For the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), just transition begins not just with carbon, but with resilience – the daily struggle of poor women to withstand the heatwaves, floods and crop failures already battering their lives. Climate shocks that are stripping poor women not only of income, but of dignity.
Representing 3.2 million informal workers across 18 states – street vendors, waste pickers, construction labourers, home-based producers and small farmers – SEWA has spent more than five decades fighting for rights and recognition.
“This is what ‘just transition’ must mean for us,” says Mansi Shah, senior coordinator at SEWA. “It is not only about future green jobs or phasing out polluting industries. For women workers on the frontlines, it is about surviving heatwaves, floods and crop failures today – and doing so with dignity.”
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SEWA’s own surveys underline the urgency. More than 90% of women workers report livelihood losses from climate shocks, while 74% say their children’s education has been disrupted. Over 80% of households face water insecurity, 62% food insecurity, and nearly 40% report mental health impacts.
“When people talk about adaptation or resilience, it sounds abstract,” Shah says. “For our members, it means the difference between feeding your children and selling your dignity.”
“On one side, hungry children. On the other, her respect”
One member – a smallholder farmer – told SEWA organisers what happened when a prolonged heatwave dried her fields and wiped out any possible work as an agricultural labourer. With children to feed and no savings, she went to a local moneylender.
The terms were brutal: extortionate interest and demands for sexual favours.
“She had to choose between her children’s hunger and her own respect,” Shah says. “That is the kind of choice no woman should ever face. But climate change is forcing it every day.”
By chance, the woman had been enrolled in SEWA’s pilot parametric heat insurance scheme – designed to trigger automatic payouts when temperatures cross preset thresholds, providing fast, predictable relief when heat destroys livelihoods. On the very day she faced the moneylender, the insurance activated and 1,800 rupees (about $20) landed in her account – enough to buy food for two weeks, enough to walk away.
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Women-led solutions prove just transition works
For Meenaben, a SEWA smallholder in Kutch district, the blow came from unseasonal rain and hail. Her 1.5-acre rain-fed millet crop, almost ready for harvest – and crucial fodder for her cattle – was shredded overnight.
“Government relief can take months to reach a village,” Shah explains. “So women like Meenaben are pushed toward debt – often predatory – just to survive the gap.”
SEWA’s answer is speed and self-help. Through its Livelihood Recovery & Resilience Fund (LRRF) – a blended pool seeded by one day’s wage per member per month, matched by philanthropy – women can access rapid loans within 14 days of a climate shock, long before state compensation arrives. The fund kept Meenaben’s household afloat, paid for inputs for the next sowing, and avoided a spiral into debt.
“We can’t wait for others to save us,” says Shah. “So SEWA women build their own safety nets – and get back to work.”
From Gujarat to the Global South
After piloting its member-owned LRRF a decade ago, SEWA shared its results at a global women leaders’ meeting in 2023 with Secretary Hillary Clinton, Ambassador Melanne Verveer and women’s organisations from Africa and Latin America. The message was clear: women workers across the Global South face the same shocks and the same finance gap.
On the strength of that model, SEWA partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative to launch the Global Climate Resilience Facility (GCRF) in February 2024. Its framework is complete and fundraising is underway. Once capitalised, it will support frontline women’s organisations to run LRRF-style funds, expand parametric insurance, and scale women-led adaptation and clean-energy solutions across the Global South.
From rural daughter to solar entrepreneur
If these stories show the cost of climate shocks, Payalben Munjpura’s shows what investment unlocks.
Payalben grew up in a village of 250 households in Surendranagar district. Her father was an electrician. Like most rural daughters, she was expected to stay indoors – until SEWA persuaded her parents to let her train as a solar PV technician.
She completed a three-month course and certification, then formed a team of four. Drawing on her father’s skills, she brought him into the enterprise, saving costs and rooting the work in local expertise. Together, they now install rooftop solar systems in nearby villages through India’s new PM Surya Ghar scheme, which offers households subsidies covering up to 60% of installation costs.
Her income has transformed the family: she helped reclaim their mortgaged farm, paid for her younger brother’s education, and rebuilt their home.
“Women are always seen as energy users,” Shah says. “Payalben shows they can be owners, managers and distributors. If skills are brought to their doorstep, women will turn the climate crisis into opportunity.”
The women-led solutions already in motion
SEWA’s members are not waiting for policy promises – they are already building resilience from the ground up. Through its Building Cleaner Skies campaign, SEWA links local experience with a broader strategy of women-led adaptation.
Its Climate School turns climate science into simple visual lessons, training grassroots leaders as climate educators. Its Green Villages initiatives bring clean cooking, biogas, drip irrigation and rooftop solar – all managed by women handling finance, vendors and repairs.
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The movement also nurtures young women climate entrepreneurs who deliver adaptation technologies and green livelihoods. And when shocks hit, SEWA’s insurance and finance schemes move faster than the state, trigger quick payouts and provide loans within 14 days.
“These are not abstract pilots,” says Shah. “They are working now, in villages across Gujarat. The problem is not solutions. The problem is finance.”
Lessons for COP30
A just transition must also confront the realities of climate impacts. For informal women workers, it is not about distant promises of green jobs, but about surviving the effects of warming now – and building social protection systems that can secure their livelihoods.
SEWA’s experience shows that women-led action works. From grassroots insurance schemes to rooftop solar enterprises, women are already designing and scaling climate solutions that protect both their income and dignity.
To take these efforts further, finance for just transition policies must be deployed – and made accessible to women on the frontlines. The Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) for a Global Just Transition – proposed by civil society as a key deliverable for COP30 – could help bridge that gap by aligning governments, international institutions and community movements, creating clearer pathways for funding and technical support to reach grassroots initiatives directly.
But whatever happens in Belém this November, for millions of women like SEWA’s members, the transition has already begun.
The post For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity appeared first on Climate Home News.
For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity
Emissions test results are in on the city’s 120 petroleum storage tanks. One activist scientist says they are high enough “to merit serious attention,” while a Citgo spokesman says the company is taking residents’ concerns seriously and working with state regulators.
SOUTH PORTLAND—It’s one of Maine’s most desirable locations—home to a vibrant and diverse community, nearby beaches, and close proximity to Portland’s downtown. But for years, residents in South Portland have wondered: With 120 massive petroleum storage tanks dotting the shore and knitted into some neighborhoods here, is the air safe to breathe?
The Iran war has spurred a range of commentators to renew calls for the UK government to issue new licences for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.
They argue that new domestic drilling could boost energy security at a time of volatility in major oil-and-gas producing countries in the Middle East.
However, such arguments overlook that the North Sea basin is in long-term decline and issuing new licences would only make a fractional difference to new production.
Carbon Brief analysis shows that the UK’s gas production in the North Sea is set to drop 99% by 2050, when compared to 2025 levels, with new licences pushing this figure down only slightly to 97%. (Oil production is also in long-term decline.)
Additionally, the analysis shows that the continued expansion of renewables and low-carbon technologies offers far greater protection against volatile gas imports than new domestic drilling.
The chart below shows how the roughly 15 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar power secured in the latest UK renewable-energy auction will avoid the need to import 78 “Q-Flex” tankers full of liquified natural gas (LNG) each year by 2030. This gas would cost roughly £4bn at current prices, which stood at 126p per therm as of 11 March.
(Gas can be either transported via pipelines or compressed into LNG and shipped across oceans, as is the case for gas coming into the UK from the US, Qatar or Algeria, for example.)
This is nearly six times more than the extra domestic gas production in 2030 if new licences are issued for North Sea drilling, according to Carbon Brief analysis of data from the UK government’s North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA).
Moreover, the 15GW of new renewables were secured in a single auction round. Another auction, likely to add significantly to this tally, is due to take place later in 2026.
Industry sources often stress the potential for the discovery of new North Sea reserves in the future. But, even if such discoveries were to materialise, they would take many years to start yielding gas, even as the UK moves away from fossil fuels altogether.
Other measures, such as replacing millions of gas boilers with heat pumps, would also be more effective at curbing the UK’s reliance on imports of foreign gas, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Even changes to people’s behaviour, such as adjusting the “flow temperature” on gas boilers to save energy while maintaining comfort levels, would reduce gas demand significantly, if performed at scale.
The opposition Conservatives and the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party have called for more drilling in the North Sea. At the same time, they have pledged to end support for renewables, heat pumps and the UK’s legally binding target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, which was legislated by the Conservatives in 2019.
Carbon Brief’s analysis shows that this combination of actions – issuing new licenses for the North Sea while rolling back climate policies – would be very likely to increase the UK’s dependence on imported gas, rather than to reduce it.
(This is in line with analysis from the National Energy System Operator, NESO, which found that reaching the UK’s net-zero target would cut fossil-fuel imports, relative to a scenario that rowed back on climate action while boosting domestic fossil-fuel production.)
Industry lobby group Offshore Energies UK has commissioned statistical modelling that it says shows that more oil and gas could still be extracted from the North Sea than expected by the NSTA, if the government were to make various policy changes.
However, this modelling still shows a rapid decline in North Sea production.
After decades of drilling, the majority of reserves left in the North Sea are oil. Around 80% of oil produced in UK waters is currently exported to the global market.
The UN Emissions Gap Report in 2023 said that the coal, oil and gas extracted over the lifetime of producing and under-construction mines and fields, as of 2018, “would emit more than 3.5 times the carbon budget available” for meeting the Paris Agreement’s aspirational target of keeping global warming to no more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
At the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November 2025, the UK joined a group of more than 80 countries in calling for a global phaseout of fossil fuels.
Methodology
This analysis is based on additional UK domestic gas production or reduced gas demand in 2030 and is measured in terms of the number of LNG tanker deliveries avoided.
The estimate of additional gas production in 2030 is taken from the NSTA projections published in February 2026. The extra output is from NSTA’s “illustrative” estimates for the development of “undeveloped discoveries” and “future discoveries”.
The gas demand avoided by new wind and solar is based on the latest “AR7” auction for new renewables, the results of which were announced in early 2026. It assumes that offshore wind operates with a “load factor” of 50%, onshore wind at 36% and solar at 12%. The avoided gas demand is based on replacing gas-fired electricity generation.
For heat pumps, the estimate assumes a typical home with a gas demand of 11,500 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year, replacing an 85% efficient gas boiler with a 300% efficient heat pump.
It assumes that the electricity to power these heat pumps is drawn from the average mix of electricity generation in 2030. It also assumes that the “carbon intensity” of generation – the emissions per unit of output – falls to 50g of carbon dioxide per kWh, implying that roughly 12% of electricity generation is from gas.
The amount of gas avoided by switching to heat pumps would be roughly halved if all of these heat pumps drew all of their electricity needs from gas-fired power stations.
The post Analysis: Why clean energy will cut UK gas imports by more than North Sea drilling appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Why clean energy will cut UK gas imports by more than North Sea drilling
Climate Change
Cropped 11 March 2026: Iran water worries | Seabed-mining treaty progress | Women farmers and climate change
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Fertiliser disruption in Middle East
FOOD RISKS: The US-Israel war on Iran is “disrupting” the production and export of synthetic fertilisers, reported the Financial Times, which could lead to food price increases. The newspaper noted that the Strait of Hormuz passage, which remains at a near-standstill, is a “crucial shipping route for exports” including urea, sulphur and ammonia – all used in fertilisers. The Guardian noted: “Roughly half of global food production depends on synthetic nitrogen and crop yields would fall without fertiliser.”
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PLANT FOOD: The fertiliser situation is “especially troubling for farmers in the northern hemisphere” who are beginning to plant their spring crops, said the New York Times. An article in the Conversation said that “even modest reductions in nitrogen use can produce disproportionately large declines in yield”. Elsewhere, a Carbon Brief Q&A looked at the impacts of the war on the energy transition and climate action.
WATER WORRIES: Water – already in short supply in Iran, where long-running droughts have been exacerbated by climate change – has come into renewed focus in the conflict. Bloomberg columnist Javier Blas said water could become the “geopolitical commodity that decides the war”. Desalination plants came “under attack” in Iran and Bahrain, reported the New York Times. These types of plants offer the “only reliable water source for millions across the Arabian Peninsula”, said the Independent.
Negotiations of seabed mining resume
LEGAL BRIEF: The International Seabed Authority (ISA)’s Legal and Technical Commission held a meeting in late February, where they made “progress” in reviewing applications for deep-sea mining exploration and the development of regional environmental management plans, according to an ISA press release. The ISA’s 36-member governing council is currently in Jamaica for a two-week meeting to discuss the future of deep-sea mining in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
NEW RULEBOOK: The New York Times interviewed Leticia Carvalho, head of the ISA, who said the long-awaited deep-sea mining rulebook should be finalised by the end of this year. She said the Trump administration’s push for deep-sea mining is making such an agreement more urgent than ever. However, Grist said that an advocate from French Polynesia said that he does not expect the regulations to be finalised this year, as there are several agreements and discussions pending, including on environmental protections.
INDIGENOUS DEMANDS: Indigenous advocates, who have long worked for their rights to be included in seabed mining regulations, are “bracing for the outcome” of the Jamaica meeting, reported Grist. Some fear that the incorporation of Indigenous rights into those regulations will be dismissed, as has happened previously, said the outlet.
News and views
- LAWS OF NATURE: The EU court of justice fined Portugal €10m (£8.7m) for “failing to comply with environmental laws that require it to protect biodiversity”, according to the Guardian. The newspaper said the country will be penalised until the 55 unprotected sites are protected under EU biodiversity law.
- BURIED REPORT UNCOVERED: Last week, a group of scientists and experts released a draft assessment about the health of nature in the US that had been cancelled by the Trump administration last year, according to the New York Times. The report is “grim, but shot through with bright spots and possibility”, said the outlet.
- ‘BI-OCEANIC’ RAIL: Experts are concerned about the potential social and environmental impacts of a train “mega-project” between Peru and Brazil, reported Mongabay. One researcher told the outlet that the possible rail routes, which cross through the Amazon rainforest, could cause “colossal environmental damage”.
- CLIMATE COOPERATION: India and Nepal signed an agreement to strengthen transboundary cooperation in topics such as climate change, forests and biodiversity conservation, reported the New Indian Express. The collaboration will include the restoration of wildlife corridors and knowledge exchanges, the outlet said.
- REPORT CARD: Carbon Brief analysis showed that half of the world’s countries met a 28 February UN deadline to report on national efforts to tackle nature loss. As of 10 March, 123 countries out of 196 had submitted their national reports, which will inform nature negotiations in Armenia later this year.
- CROP LOSSES: Down To Earth covered a study finding that a “deadly” virus is threatening cassava crops in parts of Africa, partly due to climate change. Meanwhile, Carbon Brief updated an interactive map showing 140 cases of crops being destroyed by heat, drought, floods and other extremes in the past three years.
Spotlight
Women farmers in a warmer and unequal world
International Women’s Day occurs every year on 8 March. Carbon Brief explores the impacts of climate change and gender inequality on women farmers and how they are adapting to a warming planet.
Women farmers play an essential role in global food supply.
According to a report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), around 36% of working women in 2019 were engaged in agri-food systems. On average, they earned 18% less than men in that sector.
The report found that women working in agriculture tend to do so “under highly unfavourable conditions”, including in the face of “climate-induced weather shocks”.
Typically, women farmers are concentrated in the poorest countries, produce less-lucrative crops and are often unpaid family workers or casual workers in agriculture, the report said.
Vulnerabilities
Research has shown that women farmers are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than men.
In Africa and Asia, for example, a 2023 study found that “climate hazards and stressors…tend to negatively affect women [in agri-food systems] more than men”. This is because gender inequality – in the form of discriminatory gender roles or unequal access to resources – is most pronounced in those regions, the study said.
A 2025 study focusing specifically on the Sleman region of Indonesia found that 63% of women farmers suffered from food insecurity due to vulnerability to climate change. This arises from both frequent exposure to drought and low ability to respond to climate impacts, the study explained.
Geraldine García Uribe has been a farmer at the U Neek’ Lu’um agroecology school in Yucatán, Mexico, since 2023. She told Carbon Brief:
“When you have fixed [planting and harvesting] cycles and you start to see changes in the climate – longer droughts or changes in rainfall patterns – plants take longer to grow and pests start to arrive, and that affects the farmers’ pockets and the livelihoods of [their] families.”
She added that women farmers also face inequalities when it comes to deciding how to manage agricultural lands:
“When government support comes, they take [women] less into account because, in general, there are more men present at meetings.”
Adaptation needs
Women farmers face constraints that make them less able to adapt to climate change, according to the FAO report. For example, the working hours of women farmers “decline less than men’s during climate shocks such as heat stress”, said the report.
Josselyn Vega has been farming on her own agroecology farm in Cotopaxi, Ecuador, for three decades. In the Andean region comprising Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, droughts and floods are frequent, but there are also frosts which, although expected to decrease with climate change, cause crop losses and can have a “drastic” impact on the local economy, according to the Adaptation Fund.
Vega told Carbon Brief that her farm has used “living barriers” to help protect from weather extremes:
“Living barriers are a wall of forest and fruit trees [that] block the wind and prevent drought and frost from passing through.”
The 2023 study recommended that transforming agri-food systems into fairer and more sustainable ones requires reducing and preventing gender inequality.
At the international level, countries have an agreement to implement climate solutions that take women into account, including women farmers. At the most recent UN climate negotiations in Belém, Brazil, countries adopted a new gender action plan, which will last nine years and encourages countries to develop climate policies and plans with a gender perspective.
Vega said that public policies are needed to empower women farmers and ensure that they are included in decision-making. She told Carbon Brief:
“We need to benefit from something that encourages us to continue planting and caring for the land.”
Watch, read, listen
CASH CUTS: In a four-part series, BioGraphic explored how US federal funding cuts have impacted biodiversity and conservation.
RIGHT WHALE ROLLBACK: A News Center Maine video looked at how the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is considering rolling back a rule to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales in the US.
ON THE FARM: “Women farmers are an overlooked force in climate action,” the deputy director of the climate office at the FAO wrote in Reuters.
JUSTICE: Drilled marked the 10-year anniversary of the murder of Indigenous leader Berta Cáceres and looked at why Honduras is “still so dangerous for environmental activists”.
New science
- Large-scale reforestation in different parts of the world could bring “robust net global cooling” of -0.13C to -0.25C | Communications Earth & Environment
- Insects in many parts of the tropics have a “limited capacity” to deal with future projected warming levels | Nature
- The flowering time of tropical plant species has changed by an average of two days per decade since 1794 due to climate change | PLOS One
In the diary
- 9-19 March: Part one of the 31st session of the International Seabed Authority | Kingston, Jamaica
- 15 March: Republic of the Congo presidential election
- 22 March: World Water Day
- 23-29 March: Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals COP15 summit | Campo Grande, Brazil
- 23 March-2 April: Third session of the preparatory commission for the High Seas Treaty | New York
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz.
Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 11 March 2026: Iran water worries | Seabed-mining treaty progress | Women farmers and climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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