World leaders and international civil society will gather in New York on 22-23 September 2024 for the UN Summit of the Future. The Summit is an event where world leaders meet and address current international issues and challenges to find consensus on how to create a better and safer present and future. This blog article takes issue with how the climate-gender-conflict nexus is (not) discussed in the lead-up to the summit. Reviewing the summit documents, I argue that the (draft) Pact for the Future treats gender justice, climate crisis, and conflict as separate silos of challenges, overlooking their interconnectedness. Instead, I emphasize the need for the Summit of the Future to take the climate-gender-conflict nexus seriously, recognizing the climate crisis as a risk multiplier that exacerbates gender inequalities and conflict dynamics.
Preparing the UN Summit of the Future
The UN Summit of the Future, taking place in New York on September 22 23, aims to develop concrete actions to respond to persistent global challenges and to work towards agreed on goals, such as the Sustainable Development Goals or the New Agenda for Peace. There will be an action-oriented outcome document, namely the Pact for the Future, which is currently being negotiated by countries in the lead up to and during the Summit. As of now, the Pact for the Future includes, among other things, a renewed commitment to the UN Charter, a call for the restoration of multilateralism, and a push for the implementation of existing commitments. As the Summit of the Future seeks multistakeholder participation to rebuild trust in global governance structures, it has encouraged member states to invite a wide range of international civil society to contribute to the Pact for the Future through accompanying policy briefs. Representatives of non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations (especially youth organizations), academic institutions, and the private sector provided inputs to the Pact for the Future and are also scheduled to take part in interactive dialogue events at the side of UN Summit.
Why Focus on the Climate-Gender-Conflict Nexus?
Conflicts and climate change do not affect everyone equally. Climate change can exacerbate conflicts and, vice versa, conflicts can increase climate vulnerability. The escalation of (climate related) conflicts can therefore reinforce pre-existing vulnerabilities and patterns of gender-based discrimination. The interconnectedness of these different dimensions is fundamentally stressed by the term climate-gender-conflict nexus. Even though climate change is not a direct cause of violent conflict, it can intensify them and reinforce drivers of armed conflicts such as poverty, inequalities and economic shocks. Therefore, climate change must be seen as a stress factor and risk multiplier for existing conflict-prone situations whereby climate change threats to peace are very unevenly distributed across different world regions.
Moreover, particularly the living conditions of groups suffering from social, economic and political inequalities are disproportionately vulnerable to the hazards of climate change. Since gender overlaps with axes of social difference, women from marginalized cultural, political, ethnic, or economic groups face the most challenges and climate change impacts. Gender focuses on the differences and multiplicities of identities and especially in the Global South it is often a decisive factor in assessing a person’s risk level for climate shocks as well as for access to resources and options to react. Gender has multiple linkages to vulnerability and agency related to climate change and can exacerbate vulnerability to climate change because gender-related social norms, structures, processes and relations of power have an influence on the distribution of the impacts of climate change and adaption opportunities.
One example of how the climate crisis and conflict reinforce gender inequalities is food insecurity. As women are often forced into specific gender roles around the world and are mostly responsible for subsistence agriculture and water collection for the household, they suffer disproportionately when climate change affects water availability and agricultural yields. They face the burden of additional work as they struggle to find alternative sources of food, water and income as well as caring for the sick. However, climate-related threats to human security not only increase the burden on women, but also aggravate existing gender inequalities, as women in many cultures and regions of the world are often already seen as less deserving of food, mobility and access to health services. Moreover, women’s greater vulnerability to food insecurity is often linked to gender-based violence, as risks of gender-based violence and inequality reduce women’s and girls’ access to food while, at the same time, food insecurity and gender inequality increase women’s and girls’ risks of gender-based violence.
In sum, while climate change can exacerbate conflicts, for example by increasing food and livelihood insecurity, conflicts can equally intensify environmental degradation and increase vulnerability to climate change. This interrelationship is shaped by factors such as gender which intersects with climate change impacts and security but often remains unaddressed in climate action. As the impact of climate change and environmental conflicts is gendered, any approach to transformative solutions to gender inequality, climate insecurity and environmental conflicts must have affected groups at the center, especially those in fragile and conflict affected contexts who are most vulnerable to impacts of climate change.
How is the Climate-Gender-Conflict Nexus (not) Addressed in the UN Pact for the Future?
The Pact for the Future is organized in five main chapters, namely
- sustainable development and financing for development,
- international peace and security,
- science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation,
- youth and future generations, and
- transforming global governance.
Each chapter has concrete proposals focusing on human rights, gender and sustainable development. It is clear from these goals that there are no separate chapters dedicated to gender or the climate crisis, but both are treated as cross-cutting issues. Regarding the preliminary Pact for the Future and the policy briefs, which are both openly accessible, various combinations of the three dimensions gender, climate and conflict can be identified.
Regarding the climate crisis, its gendered impacts are not explicitly mentioned in the documents, but it is acknowledged that climate impacts can multiply the risks that fuel conflict, and therefore greater efforts are encouraged to address climate change, including its possible security implications. The latest version of the Pact more specifically states that climate and environmental impacts can exacerbate social tensions, instability and economic insecurity, increase humanitarian and socio-economic needs and contribute to the onset or escalation of conflict. The need to accelerate efforts related to the environment and to effectively address the adverse effects of climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and desertification through the implementation of intergovernmental commitments is emphasized. Relations to conflict and peace as well as gender and feminist solutions are not mentioned in the documents with regard to environmental protection. The latest version of the Pact addresses climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation as the greatest challenges of our time, with a disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups. Yet who these vulnerable groups are is not further specified. The disproportionate gender impacts of the climate crisis could have been mentioned here. Even in the section on peace and security implications of climate change, there is no mention of gender relations, which is a missed opportunity to include a gender perspective and highlight the climate-gender-conflict nexus.
With regards to gender, connections are made to peace, security and conflict but not specifically to the disproportionate impacts of climate change and conflict. The documents emphasize the importance of diversity and gender representation in international institutions to better address global challenges and to achieve gender equality, girls’ empowerment and the realization of their human rights. The focus on gender is on combating gender stereotypes and discrimination, as well as harassment and gender-based violence and harmful practices such as female genital mutilation or early and forced marriage. In particular, the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls and violations of their rights is emphasized, with links being made to gender-based discrimination and conflict (e. g. in the WPS agenda), but not to the effects of the climate crisis, which can exacerbate such violence.
Regarding conflict, the Pact does not explicitly emphasize the nexus between conflict, gender and climate. Although it mentions that countries affected by armed conflict often lack the capacity, resources and resilience to respond to the adverse impacts of climate change and other environmental challenges, and therefore need to be supported, the disproportionate and gendered effects are not addressed. With regard to international peace and security, a stronger focus on addressing the root causes and underlying drivers and enablers of violence and insecurity is proposed, but the climate crisis and gender inequality are not included. In the policy brief for a New Agenda for Peace, peace and climate change as well as inequalities, violence and conflict are linked, but without a gender perspective. When it comes to addressing the effects of the climate crisis and responding to the call for action, as well as finding solutions to the climate crisis and protecting the most vulnerable, both climate-related investments in conflict contexts and the differentiated impacts on women and men are briefly mentioned, but the three dimensions are not really linked again, although this section would have been ideal for it. Nevertheless, the uneven burden of the climate crisis is highlighted and its impacts such as the destruction of infrastructure or displacement, are mentioned as exacerbating the risks of instability, especially in situations already affected by conflict. The Pact also recognizes that failure to address the challenges posed by climate change and the inequalities it creates would have devastating consequences for the planet, development, human rights and peacebuilding objectives. Nevertheless, the climate-gender-conflict nexus remains implicit.
Outlook
While the climate-gender-conflict nexus is not central to the draft Pact for the Future, and the three dimensions are considered separately rather than as intertwined, this blog article argues that the nexus should be taken more seriously and placed at the center of the UN Summit. As pointed out above, several sections of the preliminary Pact could have been used to do so. For example, the commitment to the WPS agenda and its implementation is emphasized in the Pact but instead of responding to calls to add the context of the climate crisis to the WPS agenda, the climate crisis is left unaddressed in the Pact as a fundamental obstacle to implementing the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS).
Consequently, every effort should be made to take the experiences of vulnerable groups seriously that highlight the already existing impacts of the nexus. The Summit still offers an opportunity to strengthen the linkage between climate, gender and conflict, and to put this nexus at the center, rather than having the gender dimension as an add-on to some issues, and looking at the climate crisis and conflict, peace and security mostly separately. The Summit for the Future is a unique event with great power, significance and ambition, and a defining moment, as the Pact for the Future aims to prepare the world to respond to emerging global challenges. Considering the interrelatedness of climate, gender and conflict I pointed out in this article, it would be a serious mistake not to mention this nexus. If this ambition to shape a better present and future is to be taken seriously, the climate-gender-conflict nexus offers the opportunity to address the complex challenges in their interconnectedness.
Paula Kowal
