By Chido Nyaruwata**
The rains have finally come to Southern Africa. They provide relief to many communities in the region. It marks a stark contrast to the heat stress, food and water insecurity, and reduced livelihoods that defined the 2023/2024 El Niño-induced drought period. According to the World Food Programme (2024), this drought was the worst the region experienced in 40 years.
In Zimbabwe, the drought didn’t just destroy crops. It tore through the social fabric of communities already struggling with inequality. Between March and June 2024, cases of gender-based violence in Chipinge District surged by 60% compared to the same period the previous year, according to Platform for Youth and Community Development. The cases reported included domestic violence, child marriages and sexual assault. Child marriages increased as negative coping strategies for families in affected areas, such as Chipinge, Zimbabwe; Siamuluwa, Zambia, ; Nsanje, Malawi and others.
The connection between environmental crisis and violence against women extends beyond drought-stricken households. Across the continent, women who stand up to protect their lands and communities face their own form of climate violence. Since 2022, Natural Justice has documented 261 attacks against environmental human rights defenders in Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. Only 18 of these cases involved women defenders, but that number masks the gendered nature of violence that women human rights defenders experience. The attacks include smear campaigns, sexual violence, online abuse, and repression for daring to challenge.
These are not isolated incidents, but are rather outcomes of the same underlying drivers Feminists and women’s rights movements have been saying it for years: climate justice is gender justice, an issue that again came to the fore at COP30 in Belém, Brazil
A Framework Emerges in Belem
Dubbed the COP of Implementation, Truth, and many other titles, one of the key targeted outcomes of COP30 was the development a new Gender Action Plan. While it was not strongly featured in the headlines, the Beléem Gender Action Plan proved critical in ensuring that gender equality remains central to climate action conversations and implementation.
The Plan is a guiding framework that sets out actions across five priority areas: capacity building, knowledge management and communication; gender balance, participation and women’s leadership; coherence; gender-responsive implementation and means of implementation; and monitoring and reporting. At its core, the Plan seeks to ensure that climate policies and processes meaningfully advance women’s full, equal, and effective participation and leadership at every level.
The Plan follows the Enhanced Lima Work Programme and its Gender Action Plan. Running from 2026 to 2034, the Plan agreed to in Belém strengthens support for national gender and climate focal points while driving progress on gender-responsive budgeting and climate finance. The framework weaves gender equality across all pillars of climate action: from mitigation and adaptation to finance, technology, capacity-building, and transparency. It increases the number of activities from 20 to 27 and includes new deliverables across the five priority areas.
Resistance and Progress
In a time where multilateralism is tainted by power diplomacy and anti-gender backlash, and in the context of the dominance of many socially conservative Petro-States at the talks, it is a significant that countries were able to agree to a Plan. However, this doesn’t mean that the negotiations were free from anti-gender discourse. In the lead-up to COP30, some states pushed to define gender as “biological sex” as they expressed concerns over the inclusion of trans and non-binary persons in the negotiation text. Paraguay, Argentina, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, as well as the Holy See, expressed concern that recognition would set a “harmful precedent”. The term gender remained in the text, but the fight revealed how fragile progress remains.
Other compromises were less visible but equally troubling. The Women and Gender Constituency pointed out that “foundational human rights language” that features in the enhanced Lima Work Plan preamble was absent from the Belém Gender Action Plan. The word “intersectionality”, which recognises that women, girls and gender diverse individuals face unique experiences of climate change due to interlocking systems of oppression that increase their vulnerability to the impact of climate change, did not make the text. Instead, negotiators settled for “ acknowledg(ing) that differentiated impacts of climate change and opportunities for all women and girls are shaped by “multidimensional” factors
Despite these limitations, the Plan includes provisions that could shift how we understand and address climate impacts on women and girls. It requires countries and relevant organisations to submit findings from national assessments on health, violence against women and girls, and care work in the context of gender and climate. This much needed development will plug the evidence gap in many countries. Without data, policymakers can ignore the problem or design interventions that miss the mark. This information will support accountability and could generate the evidence needed to develop policies that meet women and girls’ practical and strategic needs.
The Plan also breaks new ground by explicitly addressing the safety of women environmental human rights defenders. It tasks countries and relevant organisations, ranging from grassroots to UN agencies, to deliver workshops on barriers to women’s leadership and develop guidelines that protect women environmental human rights defenders at all levels. The mention of these defenders in the text signals that their work is essential.
From Paper to Action
The Belém Gender Action Plan comes into effect next year. As with many of the action plans shaping different tracks of climate negotiations, the Plan requires adequate finance. In this moment, states that are already required to provide climate finance must ensure that the Plan is well-resourced. This includes support to developing countries like Zimbabwe and those in Southern Africa, to fund the implementation their national Gender Action Plans.
Gender responsive climate action cannot be built on goodwill alone. The Belem GAP imperfectly showcases the link between climate and gender-based violence. However, climate-induced violence cannot only be addressed through statements or diplomacy alone. It demands resourcing, collaboration, and the full and meaningful leadership of women, girls and gender diverse individuals.
** Chido Nyaruwata is an African feminist researcher, photographer and founder of Flames and Lilies Climate Initiative.
