19 Feb 2025 UN Summit of the Future: Why the climate-gender-conflict nexus would be a game changer

Paula Kowal

World leaders and international civil society gathered in New York on 22-23 September 2024 for the UN Summit of the Future. The following article takes issue with how the climate-gender-conflict nexus was not discussed in the lead-up to the Summit. Reviewing the summit documents, the author argues that the draft Pact for the Future treats gender justice, climate crisis, and conflict as separate silos of challenges, overlooking their interconnectedness.

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, the living conditions of groups suffering from social, economic and political inequalities are particularly and 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 centre, 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 draft UN Pact for the Future?

The draft Pact for the Future is organized in five main chapters:

• 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 planned 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 draft 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 final version of the draft 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 or to gender and feminist solutions are not mentioned in the documents with regard to environmental protection.

The draft Pact does address 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 regard to gender, connections are made to peace, security and conflict but not specifically to the disproportionate impacts of climate change and conflict. The draft 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 draft 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.

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 draft 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 article argues that the nexus should have been taken more seriously and placed at the centre 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 draft Pact as a fundamental obstacle to implementing the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS).

The Summit of the Future has in fact offered a unique opportunity with great significance and ambition as the Pact for the Future aims to prepare the world to respond to emerging global challenges. This could have been a moment to take the experiences of vulnerable groups seriously highlighting the already existing impacts of the nexus. However, it seems, the Summit missed this opportunity to strengthen the linkage between climate, gender and conflict. The nexus was not put at the centre of the negotiations and the gender dimension was once more treated as an add-on issue, looking at the climate crisis and conflict, peace and security mostly separately.

Considering the interrelatedness of climate, gender and conflict, it was a serious mistake not to put the nexus centre-stage. If the ambition to shape a better present and future is to be taken seriously, the climate-gender-conflict nexus offers a leeway to address the complex challenges in their interconnectedness.

This article was first published 20 September 2024 by the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, which analyses the causes of international and domestic conflicts and looks for ways to resolve them. Source: PRIF. Reprinted under Creative Commons Nonderivatives 4.0 International.

Paula Kowal is studying for a master’s degree in international development at the University of Vienna. This blog article was written as part of Paula Kowal’s internship at PRIF under the supervision of Sophia Birchinger, where she has been working on the projects “Coercion in Peacebuilding” and “Perceptions of Coercion: AU and ECOWAS Interventions in Gambia and Guinea-Bissau”.