Poppy Bell | Climate and Environment Fellow
Internally displaced woman and her son in Kismayo, Somalia. Image sourced via Mahamud Hassan via Wikimedia Commons.
Climate change-induced mobility is a mounting global crisis. The umbrella term refers to any form of human movement provoked by environmental changes, including evacuation, displacement, forced relocation and migration. In 2022 alone, 32.6 million people were displaced due to natural disasters. This rate is predicted to escalate to 1.2 billion by 2050.
While climate change has been recognised as a global security threat, its effects are not gender neutral. In fact, the United Nations estimates that women make up 80 per cent of climate refugees. Climate-displaced women face heightened health risks, increased domestic violence, and political disempowerment.
It is imperative that states pursue gender-sensitive climate responses which specifically address women’s needs and amplify their voices. Gendered solutions should not be tokenistic or crisis-oriented, but rather authentic, accessible, and consistent. This allows climate challenges to be navigated in an intersectional and inclusive manner.
Why Women? Understanding Gendered Vulnerability
Women’s heightened vulnerability to climate change-induced mobility is primarily rooted in normative social expectations confining them to domestic spaces. These gendered roles and responsibilities are often replicated in host communities or IDP camps, wherein women can be expected to serve as caregivers and first responders and prioritise others’ needs over their own. Restricted access to clean water, cooking and hygiene facilities in overcrowded camps can also impede women’s fulfilment of domestic responsibilities and cause familial tension, increasing risks of domestic violence.
Case Study: Pakistan
South Asia is currently experiencing a surge in climate-change induced mobility, particularly due to rising sea levels, flooding and monsoons. Experts project that across Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, approximately 37.4 million people will be displaced by 2030 due to climate disasters. Despite being a distinctly gendered issue, current policy solutions do not appropriately address this.
For example, Pakistan’s response to its 2022 floods demonstrates a profound gender gap. Women in IDP camps were deprived of vital hygiene sanitation and healthcare facilities and services. Approximately 8 million girls and women lacked access to menstrual products or bathrooms, causing infections, and 650 000 pregnant women were forced to give birth without medical attention. Furthermore, a lack of private bathrooms heightened risks of sexual and gender-based violence.
These consequences stem from Pakistan’s exclusion of women’s perspectives. Diverse women’s voices must be heard and acted upon throughout entire planned relocation processes so that their needs can be met.
Women’s consultation should be an essential and sustained component of policymaking. Fiji’s experience with planned relocations is demonstrative of this. Initially, Fiji’s approach resulted in gendered oversights like incomplete bathrooms and missing kitchens in host communities, which posed risks to women, In response, the government’s 2023 Standard Operating Procedures for Planned Relocations, mandated the involvement of women at every planning stage, rectifying past failures and setting a precedent for sustained participation. Pakistan could locally adapt Fiji’s approach to ensure that women’s voices are not tokenised, but actively engaged.
Consulting different groups of women can embed accessibility in envisaged solutions. Pakistan’s flood response currently does not ensure women’s direct access to monetary support. For example, during its 2010-11 floods, the government launched a Citizen’s Damage Compensation Program providing ATM cards to over 1.62 million families. Although 96 per cent of citizens were registered to receive this support, the vast majority of those who missed out were female, due to social restrictions. This issue is especially grave when a community is facing a spike in domestic abuse, such as Pakistan did in 2022, leaving women financially dependent on their partners. To navigate this, Pakistan could organise women-only transport to and from cash sources, to safeguard their access to support.
Case Study: Somalia
The Horn of Africa is another significantly climate vulnerable area. The climate crisis has exacerbated La Niña, a weather phenomenon bringing dry weather to South-East Africa and causing extreme heat and drought in countries like Somalia and Ethiopia. Sub-Saharan Africa could have 29-86 million internal climate migrants by 2050.
This has disproportionately impacted women in the region, wherein child marriage is often used to secure assets and recover losses in times of crisis. Additionally, like in Pakistan, women face increased violence in overcrowded IDP camps, social marginalisation, and exclusion from decision-making.
Some states have made efforts to address these issues. For example, Somalia’s 2013 National Adaptation Programme of Action recognises that women face elevated risks to violence and marginalisation when experiencing climate-related mobility. However, beyond this surface-level acknowledgement, little governmental action has been taken.
However, in partnership with local authorities, the International Organization for Migration and UN-Habitat launched the Midnimo I Project in 2016. This initiative worked with diverse groups of Somalian women to address their urgent needs. The women involved expressed satisfaction at the implementation of their knowledges.
Such gender-sensitive engagement should be replicated on a national level, so that widespread issues like gendered violence and child marriage may be addressed. This could involve codifying formal mechanisms to guarantee women’s participation, such as reserved seats in local governance or mandated consultation.
States must shift from sporadic, crisis-oriented consultations with women to sustainable engagement focused on long-term capacity building. Women, particularly those in agriculture, tend to have an intricately detailed understanding of their local environment. If harnessed, such knowledge could drive the climate-resilient development of infrastructure, protect agricultural crop yields, and underpin a regional clean energy transition. However, women’s longstanding exclusion from decision-making has hindered integration of valuable knowledges. Nevertheless, pursuing women's policy involvement is crucial for systematising inclusive governance.
Conclusion
Gendered solutions to climate change-induced mobility must be accessible, institutionalised, and future oriented. Climate policies should not view women’s needs as subsidiary or tokenise their participation, because they are essential to reconstructing displaced communities. For futures to be truly sustainable, they must be inclusive.
Poppy Bell is the Climate and Environment Fellow for Young Australians in International Affairs. She is a Chancellor's Scholar at the University of Melbourne, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts (Politics & International Studies, Economics) and Diploma in French.
As a Public Affairs Analyst for international renewable energy developer CIP, Poppy engages with Government on environmental legislation and develops stakeholder engagement strategies for renewables projects across Australia and New Zealand. This experience has honed her understanding of the complex interplay between climate action, environmental policy, and cultural considerations.
b