In poor households without taps, the responsibility for collecting water typically falls on women and girls. As climate change makes water scarcer and they have to travel further and spend more time fetching it, their welfare suffers.
In a new study quantifying how gender shapes people’s experiences of climate change, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) found that, by 2050, higher temperatures and changing rainfall patterns could mean women globally spend up to 30% more time collecting water.
PIK guest researcher Robert Carr, the study’s lead author, explained how this results in more physical strain, psychological distress and lost time that could otherwise be spent on education, leisure or employment.
“Even when people talk about gendered climate impacts, there is very little attention on time poverty and how that affects someone’s ability to improve their life,” Carr told Climate Home.
In addition, the cost of lost working time for women affects economies, and is projected to reach tens to hundreds of millions of US dollars per country annually by 2050, the study said.
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Carr noted that the data underpinning PIK’s study only recently became available and is a valuable tool for connecting women’s welfare issues to climate impacts, with more such analysis expected as new datasets emerge.
“But more still needs to be done to act on, and implement, research findings like ours at the local and national levels,” he added.
For that to happen, research like PIK’s has to resonate in government offices and negotiating rooms at UN climate talks, where gender activists see 2024 as a milestone year. Countries are expected to renew key global initiatives for advancing gender-responsive climate action and improving gender balance in official delegations at UN negotiations.
Gendered impacts of climate change
So far progress has been slow. After more than a decade of working towards those aims within the UN climate process, wilder weather and rising seas are still disproportionately affecting women and gender-diverse people, as global warming continues apace.
For example, female-headed rural households experience higher income losses due to extreme weather events like floods and droughts, through impacts on farming and other activities.
Rates of child marriage and violence against women and girls have been shown to increase during and after climate disasters. And studies have identified a positive correlation between drought-induced displacement and hysterectomies among female farm labourers in India.
At the same time, barriers like caring responsibilities, lack of funding, difficulties in obtaining visas and even sexual harassment in UN spaces persist, standing in the way of women’s equal participation in the climate negotiating rooms.
Yet, despite the mounting urgency, governments made little progress in talks on gender issues at the mid-year UN conference in Bonn this month.
Delegates arrive for a workshop on implementing the UNFCCC gender action plan and on future work to be undertaken on gender and climate change, at the Bonn Climate Conference on June 3, 2024. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)
Advocates had hoped to leave the German city with a new, stronger version of the UN’s flagship gender initiative, known as the Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWP). Instead, discussions were tense and slow, leaving the LWP – which is supposed to be renewed by 2025 – to be finalised in November at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan.
A decade of work
Claudia Rubio, gender working group lead for the Women and Gender Constituency at the UN, said the LWP has enabled a better understanding of “what is prohibiting women and other genders from being in [UN negotiating] spaces”.
But Mwanahamisi Singano, senior global policy lead at the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), reminded delegates at a workshop in Bonn that “time has not been the magic ingredient in bridging disparities between women and men in participation”, which has “stagnated or even declined when it comes to COPs”.
According to data from WEDO, women made up only 34% of COP28 government delegations overall, the same percentage as 10 years ago. Azerbaijan’s initial men-only COP29 organising committee – to which women were hastily added after an international outcry – and its line-up of negotiators at Bonn were a case in point.
The UN’s own analysis of men and women’s relative speaking times at the negotiations shows that women often – though not always – speak less, and that themes such as technology and finance see consistently lower numbers for women’s participation.
Progress has been gradual even with programmes like WEDO’s Women Delegates Fund, which has financed hundreds of women – primarily from least developed countries and small island developing states – to attend UN climate talks. Since 2012, WEDO has also run ‘Night Schools’, training women in technical language and negotiation skills.
Gender in the NDCs
Increasing the gender diversity of decision-makers in UN negotiations is important in its own right, but it does not necessarily translate into more gender-responsive climate policy, experts said. Not all women negotiators are knowledgeable about the gender-climate nexus, they noted.
But having an international framework to boost gender-sensitive climate action has also “catalysed political will” at the country level, according to Rebecca Heuvelmans, advocacy and campaigning officer at Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF).
Delegates listen to discussions on the UNFCCC Gender Action Plan at the Bonn Climate Conference on June 4, 2024. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)
This is evidenced by an increase in the number of official National Gender and Climate Change Focal Points – up from 38 in 2017 when UN climate talks first adopted a Gender Action Plan, to 140 across 110 countries today. While the precise role of these focal points depends on country needs, advocates say they have been pivotal in spurring action on national gender priorities.
So far, at least 23 countries have national gender and climate change action plans, and references to gender in national climate plans submitted to the UN, known as NDCs, have increased since the earliest commitments in 2016. Around four-fifths now include gender-related information, according to a UN review of the plans.
In practice, this ranges from including gender-diverse people in the development of national climate plans to legislation that specifically addresses the intersection of climate change and gender.
For example, nine countries – including Sierra Leone and Jordan – have committed to addressing rising gender-based violence in the context of climate change. South Sudan acknowledged that heat exposure and malnutrition can increase infant and maternal mortality, while Côte d’Ivoire recognised that climate change hikes risks to pregnant women and those going through menopause.
Nonetheless, only a third of countries include access to sexual, maternal and newborn health services in their climate commitments, according to a 2023 report by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and Queen Mary University of London, showing how much work is yet to be done.
Next year, countries are due to submit updated NDCs, which campaigners see as a crucial opportunity to embed gender equality more deeply, including by involving women and girls in their planning and implementation, and collecting data disaggregated by sex and gender that can help shape policy.
Cross-cutting issue
Ahead of COP29, gender advocates are pushing for a stronger work programme with new language around intersectionality – the recognition that gender interacts with other parts of identity like race, class and Indigeneity to create overlapping systems of discrimination.
Angela Baschieri, technical lead on climate action at UNFPA, said gender commitments in the UN climate process must be more ambitious and include actionable targets for countries to address gender inequality.
Beyond the gender negotiations themselves, the Women and Gender Constituency wants to boost the integration of gender with other streams of work.
“Whether you’re talking about green hydrogen, climate finance or low-carbon transport, there is always a gender dimension,” said Sascha Gabizon, executive director of WECF International, a network of feminist groups campaigning on environmental issues.
“We have so much evidence now that climate policies just aren’t as efficient if they are not gender-transformative,” she added.
(Reporting by Daisy Clague; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post UN action on gender and climate faces uphill climb as warming hurts women appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN action on gender and climate faces uphill climb as warming hurts women
An upcoming UK government consultation on weakening targets for electric vehicles (EVs) could cost consumers as much as £3bn a year by 2030, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
It could require the UK to import an extra 17m barrels of oil in 2030, raising expected net imports by 8%, as well as adding 2.5% to national emissions that year, the analysis shows.
After years of fierce lobbying by parts of the car industry – and despite the significant savings on offer for EV drivers – media reports suggest that EV targets could be “watered down”.
Under current rules, battery EVs – BEVs, those which run only on electricity – must make up a rising share of new car sales in the UK.
This policy, known as the “zero-emission vehicles” (ZEV) mandate, was introduced by the previous Conservative government and sets a goal for 33% BEV sales in 2026, rising to 80% in 2030.
(Carmakers are able to use “flexibilities” to help meet their targets, which reduces the effective target under the ZEV mandate to an estimated 25% of sales in 2026.)
Now, the government under new Labour prime minister Andy Burnham is reported to be considering a cut in the BEV target for 2030 to just 50% of new car sales, alongside options for 60% or 70%.
Carbon Brief understands that a consultation on weakening the ZEV mandate is being reviewed by the prime minister’s office in Number 10, ahead of being formally released.
If the mandate is weakened to 50% by 2030 – and if carmakers make more use of “flexibilities” – there could be up to 3m fewer BEVs on UK roads by 2030, according to the NGO T&E.
Previous Carbon Brief analysis found that BEVs are around £1,100 cheaper to run per year than a petrol car, thanks to far lower fuel costs.
Overall, BEVs are more than £1,000 per year cheaper to own than either petrol cars or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs, which can run on petrol or electricity).
This is according to analysis of the “total cost of ownership” by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), including purchase price, fuel costs, insurance and proposed pay-per-mile charges.
In total, Carbon Brief analysis shows that UK drivers could be hit with an extra £3bn in annual ownership costs by 2030, if the ZEV mandate is weakened, as shown below.
A weaker ZEV mandate could “put billions of pounds of committed investments at risk”, reports BusinessGreen, including in the EV charging network and battery supply chains.
Industry group Energy UK says that the mandate is “working in the way it was designed to work” and that it is the “single biggest driver of emissions reductions” in government climate plans.
However, Carbon Brief analysis shows that a weaker ZEV mandate could result in an extra 7.4m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions (MtCO2) in 2030. This would add the equivalent of 2.5% to national emissions in 2030, under the UK’s international climate goal for that year.
In addition, a weaker ZEV mandate could result in the UK needing to import an extra 17m barrels of oil in 2030, equivalent to 8% of projected net imports that year.
Energy UK says that shifting to EVs will help to reduce household energy bills “for everyone”. This is not only through direct cost-of-ownership savings for EV drivers, but also by spreading the costs of upgrading the electricity system across a wider user base.
Car industry group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders claims that its members are spending “blilions…on discounts, finance incentives and marketing support” and that “natural” EV demand is below the level required to meet the current ZEV mandate. Its claims are disputed.
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The post Analysis: Weaker EV targets could cost UK consumers £3bn a year by 2030 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Weaker EV targets could cost UK consumers £3bn a year by 2030
A new draft text to revive deadlocked UN plastics treaty talks does not include specific measures on managing runaway plastic production, a growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, drawing criticism from some countries and campaigners that ambition for the global pact is shrinking.
After diplomats met in Nairobi early in July for the first time since negotiations fell apart a year ago, Chilean ambassador Julio Cordano, who is chairing the talks, released a first document last weekend, setting out elements of a possible treaty to tackle plastic pollution.
Cordano stressed this is an “informal reference document” rather than a negotiated text. But its structure is similar to a draft treaty and closely resembles the previous version rejected by governments during the last round of formal negotiations in Geneva.
The new text recognises the world’s “unsustainable” levels of plastic production and consumption, both of which are projected to nearly triple by 2060. But it contains no measures to stem that growth, critics say, pointing to what they see as a broader weakening of ambition.
They argue the document is increasingly aligned with the demands of fossil fuel-producing countries, including Gulf states, the US and Russia, which have pushed for the treaty to focus on managing plastic waste rather than limiting production.
“When you leave the countries that have the most vested interests in delaying meaningful action to shape the agenda, you end up with a text that does nothing to end plastic pollution,” said David Azoulay, environmental health programme director at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).
France disappointed with production omission
“We’ve gone backwards rather than forwards,” Christina Dixon, a campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), told Climate Home News. “A text that was rejected by the majority of countries in Geneva as being too weak and not ambitious enough has been repackaged one year later with some key elements removed and put out as a kind of sign of progress.”
A French diplomatic source told Climate Home News it was “disappointing” that the text lacked any concrete provisions on tackling “unsustainable” levels of plastics production and consumption. That is despite a majority of countries repeatedly advocating for curbs and scientists saying the world cannot put an end to plastic pollution without tackling the issue at source, they added.
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Governments across Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Pacific islands have previously called for efforts to limit the manufacturing of plastics to “sustainable levels”, but their efforts have been frustrated by strong and persistent opposition from a small group of fossil fuel producers, who see plastics as a growing market for oil and gas.
Weakening of production ambition
Cordano told Climate Home News that the “concept” of sustainable production is still reflected in different parts of the new document.
But measures aimed at achieving that objective have progressively weakened over time. Initial versions of the draft treaty, dating back to 2024, included a standalone article with the option of setting a global target to reduce the production and consumption of primary plastics.
That disappeared from successive drafts published in Geneva last year. The last version nevertheless said data on plastic production could be considered in future assessments of whether the treaty was meeting its objectives. Observers saw this as an important provision that could have strengthened the pact over time and potentially kept the door open for a global production target.
The new text only mentions “sustainable production” in the preamble and includes an article saying that countries could improve the design of plastic products in order to contribute to “sustainable production”.
“There’s a war of attrition element,” said Dennis Clare, a negotiator for the Pacific island nation of Micronesia. “The countries that want to do less are dragging out discussions and gradually pressuring the more ambitious to compromise towards a lower common denominator.”
Little space for thorny discussions
Countries have twice failed to agree on a global plastics treaty at what were meant to be final rounds of negotiations in December 2024 and August 2025. After being selected as the new chair earlier this year, Cordano has been working to steer the process back on track through a series of informal meetings, hoping diplomats can find common ground ahead of the next formal negotiations scheduled for early 2027.
But he has been criticised for sidelining discussions on some of the thorniest issues. Cordano kept plastic production off the official agenda for the Nairobi meeting a few weeks ago. He said beforehand that countries could bring any issue to the table, but production did not feature in the summary of discussions subsequently published by the chair.
Clare said discussions on fundamental elements of the treaty, including production, had been “constrained” and that there was little space for them in Nairobi.
Cordano told Climate Home News the Nairobi talks had provided space both for “reaffirming positions and expressing new ideas”, adding that countries “remain free to raise all issues they consider important”.
Informal talks between negotiators are held behind closed doors and neither the media nor external observers can take part.
Campaigners have accused the chair of making political calculations to reach an agreement at any cost. “He has clearly identified that the only way to achieve an agreement by consensus is to do away with the more complex elements of the treaty like those that deal with sustainable production and consumption of plastics,” the EIA’s Dixon said.
Cordano said he continues to be guided by countries as “they develop their own exchanges and continue working towards possible landing zones”.
Push for more ambition
Governments will debate the new text at another meeting of chief negotiators in Bangkok, Thailand, at the end of September, and a new version of the document is expected after that meeting.
The French diplomatic source said the current text should not be viewed as “an end-product”, but as a starting point that “can and should be improved”.
France, together with the EU and members of the High Ambition Coalition (HAC), will continue pushing for stronger provisions, including measures to address plastic production, the source said.
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The HAC group includes over 70 countries, primarily from across Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Pacific.
Micronesian negotiator Clare said countries on the frontline of the plastics crisis may decide to reject a really weak treaty that puts the burden on them to clean up somebody else’s waste, while producers can keep churning out plastics unrestrained.
“If the treaty does not include essential elements of the solution, even an initial, apparent diplomatic success – an agreement – can come to be seen over time as an environmental failure,” Clare warned.
The post “We’ve gone backwards” – new plastics treaty text dims hopes for production curbs appeared first on Climate Home News.
“We’ve gone backwards” – new plastics treaty text dims hopes for production curbs
Layers of red dust coat South Africa’s Saldanha Bay, a legacy of the one billion-plus tonnes of iron ore exported from what was once a quiet coastal fishing town in the 1970s. Now the government wants to turn this area into the “oil and gas hub of South Africa”, but opposition from local communities and civil society could force a change of plan.
Since 2014 South Africa has developed a strategy for taking “full advantage” of its marine resources, known as Operation Phakisa. It has resulted in the mapping of more than 95% of the country’s nearly 3,000-kilometre coastline for offshore oil and gas exploration.
The plan seeks to “drill 30 exploration wells in 10 years”, which it estimates could lead to the production of an average of 370,000 barrels of oil and gas per day over 20 years, with Saldanha Bay earmarked as a key logistics hub. It also aims to develop other marine sectors like aquaculture, maritime transport and ocean tourism.
However, two major court cases against the government and oil giants Shell and TotalEnergies have challenged those plans, as coastal residents, allied with national civil society groups, have pushed back against oil concessions held by the multinationals, arguing they were not consulted, and that towns like Saldanha Bay could face social and environmental harms from the fossil fuel extraction.
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Melissa Groenink-Groves, programme manager at legal nonprofit Natural Justice, said the cases in South Africa could set a precedent for the whole region. “When communities win in the courts, the successes serve as inspiration for other communities to advocate [for] their rights in their own contexts,” she explained.
She added that the legal challenges to Operation Phakisa also develop climate litigation in the African context, and could impact how environmental impact assessments are conducted going forward.
Globally, as the oil and gas industry sets its sights on the ocean, with over 85% of new discoveries in 2024 made offshore, scientists and activists warn it could threaten marine life and coastal communities, and weaken the ocean’s ability to trap excess heat from the atmosphere, fuelling planetary warming further.
Taking oil companies to court
About 300 kilometres north of Saldanha Bay, the Aukotowa Fisheries Cooperative, backed by nonprofits The Green Connection and Natural Justice, has taken TotalEnergies to court over its plans to drill for oil and gas in a 30,000-square-kilometre block off South Africa’s west coast.
The oil exploration block is in a biodiverse marine area bordering Namibia and South Africa known as the Orange Basin, which is a “highly relevant” sanctuary for endangered species, according to Nelson Mandela University’s Institute for Coastal and Marine Research.
Among other grievances, the cooperative maintains that the company’s environmental impact assessment was flawed, failing to consider the project’s contribution to climate change, and that the government “placed the profits of a multinational corporation above the livelihoods of vulnerable coastal communities”. The Western Cape High Court concluded hearings in late March and is expected to deliver a ruling later this year.
Walter Steenkamp, chairperson of the Aukotowa Cooperative, is concerned that the oil and gas drilling will lead to increased inequality, asking “for whom is the development? Definitely not for us.”
In a written statement, TotalEnergies told Climate Home News that it “is a responsible operator fully committed to complying with all applicable South African legislation”.
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Communities and climate impacts at stake
On the other side of the country, along South Africa’s eastern coastline, community-based nonprofit Sustaining the Wild Coast and partner organisations challenged Shell and Impact Africa’s exploration permit, arguing that the firms had failed to consult impacted communities – a legal requirement under South African law.
Co-plaintiff Sinegugu Zukulu also said in 2022 that “oil and gas will lead to more emissions, and in the face of climate change, this is wholly irresponsible”.
Following two rulings against the companies by lower courts, the case is now before South Africa’s highest Constitutional Court, which has reserved judgment since September 2025. A ruling against the companies would be final, effectively ending the exploration permit.
Legal expert Groenink-Groves said oil exploration applications under Operation Phakisa have been “granted largely without properly assessing the devastating impact an oil spill could have on small-scale fishers, the risks of drilling in ultra-deep waters, [and] without accounting for climate change impacts associated with oil and gas exploitation”.
She added that exploration applications have often failed to consider coastal management laws and in some cases, cross-border and regional environmental risks.
Shell and South Africa’s Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources did not respond to written requests for comment.
South Africa’s offshore oil ambitions
Fishers around South Africa, many of whom have for generations relied on marine resources for survival, say the country’s offshore oil and gas push is sacrificing their livelihoods for profit.
“Why do they want to destroy our heritage? We can’t afford to say yes to oil and gas because the ocean is our source of life,” said Carmelita Mostert, a member of advocacy group Coastal Links and third-generation Saldanha Bay fisher.
Yet with unemployment above 30%, alongside high levels of poverty and wealth inequality, the government sees Operation Phakisa as a vehicle for socioeconomic development.
South Africa’s Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources Gwede Mantashe has described the court cases as “anti-development”, and claimed that the environmental organisations are funded by the CIA.
Sifiso Dladla, a campaigner with human rights organisation groundWork, argued that the close relationship between the government and the fossil fuel industry – including its 3% contribution to gross tax revenue – limits the potential success of movements pushing for an inclusive energy system. Politicians “need money to win elections. Mining companies need the government to protect them,” he said.
Patrick Bond, a political economist and sociology professor at the University of Johannesburg, said Operation Phakisa only makes economic sense if its social and environmental harms are ignored, adding that “if a genuine social cost of carbon analysis were done in any African fossil fuel project, there would be few – if any – able to justify the projects economically”.
At a global scale, Bond said oil multinationals have the financial backing of European governments – including France’s $2.8 billion stake in TotalEnergies – which can help make local resistance more effective where it has international allies to amplify the messages.
For Saldanha Bay fisher Mostert, the fight is about protecting the livelihoods of coastal communities. “It is my hope that we can stand strong and protest,” she said. “If oil and gas is not allowed, our lives will be much easier and better – but if oil and gas goes ahead we will be in absolute agony.”
The post South Africa’s offshore oil push meets grassroots resistance in court appeared first on Climate Home News.
South Africa’s offshore oil push meets grassroots resistance in court
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