Climate Change Is Redrawing Where People Live, and Who Gets Left Behind

Fertility rate decline (or increase), a changing climate and a suffering environment are usually treated as separate problems. However, each shapes the other in very intimate ways.

Growing cities draw on the land around them for fuel, water, disposal and food. Floods, drought and rising seas are pushing families from their traditional homes, often into situations that are unfamiliar or more dangerous than the ones they had to leave behind.

Migration is fueling a widening poverty gap. Those with money and skills can leave places that are becoming harder to live in, either because of safety or natural forces. This creates an imbalance of opportunity, needed services and economic drivers.

Extreme Heat Is Quietly Cutting Wages for the World’s Outdoor Workers

Extreme heat is usually reported as a weather event. However, for much of the world’s workforce, heat is more of an economic event, as extreme heat can behave more like a pay cut. People who earn their living outdoors, or in market settings, can’t stop working when temperatures slowly increase. Instead, over time, the systems slow down, decrease hours and usually push through, absorbing the cost on their bodies.

And for the majority of the time, that cost isn’t shared evenly. Women in informal jobs often lose income at work, then come home to unpaid labor that is only made harder when the heat increases. A growing body of research also links hotter periods to more violence between partners, a connection most heat plans have yet to account for.

Climate Shocks Are Putting Pregnancies at Risk Where Care Is Already Hard to Reach

In all cases, pregnancy leaves little room for disruption or complication. Although women and their babies are very resilient, safe care depends on timing, having access to a clinic, and having the basics, including clean water, food and shelter. A climate shock or natural disaster can interrupt all of these at once.

For example, floods can push pregnant women into shelters with no privacy, improper sanitation and no skilled care. A flooded route turns the trip to a hospital into a risk of its own, adding unknown complications to the mix. Heat raises the chance of complications for both the mother and the baby and mosquito-borne diseases are reaching new frontiers and being pushed into areas that are not prepared.

Women Are Doing Much of the World’s Climate Adaptation, Usually Without a Plan or a Budget

The world’s adaptation to a changing climate is taking place at the roots of the community and in the drivers of local economies, usually without a coordinated plan or budget. It is happening in fields, the kitchens, the schools and community programming. And most of this adaptation is being driven by women.

In many rural places, women manage the water, the farming and the food. As the rains grow less predictable, the work to adapt and respond expands rapidly. Women are driving the innovation in the response. Many times, we see women trying new types of crops, innovating on higher-producing soil and forming collectives to build stronger markets.

Pollution Settles Where the Poorest Live and Work, in Their Food, Water and Bodies

It is no surprise that pollution doesn’t spread evenly, but instead it concentrates in the places where it is dumped or mined. Many times, the pollution enters the local food production and distribution systems and settles into the bodies of the people who live or work nearby.

Some of the harm has immediate effects on the lungs, like smoke from burning trash or a plant. Some harm takes years to realize, as is the case with lead, mercury and drug-resistant infections. The people most exposed tend to have the fewest choices, such as waste pickers, informal miners and families with nowhere else to live. In some mining communities, women pay a further price, with exploitation built into the terms of getting work at all.