Climate change has been on the environmental agenda since the mid-1980s and has risen to become a global priority. It is widely accepted that women and men will be differently affected by climate change and it is in that context that debates regarding identification of gender perspectives and the involvement of women in addressing climate change have arisen.

It is believed that men and women will be faced with different vulnerabilities to climate change impacts due to existing inequalities such as their roles and positions in society, access to resources and power relations that may affect the ability to respond to the effects of climate change. It has therefore become important to understand and highlight the interrelations between climate change and gender so as to design effective climate change policies.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation commissioned four case studies to examine the interrelations between climate change and gender so as to make a contribution to the creation of information on the gender differentiated impacts of climate change. It is hoped that these studies will contribute to the ongoing discourse on climate change and underline the urgent need to pay closer attention to the role of gender when responding to climate change.

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