Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century, with alarming impacts on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Although the gendered impacts of climate change are increasingly being recognized, the specific impacts on SRHR are routinely overlooked and underdiscussed.
When funders and implementers fail to systematically consider the impacts of climate change on SRHR- and the need to integrate climate resilience and mitigation measures in health initiatives- they face serious risks:
Backsliding on SRHR and gender equality outcomes:
If funders continue a status quo approach to SRHR programming, without considering the direct and indirect impacts of climate change, they risk not meeting the SRHR needs of women in climate change-affected areas, and, at worst, may put women at greater risk.
Mis-diagnosis of barriers to programmatic impact:
Climate change interacts with existing social, economic, and environmental conditions in complex and emergent ways. Ignoring or not understanding climate impacts on SRHR can lead funders and implementers to misdiagnose what factors are contributing to poor health or gender equality outcomes or preventing further progress in a community. If an investment or implementation strategy is based on an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of the drivers of a problem, the resulting interventions and investments will be limited in their potential effectiveness.
Reactive “whack-a-mole” funding in response to crises rather than proactive future-looking funding strategies:
Without proactively considering the near-term and long-term climate impacts on SRH by geography, funders may find themselves in a cycle of reactive funding, responding to climate-fuelled SRHR crises as they arise, rather than strategically planning for the future. If funders don’t take in account the scientific evidence and anticipate where and how climate-driven poor SRHR outcomes will increase in the next 5+ years, investments risk the missing new opportunities for transformative change and resilient SRHR outcomes.
The Impacts of Climate Change on Gender and SRHR Outcomes
Climate change has direct impacts on sexual and reproductive health; for example, extreme flooding destroying clinics and leaving women without appropriate care. It also has indirect and non-obvious pathways to affecting SRHR, created through complex interactions with existing gendered social inequalities. Here is one example of the indirect pathways:
The risk of climate-related impacts on SRHR results from the interaction of climate-related hazards with the vulnerability and exposure of human and natural systems. Changes in both the climate system (in the diagram to the right) and socioeconomic processes are drivers of hazards, exposure, and vulnerability. Resilience to climate shocks and stresses is increased by decreasing the vulnerability of a person, group, or health system and increasing adaptive capacity (IPCC 2014).
These interactions are crucial for health, climate, and gender funders to understand because it means that there are multiple possible levers to pull in order to increase the resilience of women, girls, and gender marginalized people to climate change; Conversely, this also means that even if your intervention increases the adaptive capacity of women in a community, if the frequency of shocks and their exposure to those shocks is increasing, outcomes may still worsen. See recommendations in our MEL section for how funders must shift their monitoring and evaluation approach in order to track an expanded set of variables and interactions.
Source: WHO 2015; Operational framework for building climate resilient health systems
The Good News
Through integrated investment and action, climate, health, and gender-equality funders are extraordinarily well-positioned to support synergistic investments that can have an impact-multiplier effect on climate resilience and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Imagine a world where women have access to comprehensive sexual health services resilient to climate shocks, where they are able to exercise choice without compromising their bodily autonomy, and where they are leaders for climate resilience initiatives for their community.
From bolstering climate-resilient, and low emission healthcare infrastructure to supporting innovations in longer-acting, environmentally sustainable contraceptive initiatives, to investing in gender-transformative disaster response systems, funders can pave the way for a brighter future-one where climate justice and reproductive justice go hand in hand.
This is not an abstract vision; it is a tangible path forward, with mutual gains for climate action, gender equality, and reproductive health and rights.
