Can women close the climate ‘gates of hell’?

Rachel Kyte is board chair of Climate Resilience for All, and Kathy Baughman McLeod is founding CEO of Climate Resilience for All.

We each spent a week in New York at the annual U.N. General Assembly and Climate Action Summit last month - and while there is progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and climate action, progress must be exponentially faster.

The talk seems very far away from the people hurting the most from the effects of global heating, like Kunwarben in Ahmedabad, India, a street vendor, mother of two, and member of the union called the Self Employed Women's Association. After spending time with her, she told us that, along with her children, she suffers in the high temperatures from headaches, dizziness, and dehydration. She is also struggling with significant losses in income because extreme heat spoils the meat on her cart before she can sell it.

The science is clear. We have to reduce carbon emissions drastically now and remove much of what we continue to emit. We imperil nature and people the longer we delay action. We have the financial capacity we need, but it is either channeled to the wrong things (growing fossil fuel subsidies) or not reaching those who need it.

Last month, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spelled out the severity of Kunwarben’s situation and millions like her. “Humanity has opened the gates of hell. Horrendous heat is having horrendous effects,” he declared.

And that’s why we have joined forces to launch a global effort to confront this threat - Climate Resilience for All - a new gender-focused nonprofit focused on the most vulnerable communities to protect health, lives, and livelihoods from extreme heat.

Known as the silent killer, extreme heat kills more people than any other climate effect every year. It first kills those who cannot protect themselves – low-income workers, subsistence farmers, young children, the elderly, and the sick. Women are profoundly and particularly affected by extreme heat; they experience economic losses and are physically harmed by living and working in extreme heat conditions, with burns on their hands from tools that are too hot and not made for high temperatures.

During pregnancy, extreme heat causes miscarriage and other illnesses and harms mother and baby. Millions of poor women workers in the heat have a rash that never goes away, headaches, infections, fatigue, and dizziness. Women working in hot offices and factories have reduced hand-eye coordination and slowed thinking, contributing to costly mistakes and injuries.

Women suffer the effects of climate change disproportionately:

• The majority of the world’s poor are women;
• Women are more likely than men to experience food insecurity;
• Women are 14 times more likely to die in a disaster;
• 80% of climate migrants are women;
• Globally, on average, women earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn.

As of July 2022, women held just over a quarter of parliamentary seats globally, and the earliest date for parity is forecast for 2062.

When women lead, we all win

We’ve long known that women’s leadership means everyone rises - and that women invest most of what they earn in their families and communities. In New York, women-led organizations and women leaders were visible everywhere, though thinner on the ground the more the conversation turned to heavy industry transformations, energy and finance.

Young women led the marches, activist women organized, and women leaders offered their support and built connections, speaking truth to power. From the Women Political Leaders to Shine and the Wallace Global Fund, APolitical, Amujae Initiative, She Changes Climate, the Dandelion Project and We Can - and so many more women, including from indigenous peoples across the globe - there was a sense of urgency and a need for practical action, which is often poorly funded and struggling for capital, time and attention.

Extreme heat has dominated the headlines on every continent this year. It's hot and is only going to get hotter. James Hansen, the renowned American climate scientist who raised the alarm about global heating in 1988, recently concluded, "It is now almost certain that the 12-month running mean temperature will exceed 1.5°C by May 2024 or earlier."

This all begs the question: "What can we DO?" One answer is to invest in women's leadership and solutions for women in their communities, implementing policies and on-the-ground projects that empower and protect women. Those include shade structures in Freetown over scorching markets where women work all day and rural initiatives like that of Frontier Markets to secure long-term income opportunities for women. 

We can provide more training and resources for women to establish climate-resilient livelihoods, using microfinance and income insurance solutions, improve access to healthcare and education, and promote gender equality in decision-making processes that will build resilience and adapt to climate change.

From the U.N. in New York, we turn to critical discussions on finance at the annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF, and then to the climate talks in Dubai at COP28. We do well to remember that through fires, heatwaves, floods and other disasters, the resilience of communities is a function of the cohesive cultural role women play. They are the social ties that bind when disaster hits and the backbone of our communities.

If Hansen is right, and we reach 1.5C of global warming by May 2024, Kunwarben and her children must be front of mind. So must the billions more women trying to make a living, feed their kids, lead their communities, and build a better life for themselves and their families. 

Yes, the gates of hell are open. The best shot for all of us is to channel our energy and resources into helping women close them.

Learn more at www.climateresilience.org