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The climate crisis isn’t gender-neutral. So why is climate finance?
Climate justice and the social impacts of climate change will be a key thematic concern at the upcoming COP30 this November in Belem, Brazil. This annual conference, organized under the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), will be held amid shifting paradigms in the global finance architecture and transitions in climate finance into more sustainable and equitable mechanisms to tackle the accelerating global climate crisis.
However, beneath the surface of rising temperatures and resource scarcity lies a deeper, less visible burden, one that is disproportionately borne by women and girls. In the race for climate action and push to strengthen climate governance, the plight of women is often overlooked or marginally addressed, or collectively conveyed along with that of men. Ironically, the burden of climate change falls heaviest on women and girls, who contribute least to it.
Women in Africa continue to bear the crushing load of unpaid care work amid perennial challenges including food insecurity, high exposure to vector-borne diseases and reproductive health risks. This not only amplifies pre-existing gender health disparities but also exposes how the current global climate finance mechanisms continue to fall short in addressing the specific health vulnerabilities faced by women and girls.
A colliding crisis
According to UN Women, by 2050, climate change is expected to drive an additional 236 million women and girls into food insecurity, with 93 million more falling into poverty. Furthermore, the World Health Organization projects an additional 250,000 deaths per year between 2030 and 2050 due to climate-related health impacts. These impacts include heat stress, undernutrition, and the spread of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue, which women are often more exposed due to their social roles as the primary care-giver and limited access to healthcare.
In 2022, East Africa experienced its worst drought in 40 years, affecting over 37 million people. According to the 2023 Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, at least 677,900 children and more than 138,800 pregnant and breastfeeding women across the region faced acute malnutrition. The drought and famine increased stress in communities, which in turn raised incidents of differential feeding, child marriage, and gender-based violence.
A 2025 study by Spotlight Initiative & Dalberg revealed that climate crisis and gender-based violence are a “colliding crisis”. This violence threatens women’s and girls’ agency and ability to drive climate action and solutions, and reduces humanity’s collective capacity to effectively fight the climate crisis.
Reproductive health also suffers in climate-affected zones. Research indicates that women and girls are up to 14 times more likely to be harmed during a disaster. For survivors of climate-induced disasters as well as climate refugees, displacement increase the risk of maternal mortality, with pregnant women and girls often cut off from health services.
Moreover, apart from routinely deprioritized sexual and reproductive health rights, women are also at greater risk of land-grabbing as they move to protect their land and natural resources. In Somalia, which ranks as the world’s 4th most gender-inequitable country as per UN Women SGBV index, climate change and GBV are pervasive and severe. This situation compound both physical and psychological harm, a reality that remains severely underrepresented in health and climate policy planning.
The unseen burden of care work
Climate change also increases the burden of domestic work, which mostly falls on women and young girls. In most regions across sub-Saharan Africa, women spend more time walking long distances to fetch water as droughts reduce access to clean water. UNICEF estimates that over 2.6 billion people, mostly women, rely on solid fuels like wood and charcoal for cooking. The smoke from these fuels causes deadly indoor air pollution, leading to diseases like lung infections, eye problems, and chronic respiratory illnesses.
In the event of a climate shocks women frequently serve as the first responders in their households and communities. Oftentimes, they tend to the sick, secure dwindling resources and are the agents for emotional support; all while absorbing the psychological toll of this precarious situations. This care labor is often unpaid and unacknowledged. It remains a sunk cost, magnified during climate-induced crises, yet remains invisible in most economic and policy calculations.
Inadequacies in climate finance flows
At COP29 in Baku, UN Women revealed that of the $28.2 billion committed to adaptation financing in 2022, only about 3% was allocated to projects with gender equality objectives. Despite making commitments to promote gender equality in climate finance, funding directed to gender responsive projects in Africa consistently fail to deliver. Moreover, awareness of the intersection between climate change and gender has generally increased, reflecting a broader failure of climate finance systems to understand or address the complexity of gendered health vulnerabilities.
Moreover, most climate finance lacks gender-disaggregated data, making it nearly impossible to track whether funds are effectively reaching women and girls or addressing their specific needs. The lack of such data obscures the real impact of climate funding on public health outcomes and blocks progress toward inclusive, equitable solutions. Without tools for accountability, transparency, and targeted investment in women’s health, resilient climate justice will remain a façade.
Gender-responsive climate health investment
There is a valid case for gender-responsive climate health investment not only in Africa, but globally. Effective climate financing must intentionally target the gendered dimensions of health and resilience. To begin with, governments and multilateral bodies ought to increase support of gender-sensitive public health programs that tackle the root causes of vulnerability. These include clean cooking solutions to replace toxic solid fuels, nutrition programs that prioritize women-headed households, and climate-smart agriculture training for women farmers.
For instance, wood and charcoal as domestic fuel not only contributes to deforestation but also results in fatal indoor air pollution. Shifting to clean energy for cooking would save lives and alleviate women’s health burdens. Funding of resilient, accessible, and community-based health infrastructure is also imperative. Facilities like health centers should be designed to withstand climate shocks and equipped to deliver maternal care, psychosocial support, and sexual and reproductive services, especially in rural and disaster-prone areas.
Additionally, climate finance must include grants to grassroots women’s organizations and guarantee their participation in climate governance structures. For example, school-based food programs can ease some of this burden by ensuring children receive nutritious meals, thus freeing women from additional cooking duties. Yet such programs are rarely linked to climate finance planning or evaluated for their gendered health benefits. This care burden also comes at a cost to women’s mental health, as the constant responsibility for others, without corresponding institutional support, creates chronic stress, anxiety, and burnout.
Third, climate adaptation programs must elevate women’s voices in policy and planning. Women’s knowledge, especially in indigenous and rural communities, is critical to sustainable and effective climate responses. For instance, of the 78 government leaders present in the opening high-level segment of COP29, on 6 (less than 8%) mentioned the impact of climate change on women, four of whom were women. In order to achieve equity and positive climate outcomes, gender parity and representation is critical.
Finally, wealthy countries must meet their obligations to address global warming, in line with the targets of the Paris Agreement. Since the industrial age, the Global North has been responsible for 92% of excess carbon emissions, yet the South, and particularly women in the South, bear the heaviest health costs. Thus, reparative justice must go beyond loss and damage funds and include investments in healthcare, education, and livelihood programs that equip women and girls to thrive in a changing climate.
Amid global calls to rebalance the scales, experts and stakeholders must understand that climate crisis is not gender-neutral, and neither should climate finance be. The health vulnerabilities of women and girls have been shaped by intersecting inequalities of gender, poverty, geography, and discrimination. Climate finance must see, hear, and serve the women and girls on the frontlines of the fight for a livable planet.
