95%
countries
where we work have a high vulnerability to climate change
55%
rise
in deaths in India due to extreme heat between 2000-2004 and 2017-2021
20%
female
Heads of Delegation at COP27 in 2022
22%
of Nationally Determined Contributions include sex-disaggregated data
Climate resilience, health, and gender equity are inseparable
The climate crisis is already here. Climate hazards like storms and extreme heat threaten health directly, and a changing climate also shifts how people live and interact with the world around them. This can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and inequities, keeping women, girls, and other marginalized community members from the table.
To build a more climate-resilient future, we need everyone to be able to participate in creating climate solutions. Doing that means building a future that is healthier and more equitable for all.
- Climate change affects every aspect of life. It increases health risks, hinders sexual and reproductive health and rights, increases food and water insecurity, and worsens existing inequities—in every country where we work. These negative impacts are not gender neutral: women and girls are often disproportionately affected.
- Climate change could undo decades of progress in global health. The health impacts of a changing climate may overwhelm already strained health systems, making access to sexual and reproductive health more challenging for women and communities.
- We center women in climate resilience programming because investment in women generates durable improvements to key outcomes, helps ensure services and programming remain in place, and ultimately leads to communities that are more equitable, healthy, and sustainable.
Test your climate IQ!
With climate change, who’s most at risk?
At Pathfinder, we’re responding to the climate crisis with integrated programs that advance health, equity, and local climate solutions. Applying a rights-based approach, our programs support climate resilience, with a focus on improving the health and agency of women and girls.
Elevating women and girls as changemakers in their communities enables them to lead resilient, local, and rights-based solutions to climate adaptation. At Pathfinder, we engage with these individuals as the thought leaders, innovators, and implementers they are.
Pathfinder takes a locally led, gender-transformative approach to climate resilience.
- We help to meet unmet demand for contraception and sexual and reproductive health care, essential to women’s and girls’ agency in communities affected by the climate crisis.
- We strengthen the capacity of health systems to prepare for and manage health risks due to climate change.
- We tailor our programming to each community’s distinct needs and assets.
- We support women’s engagement and leadership in local resilience planning and implementation.
Women’s participation is critical at all levels of climate and health work. From the individual household international convenings, we need everyone’s voice. When women aren’t fully engaged in climate work, programs, at best, may not meet their needs and, at worst, may put women at greater risk. Given the urgency and scale of the climate crisis, it is imperative to ensure that all people can choose to participate in developing and implementing climate solutions.
Community is at the heart of this work. Working collectively sparks creativity, fosters active learning, heals divides, and helps all of us do the work better. Collaboration is the cornerstone of this: pursuing climate resilience means learning from others, centering community voices, addressing barriers to participation, and crossing silos to bridge knowledge and skills across sectors. This work involves not only building grassroots agency, adaptive capacity, and advocacy skills, but also advancing societal transformation towards a more just and equitable world.
