Colliding Crises: How the climate crisis fuels gender-based violence

For decades, feminist and women's rights organizations and movements have pointed out that climate change exacerbates violence against women and girls (VAWG), and a range of studies have shown how these impacts slow progress across the Sustainable Development Goals, including on education, health, peace and security, and sustainability. It is also well documented that violence threatens women’s and girls’ agency and ability to drive climate action and solutions, and reduces our collective capacity to effectively fight the climate crisis.

This brief aims to spark conversation and collaboration across climate and VAWG actors to end violence against women and girls as a foundational – and urgent – part of the climate action agenda. Specifically, it:

● synthesizes the best available evidence on how climate change is exacerbating VAWG and introduces a quantitative perspective of the scale of impacts 

● sheds light on overlooked forms of violence that threaten progress on climate change, especially violence that seeks to silence women environmental human rights defenders

● shows how ending VAWG is critical to effective climate action and a just transition

● offers ideas on how climate and VAWG actors can better work together