CARE and our partners support communities to adapt to climate change by strengthening local solutions, reducing inequality, and advancing resilience — especially for women and girls.
Typhoons ravage countries across Asia. Hurricanes devastate communities in the Caribbean. Heatwaves and wildfires scorch North America and Europe. Drought grips parts of Africa and the Middle East. Floods overwhelm cities across South America.
Climate change is everywhere. It affects everyone and everything.
It shapes how we grow food, earn a living, travel, and build our homes. In many places, it shapes whether people can survive at all.
But climate change is not only destructive. It is also deeply unfair. Its impacts fall first and hardest on the people least responsible for the crisis, especially women and girls.
Nearly half of the world’s population, more than 3 billion people, live in places highly exposed to climate risks. These are the same communities that have contributed the least to climate change.
This injustice shapes CARE's approach. Climate considerations run through all our work, from emergency response to health, livelihoods, and long-term development. They also strengthen our commitment to put women and girls at the center of climate solutions. Climate justice and gender equality must move forward together.
CARE aims to support 25 million poor and marginalized people, especially women and girls, to adapt and become more resilient to climate change.
Why climate change impacts women and girls the most
Climate change deepens existing inequalities.
Farmers lose their harvests as weather patterns shift. People living in fragile homes are often the first to lose everything after storms or landslides. Families without savings are forced to rebuild from nothing after disasters.
By 2030, climate change could push more than 130 million people into poverty. It is already a major driver of crises worldwide and increasingly shapes all areas of CARE’s work.
Because women and girls face greater risks even before disasters strike, they are often hit hardest when climate shocks occur. Climate change intensifies hunger, poverty, violence, and harmful gender norms. We see this across contexts:
The conclusion is clear: addressing climate change also means advancing gender equality.
What CARE and partners do to address climate change
CARE International and our local partners help communities, especially women and girls, to build resilience and address the root causes of climate change.
We lead and coordinate climate action across CARE in three main ways:
Strengthening communities' capacities
We ensure all CARE and partners’ programs consider both current and future climate risks.
We:
- Support farmers to use climate-smart techniques, like growing crops that tolerate shifting weather
- Help families build stronger houses that are more resistant to disasters
- Highlight how climate change impacts, like food and water shortages, can increase violence against women and girls.
- Develop nature-based solutions to protect coastlines and support women’s livelihoods like mangrove restoration in Bangladesh
- Work with communities to restore land, protect water sources, and manage natural resources in ways that strengthen resilience to climate change impacts.
A CARE-wide tool we use to assess and understand climate risk and resilience is the CARE Climate Resilience Marker.
Influencing policies and amplifying voices
Helping people adapt to climate change’s impact is only half of the work. We also need to tackle its root causes.
This means advocating for policies that reduce global warming and protect people facing the worst impacts. The biggest polluters, especially wealthier countries, must act faster. We engage with them in global forums, including the annual UN climate negotiations (COP). Learn more here.
Building knowledge and skills
Knowledge is key to action. CARE shares our learnings with all those working alongside us to tackle the causes and consequences of climate change.
This is why we created the CARE Climate & Resilience Academy, an e-learning platform that helps humanitarian and development workers integrate climate change and adaptation into their programs, policies, and everyday decision-making.
Learn more here.
Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations
CARE International, represented by our Climate Justice Center, is a signatory to the Climate and Environment Charter, and sits on the board of the Climate Charter - Sign the Charter.
Together, we work to strengthen climate commitments across the humanitarian sector and drive collective action.
The CARE Climate Justice Center (CJC) is an initiative powered by CARE Denmark, CARE France, CARE Germany, CARE Netherlands, and CARE International UK. Click below to learn more.
