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Climate

We believe that everyone has the right to live on a healthy planet.

A side profile of three women standing in a row and standing tall while resting their hands on wooden farm tools. They are standing in a green field full of crops on a sunny day.

Our 2030 Goal: 25 million poor and marginalized people, particularly women and girls, have strengthened their resilience and adaptive capacities to the effects of climate change and are contributing to the energy transition.

The scale and the urgency of the global climate crisis demands an augmented effort by CARE to promote climate justice to tackle the gendered consequences of climate change and the drivers causing it.

CARE knows climate change exacerbates existing inequalities; it has a disproportionate impact on women and girls because of the roles and tasks that they are assigned and the discrimination they face. In the event of a disaster, the risk of death is higher among women and children than among men. However, women are also on the frontline when it comes to combating climate change, demanding justice and adapting to its consequences.

The climate crisis jeopardizes the benefits and progress already made in addressing the injustice of poverty and gender inequalities in communities where CARE works. It also increases the need to respond to ever more urgent humanitarian needs. This has tremendous impact on CARE’s efforts to overcome poverty and social injustice.

132

million

additional people may be pushed into poverty by climate change by 2030

It is estimated that climate change may push an additional 132 million people into poverty by 2030. Strengthening the resilience of the poorest and most marginalized people, especially women and girls, while building their capacities to adapt, becomes more pressing every day. At the same time, countries most responsible for causing changes to our climate must commit to a stronger, zero-carbon future.

This transition must lead us to climate justice. For CARE, this is about a future in which the poorest and most marginalized people have improved their wellbeing significantly and can enjoy their human rights due to increased resilience to climate change, increased equality, and a limited rise in global temperature. In order to achieve this, CARE will work on three interconnected pathways to change:

  1. Increased capacities and assets for people of all genders
  2. Progress through policies and actions by powerholders in the global north and the global south
  3. Strengthened collective voice and action of civil society, including social movements.

CARE-WWF Alliance

The CARE-WWF Alliance works at the critical intersection of development and conservation. The Alliance leverages complementary skills and competencies to address climate change challenges.

Learn more about the CARE-WWF Alliance

Program areas

Advocacy

Climate change poses the greatest threat to the most vulnerable, particularly women and girls, who are often the ones contributing the least to its escalation. The global climate crisis affects everything that CARE does and threatens our vision of a world of hope, tolerance and social justice where poverty has been overcome and people live in dignity and security. As the breadth and impact of the climate emergency are expected to worsen in the coming future, CARE must do all it can to ensure that our actions are part of a global, urgent, effective and equitable response.

Locally Led Adaptation & Resilience

To reduce people’s vulnerability to climate change, CARE focuses on building the adaptive capacity of individuals and communities: the capacity to adjust behaviors, practices, lifestyles and livelihood strategies in response to climate changes and its impacts. CARE’s approach to adaptation focuses on targeted community-based adaptation projects and integrating climate change adaptation into our work in climate-sensitive sectors. Adaptation is critical to protecting millions of poor and marginalized people who are at risk of losing their lives and livelihoods as a result of climate change.

Ecosystems and Nature-based Solutions

Climate change is having a huge impact on ecosystems and natural resources. Human practices are leading to massive deforestation, forest degradation, biodiversity loss and widespread natural resource depletion, destroying the natural buffer that once protected us from climate extremes. Paradoxically, the destruction of carbon sinks, such as forests and wetlands, is driving greenhouse gas emissions even higher. These two trends of climate change and environmental degradation are amplifying natural hazards, making the poorest even more vulnerable, and worsening inequalities.

Sustainable Livelihoods

Higher temperatures, erratic rainfall and increasing uncertainty pose significant challenges for food systems and small-scale food producers, eroding confidence in local knowledge of weather patterns and ecosystem services. Rising food and nutrition insecurity in the face of the climate emergency is a defining challenge of the 21st century. Food security encompasses the availability of food, access to nutritious food, stability of food supply, and good care, feeding, health and sanitation practices, and it conveys having consistent and affordable access to enough of the right kinds of food.

Gender Equality

In societies where people are discriminated against based on gender, ethnicity, class, and caste, being a man or woman is often a decisive factor in determining the levels of risk they face from climate change, extreme and uncertain weather, and changes in the environment and economy. Gender inequality is a root cause of poverty. Climate change, in turn, is making poverty worse. This means that the chances of achieving a better life for many women and girls are threatened by a double injustice: climate change and gender inequality.

Disaster Risk & Humanitarian Action

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme events, and this requires increased humanitarian assistance. 2019 saw more climate disasters than ever before, and out of the 33.4 million newly displaced people in 2019, 70% were due to climate-related disasters. Climate change can also aggravate existing larger-scale conflicts, and affects the dynamics of lower-scale communal violence. As a humanitarian organization, we need to address climate change as a driver of conflict, displacement and humanitarian needs.