GENDER AND CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION: A REVIEW

Abstract

By altering the earth’s ecosystems, climate change directly impacts the human race affecting people of different genders. Both climate change and gender have been central to debates on development. Even the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report recognizes that gender roles and relations impact both vulnerability and capacity to adapt to climate change. Gender analysis in climate change studies engenders the need to provide answers to questions such as, what are the gender dimensions of both adaptation and mitigation; and to supply a standard for gaining insight into gender differentiated impacts of climate change. This study particularly examined the interrelationship between climate change and gender through a review of previous studies and explored the various ways that equity could be attained in the effort to mitigate the effect of climate change. From the study, it was observed that there is no focus on gender in policy responses to climate change as a result of the imbalance in the power relations connected to climate change. The study recommends that females should be as involved as their male counterparts in disaster response decision making and gender specific policy formulation. It is a bid that will help lessen the negative impact of climate change on women and children.