1/27/26, 4:03 PM
TRANSFORM News Magazine Issue 5
NEWS MAGAZINE
ISSUE 5 | DECEMBER 2025
SPECIAL EDITION! Gender Transformation & Climate Justice From the TRANSFORM Team Welcome to the TRANSFORM NEWS MAGAZINE’S themed issue on gender transformation in the context of climate justice. The impacts of climate change are deeply connected to gender inequalities. This is clear not only from feminist environmental research dating back decades, but also from what we heard directly from young people at the TRANSFORM sites when we were first developing the project. The conceptual links between climate justice and gender transformation are particularly obvious in climate vulnerable settings in the Global South, which face disproportionate burdens related to climate change, from drought to rising sea levels, and the increasing intensity of tropical storms. Despite bearing little responsibility in contributing to the causes of climate change, most of the TRANSFORM field sites are amongst the top climate vulnerable countries in the world (India, Mexico, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa). Patriarchal norms about livelihoods, land rights, marriage, and gender roles often mean that girls and women in the Global South are responsible for environmental management (e.g. collecting water, fetching firewood), but are not able to play a role in decision-making about resources. As many recent global reports and forums such as COP30 have highlighted, climate injustice is far from gender neutral. It is also increasingly evident that the ways in which young people experience climate change are gendered. Girls and young women in the Global South risk forced and early marriage, dropping out of school, and increased rates of sexual and genderbased violence (SGBV), and are also expected to make personal, social, and educational sacrifices and commitments to reduce the impact of climate change on their communities,. Recent studies on masculinities in climate vulnerable contexts point to the need for deeper understandings of how boys and men cope with and take action on climate injustice. There is tremendous potential for youth-led work to inform what it means to disrupt gender norms as an integral part of efforts to address climate injustice, dismantling the silos that separate research and activism related to the environment and to gender equity. We thank Blane Harvey, Shiqing Gong, and Shannon Weekes for organizing an amazing Transform Learning Series on Gender and Climate Justice and for leading the way in guest editing this issue of the TRANSFORM News Magazine.
https://e1.envoke.com/m/14c2f687f2ea740c45d66c4a57c397df/m/186c708bec648cd5ef5693307da1da83
1/17