Gender, Climate, Security . . . and Mangroves!

Nov 16, 2023 | Marisa O. Ensor

Since the establishment of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda with the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000, climate change has become arguably the most pressing security issue of our time. UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ New Agenda for Peace (2023) devotes an entire section to the “climate emergency,” while references to women and gender dynamics are interwoven throughout the document. Among several additional causes for concern, he cautions that climate-induced sea level rising and coastal erosion constitute increasingly serious risks to coastal communities – including many of the world’s most populous cities – and an existential threat to many small island developing states (SIDS). Initiatives for mangrove conservation, vital to coastal defense and climate change mitigation more broadly, will be prominently featured at the upcoming Conference of the Parties (COP28), to be held in Dubai from 30 November until 12 December 2023  Across the world, women are playing a central role in protecting mangroves and building climate-resilient, food-secure coastal communities. Women’s unique challenges and contributions to mangrove management and coastal planning in the face of a changing climate nevertheless remain insufficiently understood and inadequately supported.

Linking WPS and Climate

While the links between climate change and gender are widely recognized, there has been until recently limited overlap between responses to the climate crisis and the WPS agenda. UN Security Council Resolution 2242, the eighth of the ten resolutions that currently comprise the WPS framework constitutes the first and thus far only one to explicitly acknowledge the relevance of climate change to the WPS agenda. Adopted in October 2015, this document links climate change to other processes shaping the global peace and security landscape including forced displacement, violent extremism, and pandemics. In considering this broader context, the UN Security Council reconfirmed its intention to increase attention to women, peace, and security as a crosscutting issue in all thematic areas.

Three years later, the October 2019 Annual Report of the UN Secretary-General on the WPS Agenda underscored the need for improved and immediate action to address the links between gender, climate change, and conflict. More specifically, it noted that “the global threat of climate change and environmental degradation is poised to exacerbate the already increasing number of complex emergencies, which disproportionately affect women and girls.” Most recently, the 2023 Report on the WPS Agenda similarly underscores that “the impacts of climate-related risks on peace and security have distinct gendered dimensions.”  Furthermore, these risks are not evenly distributed across the globe. Some ecosystems are known to be more vulnerable than others to the adverse effects of climate change, which significant consequences for the women and girls who inhabit them.

Referenced in this latest WPS report is a Thematic Review on Climate-Security and Peacebuilding. Commissioned by the UN Peacebuilding Support Office, this study highlights the peacebuilding benefits of meaningful participation and leadership of women and girls in climate change adaptation, mitigation, and natural resource management. It discusses the situation in three world regions: (1) Africa’s Liptako-Gourma subregion (Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso); (2) Yemen; and (3) several Pacific Islands (Kiribati, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu) that are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. These islands are extremely prone to flooding exacerbated by sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and tidal events, all of which cause saltwater intrusion and threaten already limited freshwater resources. The Tuvalu National Council of Women has long recognized the crucial role of mangroves in mitigating these threats, and the need for better coastal protection for Tuvalu and elsewhere in this Pacific region.

Women and Mangroves Building Resilience to Climate Change

Mangrove forests have been increasingly recognized as critical coastal ecosystems, are havens for biodiversity, and critical for climate action. These coastal forests are comprised of the only shrubs and trees that thrive in salty waters and improve water quality by filtering out nutrients and sediments. Mangroves extract up to five times more carbon than forests on land, incorporating it in their leaves, branches, roots, and the sediments beneath them. Mangroves absorb the impact of waves and act as a buffer zone, absorbing the impact of strong winds and reducing the vulnerability of coastal communities to damage and destruction caused by flood surges and other extreme weather events.

Mangroves are also teeming with life. They provide a vital home and breeding ground for sea creatures such as fish, oysters crabs and shrimps, as well as birds who use the shallow waters beneath mangrove trees as nurseries. Recent research by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) concludes that mangroves are also critical for larger mammals, such as monkeys, sloths, tigers, hyenas, and African wild dogs. Overall, more than 1,500 plant and animal species depend on mangroves, many of which are classified as Critically Endangered, Endangered and Vulnerable according to the Red List categories of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Beyond climate action, coastal protection, and biodiversity conservation, mangroves also help secure livelihoods and food security for communities around the world. Mangroves for the Future (MFF), an initiative co-chaired by IUCN and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is running mangrove restoration and sustainable development projects with gender integration as a core strategy in several Asian countries. Both women and men in coastal communities in Asia and elsewhere are often closely connected to their littoral ecosystems. Their relationships with mangroves – i.e., how they use the ecosystem; which mangrove products they choose; which benefits they obtain – tend to be gender-specific.

Attention to the different roles that women and men play in both mangrove ecosystems and the larger community is therefore essential in any conservation and climate action efforts in these regions. For women, some of the potential benefits of gender-responsive initiatives include expanded income-generating strategies, increased food and water security, improved health, education and capacity development, and enhanced leadership and governance opportunities.

A Call to Action

As the world seeks viable strategies to stop CO₂ levels from rising and slow the pace of climate change, protecting mangroves for their blue carbon value, among other ecosystem services, is key. However, mangroves are threatened worldwide, and  one-fifth of them have already disappeared. In fact, over the last 50 years, we have lost mangroves at rates higher than any other forest. The consequences of mangrove destruction, like most other dimensions of climate change, tend to be deeply gendered. The loss of mangrove forests often places the women who rely on these coastal ecosystems for their livelihood at risk of losing their autonomy, economic independence, and ability to pass on their traditional ecological knowledge and cultural wisdom.

The Global Mangrove Alliance in collaboration with the UN Climate Change High-level Champions, launched the Mangrove Breakthrough in November 2022 at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Responding to the need for a unified global approach towards mangrove conservation, this initiative “has the potential to sequester an estimated 43.5 million tons of CO₂ through mangrove biomass, and an additional 189 million tons of CO₂ in the soil.”  The United Arab Emirates (UAE), the host-country of COP28 in Dubai, has endorsed the Mangrove Breakthrough, and is scheduled to host a Mangrove Ministerial during Nature, Oceans, Land Use Day on 9 December. Fulfilling a pledge made at the COP26 conference in Glasgow in 2021, the UAE has made a commitment to plant 10 mangroves for every person attending COP28. By including more women as equal partners in every dimension of climate action in coastal regions and elsewhere, we can create a more sustainable and equitable future for all. As highlighted by the IUCN, gender equity is key to mangrove restoration, and thus essential for mitigating global climate change, and its negative impacts on peace and security.

Dr. Marisa O. Ensor is an applied environmental and legal anthropologist currently based at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) where she leads the portfolio on climate security.  She is also the current Chair of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association’s Gender Interest Group (“EnPAx-GIG”).