UNSW academics explain why COP30 must not overlook the power of grassroots and community-based responses – especially with the health impacts of climate change. Across Indigenous communities, including in Australia and the Pacific, women are leading responses to the intersecting crises of climate change and health inequity. Climate change intensifies existing gender, health and care inequities – from heightened maternal and reproductive health risks to food insecurity, unpaid care, displacement, and gender-based violence. Climate solutions must be systemic, culturally grounded and led by those most affected. Women's health is central to climate resilience, and policy needs to be shaped through inclusive, participatory, locally led processes.
For Indigenous women, climate, health and gender are understood through relational obligations to Country, kin, community, and to the wellbeing of future generations. These relational frameworks shape long-standing practices of care, governance, and land stewardship that are essential for global climate policy.
With COP30 underway in Brazil, delegates must advocate for outcomes that recognise the vital role of Indigenous peoples, and especially women, in climate solutions and the critical correlation between gender, climate and health. It is essential to recognise that while many Indigenous women live in the Global South, their identities, rights and knowledges are distinct and meaningful climate action must honour their cultural authority and place-based expertise.
Women experience greater health impacts than men
The sustained impact of climate change, coupled with the increased frequency of extreme weather events, has a devastating effect on human health and the systems in place to deliver healthcare. These impacts are not gender-neutral, they magnify existing inequalities and intensify the impact on those with less power, voice, resources and agency. Violence against women, children, and other structurally marginalised groups increases exponentially during environmental extremes and events, and gendered health impacts persist long after the catalyst environmental event. This includes the impact of waterborne and vector-borne diseases from storms and flooding, sustained heat-related injury from extreme temperatures and a lack of access to safe drinking water, respiratory illnesses from pollution and bushfires, and malnutrition from food and water insecurity. Catering to both the acute and chronic care needs of communities during environmental extremes puts high strain on already fragile health systems and local communities that depend on them.
Indigenous-led organisations across Australia and the Pacific provide culturally grounded, community-driven models that strengthen resilience and demonstrate the proactive leadership of Indigenous women in navigating these complex health impacts. These models highlight Indigenous women's innovation in designing integrated climate-health responses rather than merely adapting to external pressures.
Climate change is widening the gendered economic inequity gap
In many countries and communities, women are responsible for providing basic household needs – food, water, and fuel – through subsistence agriculture, animal husbandry, and forest management. However, rapid biodiversity loss, drought, floods and land degradation are making the provision of food, water and fuel more dangerous for women, as well as more time-consuming and complex. Women require more time and energy to gather resources for their families and communities as these resources become scarcer.
Exacerbating this situation is the fact that in the Global South, many women rely on traditional energy sources such as kerosene, oil and biomass for cooking and heating. This means they're exposed more often to the harmful health effects of these polluting energy sources. Indigenous women and their families are often further impacted due to conflict over land and territory, including due to poaching, or oil and gas interests, meaning their time and energy are expended on multiple fronts. Women's caregiving responsibilities are also exacerbated during and after climate crises, which further limits their access to paid work. Despite these pressures, Indigenous women continue to assert sovereignty, protect ecosystems, uphold cultural governance of land and water, and drive community-led solutions. Their leadership is proactive, intergenerational and central to climate stability.
Including Indigenous communities and women builds resilient, sustainable communities
Climate solutions too often aren't shaped by those most at risk, nor informed by those with the most lived experience to contribute. A gender-just, equity-driven transition is vital to ensuring resilient, sustainable communities. This means integrating an Indigenous, gender and health equity lens into climate policies and solutions, promoting green health and care jobs, investing in health and care infrastructure and human resource capacity, committing to just finance and tax systems, funding vital research, and ensuring that Indigenous women and women on the frontline of the climate crisis are represented at climate forums. Representation must move beyond symbolic inclusion toward shared decision-making and recognition of Indigenous knowledge systems as essential to global climate governance. This is an urgent need and a unique opportunity for COP30 delegates to help achieve a just transition that supports people and our planet.
About us:
Keziah Bennett-Brook is a Torres Strait Islander woman and Director of Guunu-maana (Heal) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Program at The George Institute for Global Health, UNSW Sydney.
Dr Laura Downey, Program Lead, global program for Universal Health Coverage (UHC), Conjoint Senior lecturer, UNSW Sydney, Advanced Research Fellow, Imperial College London, UK, PhD
Dr Jane Sloane is the Inaugural Director of the Global Policy Initiative at UNSW Sydney and Canberra. She is part of the COP30 virtual delegation and an international leader on gender equality and climate justice, with expertise in inclusive policy design and advocacy frameworks for equitable climate action.
