation and representation of women in climate action: Systematically engaging women and girls in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of ambition-raising public policies and actions on climate change.
- Push governments to submit ambitious national climate plans: Push all governments to commit to nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees – and support women to lead and shape these plans
Key Messages
Climate change is driving the world’s greatest challenges
After decades of decline, global hunger is on the rise, affecting 821 million people in the last year. Weather-related hazards like flood and drought account for more than 87% of all displacement, forcing families from their homes. Competition over increasingly scarce natural resources is driving instability and conflict. Climate change threatens to push an additional 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030, eroding decades of progress in social and economic development. The humanitarian consequences of climate change will only escalate if global warming is not kept below 1.5°C.
Climate change hits those that are the least responsible
The poorest 1 billion people are responsible for just 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet developing countries are already bearing up to 80% of the costs of climate change – including through food insecurity, forced migration, damages to property and productive humanitarian assistance worldwide. Women and girls in emergencies are at heightened risk of gender-based violence and trafficking, unintended pregnancy, maternal morbidity and mortality, unsafe abortions and child, early and forced marriage.
Climate change worsens inequalities between men and women
Women and girls are highly dependent on local natural resources and are more likely to be vulnerable than men to the impacts of climate change, due to social and cultural conditions that influence access to resources and division of labour, as well as lack of participation in decision-making. In emergency response and recovery, women and girls’ unique needs are not treated with the same urgency as ‘mainstream’ issues like shelter, water and food aid.
Support for adaptation is critical for women
Support for adaptation is critical for women bearing the brunt of the climate crisis, and must go hand-in-hand with efforts to limit global warming. Developed countries have agreed to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020 to help developing countries deal with the impacts of climate change, and for those resources to be balanced between adaptation and mitigation. Yet global climate finance remains woefully inadequate, and the proportion of that finance for adaptation makes up less than 20% of the total. Ambitious investments in adaptation are critical to reduce future costs of confronting climate change, while cutting emissions quickly to limit climate change.