1. How do we gather the facts?

On this page, we will provide a brief overview of climate change and gender equality.

Why is our climate changing?

Climate change is caused by having too much heat-trapping greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, water vapour, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons.

The greenhouses gases help to warm the planet, resulting in loss of sea ice, accelerated sea-level rise, and longer, more intense heat waves.  This is why we are experiencing more severe droughts, floods, fires, and storms.

The graph below shows how, for hundreds of thousands of years, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was below 300 parts per million. Since 1950 the level has rapidly increased and today, according to NASA, is 420 parts per million. 

The video on the same page as the graph shows how the world has been rapidly warming in the last few years.

Each day we hear of more extreme weather events around the world impacting people’s lives, devastating their homes, and destroying biodiversity. We are living in a climate crisis. 

According to the International Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report 6, the choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years. We need to take action to keep the global increase in temperature to less than 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial age.

To do this, we need to halve emissions by 2030, halve them again by 2040 and keep going until we achieve zero emissions around 2050. If we don’t take action, global temperatures will continue to rise, and this is what is at stake.

What does climate change have to do with gender equality?

Women and girls are more heavily impacted by climate change than men.

• Women, as caregivers, and food providers, are more vulnerable when flooding and drought occur; 
• Women face systematic violence that escalates during periods of instability and can precipitate early marriage or forced prostitution as a way to survive;
• During extreme weather events, women are at greater risk of being injured, killed, displaced and unemployed.
• Globally women have less socioeconomic power than men, so it is harder for them to recover from disasters; and
• The UN highlights that gender-sensitive responses to climate change are needed – but average female representation on negotiating bodies is well below 30%. 

Much of this disadvantage can be rectified through Zonta’s existing advocacy, health, education, and violence eradication programs.  However, we need to ramp up our activities to ensure that girls are educated, child marriage is ended, gender equality gaps are closed, and women are supported to take on leadership positions in the workplace, community and political spheres.

In addition, we need to advocate for more climate action to minimise global warming.

Christiana Figueres, a former diplomat from Costa Rica, headed up the UN Paris climate conference and is a total inspiration.  She explains that building gender equality is an important part of the climate solution:

Educating young women and empowering women to come to decision-making tables is the strongest thing that we can do for the climate. When there are more women in boardrooms and in high-level positions in institutions, you get decisions that are wiser and longer term.

Christiana Figueres

Resources

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