Though They Be But Little, They Are Fierce!

As a wicked problem (Rittel and Webber, 1973; Conradie, 2020), climate change is confirmed as the most pernicious of the triad of planetary crises experienced in the Anthropocene. An emergency of gargantuan proportions, climate change confounds the prospect of sustainable development, with impacts which transcend ecological, economic and social spheres. Evidence from a plethora of sources such as the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading international body assessing climate change, other U.N. entities, and the statements tendered during the advisory proceedings before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), the Inter American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) (Lancaster, pp. 66 – 182), underscore clear evidence that  climate change is intrinsically linked to, and influenced by, structural inequality and injustice. These imbalances affects the most vulnerable in disproportionate, diverse and deeper ways, including developing countries and their peoples, low-income communities, marginalised groups such as Indigenous peoples and Afro-descendant peoples, and those with limited access to resources, which includes women and [female] children (i.e., girls).

There have been several globally significant initiatives to promote women’s (and girls’) equality and inclusivity, including  the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and  General Comment 26 on Children’s Rights and the Environment With a Special Focus on Climate Change. However, globally and nationally, historic, biological, cultural, societal, economic and other reasons have sowed deep-seeded systemic discrimination and disenfranchisement, which deprive women of their basic human rights. Accordingly, as the climate crisis deepens, cries for climate justice are getting louder in a diversity of fora, and the approach of climate law and policy is undergoing a revolutionary era, where increasingly, a rights-based approach is fundamental. This blog post posits that climate and environmental justice without due regard to equality and justice for women and children is unlikely to lead to transformative solutions to the climate crisis. Women and girls (as female children), it will be argued, are not victims, but rather valuable agents of change in the (en)gendering of climate justice, through the strengthening of their procedural human rights, while safeguarding their substantive human rights.

They May Be Little …

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of William Shakespeare’s most performed plays, the Bard presents Hermia, one of the rare occasions in his works illustrating frank and flagrant and female defiance to the oppressive forces of the patriarchy which women endure (both in literature and life). A deceivingly complex play which raises issues which parallel the climate and gender justice chasm, Midsummer’s context presents an interesting interplay between patriarchy, male and female gender roles, as well as different voices of authority. As one of the ‘central characters’, Hermia’s, refusal to kowtow to the stereotypes widely expected of females elicits the infamous quote “… though she be but little, she is fierce …” (Helena, Act 3 Scene 2, 323-325). This is a perfect lens to analyse the vulnerabilities that women face as a result of climate change, and as will be outlined in the blog post, serves as an allegory to highlight the powerful transformative roles which women can play in engendering climate justice.

Despite the paucity of data collection, climate change is a major disrupter and ‘the most consequential threat multiplier for women and girls, with far-reaching impacts on new and existing forms of gendered inequities’ (Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, Its Causes and Consequences, para. 73).  From a young age, climate change is more likely to impact girls’ education, meaning fewer opportunities for work, and even fewer for adequately compensated jobs. Girls are also forced into child marriages as families struggle to cope with financial hardships catalysed by climate change, such as loss of land or lower yields in crops or fisheries. This exposes them to increased risk of violence, and a raft of health problems stemming from hunger, malnutrition, environmental exposures and poor reproductive health.

Additionally, during displacement in the wake of disasters associated with climate change, women and girls are vulnerable to rape and other gender-based violence during everyday life, such as when collecting natural resources like water and fuel/firewood further from their villages and homes. Women and girls are forced into marriages, which can expose them sexual and physical abuse, early pregnancy and maternal death, are fourteen times more likely to die in a climate-related in the aftermath of climate disasters than men, and represent eighty percent of persons who are displaced by climate events. These stark statistics are primarily driven by gendered and associated cultural responsibilities of women and girls (such as cooking, cleaning and caregiving), their connections to (e.g. the gathering of water and fuelwood) and direct reliance with all components of the environment (air, water, soil, biodiversity). Further, despite females now comprising almost half of the global population, these impacts have deepened, rather than improved.

Consequently, for women and girls, the issue of climate (and environmental) justice is also a matter of gender equality, as overwhelmingly they are unfairly deprived of procedural rights by their exclusion in decision-making and other processes. As a demographic, women and girls are also more likely to be denied substantive rights, such as the widely accepted right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment (Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Issue of Human Rights Obligations Relating to the Enjoyment of a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment, p.1), the right to health as confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights, and the right to life, since they are a higher risk from climate-induced disasters.

Further, as illustrated in the landmark Torres Islanders case, these impacts also transcend timescales, since they affect the right to culture and family life, depriving women their contribution to the inter-generational development of their children, as well as depriving children of this equitable right. These threats are further compounded for women who are minorities, such as Indigenous and Afro–descendent women, and those directly reliant on nature such as peasant and fisherwomen, and women in the Global South. Factors which increase the likelihood of marginalisation in society, such gender minorities, age, disability, migrants, displaced, refugees, environmental defenders, unmarried, informally married, widowed, or living in armed conflict, also exacerbate women and girl’s vulnerability to climate stressors.

… But They Are Fierce

Yet, as illustrated by the ‘authority gone archaic’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Tennenhouse, Power On Display  p. 73), women such as Hermia have always been capable of identifying and driving solutions, as well as bringing innovative, grassroots-based and equitable perspectives to leadership required to tackle wicked problems. Women share intimate connections with nature and natural resources because of their ‘societal roles,’ relationships which make them de facto stewards of nature, born leaders and expert agents of change in engendering climate justice. However international decision-making remains mired in patriarchy and there gatekeeping at all levels, including the global multilateral environmental processes which seek to focus on land, climate and biodiversity issues. Therefore, while the importance of women and girls to climate policy and justice is acknowledged, multilateral and climate processes still fail to address gender as a high priority issue. The IPCC, the lead scientific body responsible for the evidence driven, scientific approach to climate change, is still predominantly male dominated, with female representation creeping from 8% in 1990 to 33% in 2021 (IPCC, 2019, p. 1). Similar imbalances exist in delegations to the CoPs, and in 2024, the issue of gender in climate justice reached an all-time abyss at CoP 29, when the presidency excluded women from its organisation committee. While the presidency relented after widespread international condemnation, the appointment of 12 women out of a 28 person committee felt absolutely tokenistic.

Nonetheless, the eight women among the seventy-eight heads at CoP 29 (arguably a product of national processes as opposed to the multilateral system) are leaders and trailblazers, who like Hermia, are not shrinking violets. A quintessential example is the Prime Minister of Barbados, The Honourable Mia Amor Mottley, who has consistently delivered both pointed and impassioned speeches before CoP plenaries.  Mottley’s stances on the global stage are a personification of the Biblical story of David and Goliath, as Barbados is a Caribbean Small Island Developing State (SIDS), who like her Pacific, Indian Ocean and African counterparts,  is a minor contributor to the climate conundrum. However, SIDS and their peoples are among the most vulnerable to the ravages of climate change and like women and girls, have consistently been failed by the multilateral system. Reminiscent of the groups of characters in the woods in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Mottley and the other seven female leaders at CoP 29 are happily not alone in the climate ‘drama’,  since there is a growing cadre of women leaders and young women agents of change.

Women and girl activists have increasingly made their presence felt at the CoPs and international fora such as the Inter American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The recent hearings of these courts are discussing the question of State responsibility for climate change for a range of matters, the role of human rights and inter-generational equity. The presence of women and other youth activists in protests, policy development, and negotiations can no longer be ignored, and both the CoP 27 and CoP 28 outcome documents (but conspicuously, but yet unsurprisingly absent in the CoP 29 Baku Climate Unity Pact) have highlighted their importance as agents of change to the future of the climate process (Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan, paras. 53 and 55; UAE Consensus, paras 9, 178, 182 ). Further, in addition to the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, other key U.N. rapporteurships supportive of a gender just human-rights approach are for the [first] time held by women. These  include the Special Rapporteur on Climate Change, Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to a Healthy Environment, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education.

(En)gendering Climate Justice

The recognition of youth in the climate process is no small feat and is significant given the importance of intergenerational equity to the climate conundrum. In the words of the Ugandan female youth activist Vanessa Nakate, there can be ‘no climate justice without gender equality.’ It is within this context that Human Rights Council Resolution 38/4 of 2018 requested OHCHR ‘to conduct, from within existing resources, an Analytical Study on the integration of a gender-responsive approach into climate action at the local, national, regional and international levels for the full and effective enjoyment of the rights of women…’/ Overwhelmingly, the Study found that despite the prohibition of discrimination based on gender by international human rights law (IHRL), “women face systemic discrimination, harmful stereotypes and social, economic and political barriers that limit their adaptive capacity” (para. 4).

The takeaway message is pellucid: gender justice is climate justice! Women therefore, need to lead the charge, and be in the spaces where in climate change is being discussed and for girls (young women), where decisions being taken about their futures.  Women also need the agency to transcend cultural, economic and legal hurdles which prevent their inclusion, and to equally have the means to access justice to exercise their procedural human rights and safeguard their substantive ones. At the Sixty-sixth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 66) in 2022, this approach was endorsed in the Agreed Conclusions.

Gender Sensitive Legal Frameworks

A linchpin to engendering climate justice is a gender sensitive legal framework which allows women to enjoy their substantive and procedural human rights. While for a predominately patriarchal world, change from practice rooted in millennia of traditional, religious and customary laws, etc. will be a bitter pill to swallow, the fact that roughly half the world’s population comprises women and girls means that the time for change has come. National legal and policy frameworks need to support women as agents of change  (as opposed to victims), and acknowledge women’s role in the stewardship of land and aquatic spaces, and natural resources. As many States pursue models anchored in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as the blue economy and just transition in [renewable] energy and addressing plastic pollution, the lack of human-rights based gender-responsive governance dooms these initiatives to failure (Bennett, Morgera and Boyd, pp. 1 – 8; Bennett et. al., pp. 1 -19)

Gender Responsive Governance

Gender-responsive governance also needs to reflect the pervasive nature of the climate threat needs to cross-cutting and intersectional. Responsive governance must be approached on several fronts, including coordination between entities which address women’s and other minority rights (e.g. Indigenous, Afro-descendant peoples, LBGTQ+ etc.), resources management such as fisheries, agriculture and forestry, and disaster risk management. Gender responsive governance can also address challenges women have in securing finance by providing incentives which makes investment in women (and by extension girls) attractive to corporate entities and the private sector. Social schemes which help to displace the disproportionate responsibility of childcare, and support the increasing numbers of single moms are also examples of strengthening and engendering women’s leadership abilities.  This is especially crucial for Global South States, which need to build and maximise capacities, and often, because of governance frameworks mired in colonial methodologies, exclude community and frontline stakeholders such as women from participation in decision-making, conservation and management (Niner et. al., pp. 1 – 16).

Access to Justice for Women and Girls

Finally, because change will not come without struggle, sacrifice and strong action, it is fundamental that the women’s access to justice is unobstructed, so as to safeguard their access to information and guarantee their participation in decision-making. Increasingly, research and practice show an increased intersection between climate advocacy, livelihoods and violence against women. For example, the assassination of women who defend climate, land, Indigenous and environmental rights, such as Berta Cáceres  and Ludivia Galindez has risen sharply, especially in Global South regions such as Latin America, Asia and Africa. Women defenders are targeted directly and intimidated using online and non-lethal means accused of sorcery and witchcraft, but, to echo woman defender, 2024 Goldman Prize Winner and founder of the Amadiba Crisis Committee South African Nonhle Mbuthuma, “[women]  will not be silenced[;] [they] will keep making history.”

Girls, such as Canada’s  Indigenous water rights advocate Autumn Peltier, whose mother and aunt were also political activists, and climate defender Deborah Schutz of the Marshall Islands, illustrate that the defiance to patriarchal  ‘supremacy’ is now  inter-generational. Women and girls are increasingly part of court systems as women judges, and are taking to the courts to defend the nexus between gender and climate justice in often landmark actions such as the advisory opinions before the IACtHR and the ICJ, the  KlimaSeniorinnen from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) (even in the face of reluctance to comply by Switzerland), Juliana v United States in the District of Oregon and the U.S. Supreme Court, Mathur v Ontario currently before the Ontario Court of Appeal, and Sharma & Ors v Minister of the Environment of Australia heard before the Federal Court of Australia. The golden thread across this growing body of climate litigation is to promote more robust climate policies, prevent and respond to gender-based injustices and safeguard inter-generational rights in the context of climate justice.

Floreat Gender and Climate Justice for Women and Girls?

While the conclusion of A Midsummer Night’s Dream ends on a festive note for Hermia and the other women in the play, it is suggested by Puck (Robin Goodfellow), that it is all just a “dream” (Act 5, Scene 1, 419). This observation is noteworthy, as Puck, is one of the play’s main fairy characters, who is an agent for the governance mechanism in Midsummer and also significantly influences many developments within the play. Bringing the analogy to the current stare of play (pun intended), gender justice is at a critical juncture, and despite clear synergies between gender and climate justice, a similar paradox to Midsummer appears to exist. While today’s women and girls have made substantial gains, as with, ‘the festive conclusion in A Midsummer Night’s Dream [their futures at present still largely] depend upon the success of a process by which the feminine pride and power manifested in Amazon warriors …  and wilful daughters are brought under the control of lords and husbands’ (Montrose, ‘The Imperial Votaress,’ in A Shakespeare Reader: Sources and Criticism, p. 65).

At CoP 29, Parties haggled over the agenda item specifically geared ensuring the integration of vulnerable and underrepresented groups, including women and girls (youth) in climate policies. It is incredible that in the face of widespread acknowledgement of the challenges which marginalised, and minorities face in relation to climate justice, that this item attracted such a high level of disagreement, when fundamentally parties should be striving to ensure that these groups should be safeguarded. Ultimately parties consented to the development of a new gender action plan, which will inform discussions at CoP 30 and the new climate finance agreement also highlighted the need for gender-responsive climate finance and to consider the needs and priorities of women and girls. For women and girls it appears that a critical pathway for these obligations to concretise, will be a human-rights centred gendered approach to climate justice, which it is anticipated will be advanced by the IACtHR and the ICJ as they consider the relationship between State obligations, human rights, inter-generational equity, and other legal norms underpinning the climate conundrum.