The world is living through a triple planetary crisis: accelerating climate change, the devastating loss of biodiversity, and growing pollution. 2024 was the warmest year on record, with global temperatures hitting 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This tipping point has translated into unprecedented floods in Pakistan, twin cyclones in Vanuatu over the space of 24 hours, and unrelenting drought in the Horn of Africa.
It is also increasingly clear that climate change is not gender neutral.
Women and girls are often hit hardest by the impacts of climate-induced disasters, from food insecurity and threats to livelihoods, to the increased risk of sexual and gender-based violence during displacement. Too frequently women are shut out of decision-making processes and denied access to the resources that could strengthen their resilience to climate-related disasters.
ActionAid’s own research with the Economist Intelligence Unit highlighted this vicious cycle: when women are excluded from decision-making, policies fail to address their needs. When disasters strike, those needs are unmet, which further entrenches gender inequality and leaves women even less resilient to future shocks.
The intersection of women, peace and security
Despite the growing urgency, policy makers still tend to treat climate change, security, and gender as separate issues. Governments may discuss climate and security, or gender and peacebuilding, but rarely do they work at the intersection of all three. This siloed approach is a major barrier to progress.
There are, however, important foundations that we can build on. UN Security Council Resolution 2242 (2015) brought climate change into the WPS agenda, paving the way for National Action Plans on WPS to integrate climate. By 2023, 43 countries had made these linkages. Likewise, CEDAW General Recommendation 37 (2018), which ActionAid contributed to, informs the gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction and climate change. Yet operationalising and resourcing these commitments remains a critical priority.
The opportunity is clear: we must urgently examine the gender-differentiated risks of climate change, and the ways climate change and conflict fuel one another. Land disputes exacerbated by drought or displacement can ignite violence, while wars themselves leave a massive climate footprint as we’ve seen in Gaza. The first 15 months of conflict produced emissions greater than those of 100 countries combined.
Where to from here
The reality is that both climate and security policy spaces are still male-dominated and gender-blind. This has to change if we are to drive a more integrated approach and one that prepares for the reality of continued global heating.
In a report launched this week at the Regional WPS Convening in Brisbane, the Australian Civil Society Coalition on Women Peace and Security has identified a number of important factors that can help us to advance a more coherent and integrated approach to climate, gender and security.
- Elevating a human security approach – Climate change undermines food, water, health, and economic security. Yet security debates remain focused on borders and defence, rather than the safety and resilience of people and ecosystems inside those border. Australia, for example, is the world’s second largest fossil fuel exporter at a time where our Pacific neighbours see climate change as the greatest threat to their security. There is an urgent need to reconcile our policy commitments to climate change with our continued financing of fossil fuels.
- Shift resources from militarisation towards climate finance – In 2024, global military spending hit USD 2.7 trillion, before the Trump administration’s push for NATO members to increase their defence budgets even higher. Meanwhile, countries least responsible for the climate crisis struggle to finance climate adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage. Shifting resources from defence to climate action is both a moral and a security imperative.
- Centring women’s leadership and indigenous knowledge – ActionAid’s Gender Responsive Alternatives to Climate Change and Disasters framework, developed with Monash University in 2015, drew on women’s lived experience in Vanuatu, Kenya, and Cambodia. It highlighted how women’s localised and indigenous knowledge, from traditional cropping systems to disaster preparedness strategies, can complement climate science. It also underscored the importance of supporting women’s leadership, resourcing women’s organisations, and tackling harmful gender norms are critical to gender responsive climate action.
To truly meet the scale of the challenge, we need a nexus approach that integrates climate change, gender equality, and peacebuilding into coherent policy and practice. The four pillars of the WPS agenda – participation, protection, prevention, and inclusive relief and recovery – offer a clear framework for this.
The climate crisis is influencing security in profound ways but if we continue to leave women out of decision-making, we will keep missing the solutions staring us in the face. Ensuring women’s voices, knowledge, and leadership are at the heart of climate and security responses is not only a matter of justice, it is the key to building peace and resilience in a warming world.