Gender and Climate Change
EmPower: Women for Climate-Resilient Societies
The Hop Giang Cooperative in Viet Nam uses a solar drying house, which reduces their costs by getting the most out of their products, despite climate change and COVID-19. Photo: UNEP/Maxwell Gutteridge
In Bắc Kạn, Vietnam, indigenous women started using solar drying systems for their food production businesses, improving their products’ quality and increasing their income threefold. Photo: UN Women/Hoang Thao
Duek Da, a farmer from Cambodia, uses a solar water pump to irrigate her crops. Photo: UN Women/Ploy Phutpheng
Kem Oum, a farmer from Cambodia, grows crops inside her greenhouse with help from a solar water pump. Photo: UN Women/Ploy Phutpheng
In Chuadanga, Bangladesh, women goat farmers have shifted from diesel to solar energy to pump water for livestock and agriculture, enabling more stable livelihoods for themselves and their families. Photo: UNEP/Reza Shahriar Rahman
The impacts of climate change, environmental degradation and disasters are unequally felt across Asia and the Pacific region. Women and marginalized groups have less access to information, resources, finance and technologies, leaving them with greater challenges in coping and rebuilding after a crisis. They also remain underrepresented in climate change, energy transition and disaster risk reduction (DRR) related decision-making.
Women can be powerful actors in accelerating change. But this requires collective, rapid efforts by governments, development partners, private sector, financing institutes, civil society groups and local communities. Without their participation, representation and leadership, the solutions and response to the climate emergency will continue to exclude their needs and undermine their rights.
About EmPower: Women for Climate-Resilient Societies
Jointly implemented by UN Women and UN Environment Programme, the EmPower: Women for Climate-Resilient Societies (EmPower) project aims to strengthen gender equality and human rights in climate change and disaster risk actions in the Asia and the Pacific region.
The EmPower project works on three outcomes:
- Asia-Pacific actors increase action on gender responsive climate change adaptation and mitigation.
- Women in all their diversity and other marginalized groups are represented as key environmental actors in climate and DRR decision-making.
- Women and other marginalized groups in Asia-Pacific engage in climate-resilient livelihoods.
Through the first phase of the project (2018-2022), UN Women, UNEP and partners have successfully engineered alternative livelihoods for vulnerable communities, reduced emissions through renewable energy and sparked intergovernmental commitments to ensure gender-responsive policies and actions in the Asia-Pacific region.
Over the next five years, UN Women and UNEP will scale up the lessons learned and the approaches developed by implementing the second phase of the EmPower project (2023-2027).
Stories
Videos
Our Journey to EmPower (English Subtitles). See all subtitles
Bangladesh: Reti Khatun’s story
Cambodia: Moul Phally’s story
Viet Nam: Luon Thi Giang’s story
For more information, contact:
- Maria Holtsberg
Regional Advisor for Humanitarian Action and Disaster Risk Reduction
UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific
Email: maria.holtsberg@unwomen.org
- Annette Wallgren
Programme Management Officer, Gender & Climate Change
UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific
Email: wallgren@un.org