The climate crisis is reinforcing the gendered and economic inequalities of care: who provides it, who receives it, and who bears the increased responsibilities.
WEDO developed this advocacy brief, Integrating Care into Global Climate Policy Processes: A Guide for Advocates, as part of our collective work in the Climate and Care: Knowledge for Action Collective.
The climate crisis is increasing the demand for care while damaging care systems and infrastructure, yet this reality remains largely invisible in climate policy and investment. The brief offers a practical roadmap for care advocates to engage in key climate policy processes — from NDCs and National Adaptation Plans to climate finance, just transition, and disaster risk reduction — and make the case for care as essential climate infrastructure.
Environmental degradation increases the demand for care as climate impacts drive worsened health outcomes, broader displacement, food and water insecurity, and the loss of livelihoods and economic opportunity, while simultaneously undermining the care systems and public services that sustain individual and community well-being. National and global climate policies can reinforce existing inequalities when they fail to recognize, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work (and reward and represent paid care work) by investing in strong care infrastructure. Integrating care into climate policy is a crucial matter of addressing gender, economic, and social inequalities in care burdens, and it is necessary for effective, equitable, and resilient climate action.
Therefore, care advocates play a critical role in shaping climate policy at the national, regional, and global levels. To influence climate policy, the care advocacy community does not need technical expertise in climate science, but to understand the policy processes that determine climate priorities, financing, implementation, and accountability. From the Sendai Gender Action Plan to National Adaptation Plans to the myriad of national health and just transition policies, pathways for care advocacy in climate policy processes are plentiful and vital.
This policy brief highlights the key climate policy spaces where care advocates can engage strategically alongside climate justice allies to ensure the recognition and integration of care across national and global policy arenas.
The Climate and Care: Knowledge for Action Collective
The Climate and Care: Knowledge for Action Collective is part of a broader approach by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to fund actionable, evidence-informed solutions to global challenges. Coordinated by Fundación Avina, the collective brings together six regional teams across the Caribbean, Latin America, East, Southern and Sub-Saharan Africa, North and West Africa, and Asia. Together, we ask the same underlying questions from different regional realities: how does climate change intensify care work, most of it unpaid and carried out by women and girls; how does care work, in turn, build climate resilience; and how can and should climate policies and financing recognize care work as foundational to climate infrastructure. WEDO supports the Collective via synthesis, global advocacy, and the development of policy resources.
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