The overarching recognition in all the literature is that climate change will have huge and largely detrimental impacts on vulnerable communities, and that gender will be a defining feature in shaping individuals’ experiences of adverse circumstances. However, there is to date little research on how actual and potential climate change impacts are and will affect women and men, on adaptive capacities at community or household levels, and on the ways in which gender and social differences are expressed in and reflected through inequalities and discrimination in
policies, institutions and practices.

What is crucial is to understand that even though climate change is often viewed as a purely scientific and technical phenomenon, it has profound implications for social justice and gender equality because the climatic stressors compounded by socioeconomic drivers of change will result in social, political and economic vulnerabilities of people and society, setting back development and destroying livelihoods.