Climate Change, (In)security, and Violence against Women and Girls

May 17, 2023 | Marisa O. Ensor

Climate change and environmental degradation are recognized as serious aggravators of violence against women and girls across the world. Intensifying environmental pressures intersect with socio-political and economic shocks and stressors such as armed conflict, forced displacement, and resource scarcity. The combination of these factors exacerbates gender inequalities and results in the feminization of vulnerability and the worsening of global insecurity. At the same time, gender-transformative climate action is also known “to provide significant opportunities to empower women politically and economically, and to strengthen their contributions to conflict prevention and peacebuilding in conflict-affected countries”. Understanding and addressing the security implications of climate change will require a much wider lens than the international community has traditionally used – one that meaningfully incorporates gender considerations.

Understanding the Connections Between Climate Change and Gender-based Violence

Around the world, women and girls play key roles in nature conservation and positive climate action. Yet, gender-based violence (GBV) is too often used to reinforce existing gender inequalities and control over who can access, benefit from, and participate in the management of critical natural resources such as land and water. Consequences include worsening domestic violence, compromised sexual and reproductive health of the affected women, and further discrimination of those from Indigenous communities. An absence of political, economic, and human security increases exposure to gender-based violence. GBV also inhibits victims and survivors from exercising their economic and political rights and limits their access to education and income-generating opportunities. Social stigma against victims can likewise create barriers to justice, reinforcing a culture of impunity for the perpetrators.

 According to World Bank data, expressions of gender-based violence affect an estimated one in three women and girls worldwide, but are also experienced by people of all sex and gender identities. Weak rule of law enables conditions in which violence flourishes, as documented in numerous case studies of sex trafficking, sexual abuse, and child labor in illegal operations related to the extraction of natural resources around the world. Examples include illegal mining in Peru connected to the trafficking of girls as young as 12 years old; illegal fishing in South Asia where men and boys have been are subjected to sexual abuse and slave labor; and illegal logging and charcoal trade leading to extensive human rights abuses, including sexual exploitation in parts of Africa.

When climate-related disasters strike and threaten livelihoods, communities may further engage in maladaptive coping mechanisms. During prolonged drought, for example, impoverished families resort to child marriage as a strategy to cope with scarcity of food and income. In the aftermath of environmental disasters, intimate partner violence rates are also known to increase – as they did in Honduras and Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch, in Vanuatu following two tropical cyclones, in Zimbabwe after Cyclone Ida, or in Bangladesh following Cyclone Roanu. Failure to act simultaneously on GBV and climate change mitigation and adaptation can perpetuate the cycle of violence, undermining community resilience to climate change, eroding human and national security, and inhibiting development progress.

Stepping up Global Efforts toward Gender-transformative Climate Security

Gender-based violence is a serious impediment to global efforts to address climate change and environmental insecurity. At the same time, gender-transformative climate action is an essential component in the ongoing fight to eliminate violence against women and girls. Tackling the issue of violence against women and girls is also an important step toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), intended to serve as a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people [all people] and the planet, now and into the future”. This requires a greater – and safer – involvement of women in climate action, which in turn necessitates an increased emphasis on gender mainstreaming in the policymaking process. Only if designed and implemented with a robust gender lens will global responses to climate change and environmental degradation be truly transformative. Otherwise, they will reinforce a vicious cycle of marginalization, violence, and insecurity.

Given the serious psychological, bodily, and economic harms it causes to women and girls, GBV needs to be deliberately and explicitly factored in all the relevant international legal instruments, including the various global frameworks on peace and security, climate change, and disasters. At least 155 countries have passed laws on domestic violence, and 140 have legislation on sexual harassment in the workplace. Nevertheless, challenges remain in enforcing these laws, limiting women and girls’ access to safety and justice. Not enough is done to prevent violence, and when it does occur, it often goes unpunished. Furthermore, GBV’s pervasive links with environmental issues, related socio-economic inequalities and gender-differentiated climate insecurity are rarely acknowledged in policy and legal frameworks.

The multiple challenges facing the world require a more inclusive concept of security reflective of current conditions where global threats affect all nations – and all people – in their own way. As the United Nation’s top climate change official, Patricia Espinosa, recently said, “There is not anymore a situation where we can say these are the vulnerable countries and these are not the vulnerable countries”. Policy makers must close these gaps and ensure that effective gender-responsive environmental laws, policies, strategies, and accountability mechanisms are in place at all levels. Also critical is ensuring that gender strategies and legislation take environmental factors such as climate impacts, land rights, and natural resource governance into account. As security is reconceived, the rights, needs, and priorities of women – as well as those of youth, Indigenous communities, and other often disenfranchised minorities – deserve special consideration. 

The Way Forward

Without women’s meaningful participation and freedom from violence, oppression and discrimination, global efforts to achieve peace, security, and the various Sustainable Development Goals will be fundamentally hampered. Understanding the environmental, political, and socio-economic impacts of climate change requires more deliberate consideration of global interdependencies between natural and anthropogenic systems, as well as between and among individuals and communities.

Dr. Marisa O. Ensor is an applied environmental and legal anthropologist currently based at Georgetown University’s Justice and Peace Studies Program. She is also the current Chair of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association’s Gender Interest Group (“EnPAx-GIG”).