Current and future damages of climate change depend greatly on the ability of affected populations to adapt to changing conditions.
Current and future damages of climate change depend greatly on the ability of affected populations to adapt to changing conditions. According to an international group of researchers, building capacity to adapt to such changes will require eradicating inequalities of many sorts, including gender.
Vulnerability and exposure to the effects of climate change differs significantly across social groups, defined not only by income levels but also by gender, education, and racial and ethnic profiles. Understanding how these inequalities will evolve in the future appears particularly important for the design of policies aimed at reducing the impact of climate change globally. In a new article published in Nature Communications, an interdisciplinary group of researchers from IIASA, Humboldt University, the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and Climate Analytics have developed projections of a gender inequality index throughout the 21st century to shed light on such developments.
The linkages between gender inequality and adaptive capacity to climate change relate to a large number of factors that differ across countries and over time, and also range from uneven access to resources to cultural norms. In addition, women’s representation in politics has been shown to lead to more stringent climate action, thus affecting mitigation policies as well. Building capacity to adapt to climate change will require eradicating inequalities of many sorts, including those in terms of gender. To the extent that gender inequality is a determinant of adaptation to climate change impacts and may also have an effect on the implementation of mitigation policies, projections of trajectories in gender inequality can highlight potential future challenges to combating the negative effects of climate change. According to the authors, such projections, combined with existing scenarios for the future path of population growth, education, and income, can contribute significantly to our understanding of the obstacles faced by future societies in their efforts to foster climate resilient development.
Read more at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
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