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From
Ibukun Taiwo
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Published on
12.11.25
Why Gender Matters in Climate Security?
Climate change impacts are not gender-neutral and vary across population groups. Women, children, minority groups, refugees, the elderly, and people with disabilities face differential vulnerabilities linked to resilience and adaptive capacity to diverse shocks and hazards (Pradyumna et al., 2022). In regions reliant on agriculture, pastoralism, and fisheries, climate-induced shocks—such as erratic rainfall, droughts, and extreme weather—threaten food security, livelihoods, and the social fabric of communities.
The intersection of climate impacts with conflict, fragility, and instability further undermines community resilience and adaptive capacity, heightening risks of climate-induced displacement, resource scarcity, and competition over land, water, and energy. These threats interact with power dynamics, gender roles, cultural norms, and access to resources, decision-making, and basic services (UN DPPA, 2020).
Despite growing recognition of the need for gender-responsive and intersectional approaches, women, youth, and marginalized groups remain underrepresented in leadership and decision-making spaces. This limits the effectiveness of policies and programs that should reflect the differentiated needs and aspirations of frontline communities (UN Women, 2025). Yet, women and youth continue to demonstrate resilience and innovation, generating community-driven solutions and assuming leadership roles (UNDP, 2025).
Food, land, and water systems (FLWs)—through climate adaptation, agriculture-based livelihood programs, and agri-food system development—offer critical entry points for addressing gender inequalities and power imbalances. Likewise, women’s empowerment, social protection, and humanitarian programs can bolster climate resilience, foster peace, and strengthen social cohesion when designed with climate- and peace-positive considerations.
Introducing the Gender and Climate Security Training Module
In recognition of the importance of building clear, rigorous and practice-oriented connections between gender and climate-security, this training module aims to strengthen the capacity, skills, and knowledge of relevant stakeholders, including practitioners, program managers, and policymakers to address the gender, climate, peace, and security nexus.
The overall objective of this module is to enable participants to (1) design gender-responsive and socially inclusive climate-security interventions and (2) develop climate-resilient and peace positive social protection and gender equity strategies and programs in contexts where climate, peace, and security intersect. Through training, knowledge-sharing, and access to training resources, the project will equip relevant stakeholders with the necessary knowledge, tools, and resources to design inclusive and integrated responses, fostering justice and equity to promote resilience, social cohesion and peacebuilding.
Our Approach: How We Built the Module?
- Practical and evidence-based: Combines CGIAR Climate Security team’s research insights with hands-on learning tools to help participants turn concepts into real-world actions.
- Grounded in CGIAR research: Builds on the FOCUS Climate Security team’s research, tools, and innovations on gender, climate, peace, and security. Draws from fieldwork and partnerships in Kenya, Senegal, Guatemala, Honduras, the Philippines, and Jordan.
- Rooted in food, land, and water systems: Emphasizes agriculture-based livelihoods and climate-smart practices as entry points for women’s empowerment, gender equality, and community resilience.
- Solution- and practice-oriented: Uses real case studies and design exercises to help participants analyze what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve gender-responsive programs and policies.
- Participatory and engaging: Encourages active learning through group discussions, games, case studies, scenarios, visual materials, and creative expressions.
Inside the Module: What the Module Covers?
The module takes participants on a learning journey — from understanding the tenants of the gender–climate–security nexus to putting this knowledge into practice. Through a mix of concepts, frameworks, analytical tools, real-world case studies, and interactive games, participants explore how gender equality and social inclusion can be woven into climate action, peacebuilding, and resilience-building efforts. The following are the five components of the training module:
| Component | Description |
| 01 Conceptualizing the Gender–Climate–Peace Nexus | This foundational component introduces participants to the interconnections between gender dynamics, climate change, fragility, and peace. It unpacks key concepts—such as intersectionality, social inclusion, gender equality, gender equity, and gender transformation —while exploring how climate stressors reshape gender roles and responsibilities, power relations, and community cohesion across different contexts. |
| 02 Gender Analysis Tools and Frameworks
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Participants learn and apply practical tools—such as the Power Walk, Problem and Solution Trees, and the Vulnerability and Capacity Framework—to analyze inequalities, identify entry points for inclusion, and integrate gender perspectives into climate and peace programming. |
| Power Walk
The Power Walk is an interactive exercise that reveals how gender and intersecting identities shape people’s access, opportunities, and vulnerabilities. Participants take on different roles and experience inequality through movement and reflection. It helps uncover hidden biases and deepens understanding of intersectionality in climate, peace, and security contexts. Access the publication through this link. |
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| 03 Design and Planning Consideration for Programs, Practices, and Policies | This component focuses on translating analysis into action. Participants examine real and hypothetical cases to design inclusive, gender-responsive, and climate-resilient interventions, integrating social protection, humanitarian support, and livelihood strategies within programmatic interventions and broader policy frameworks, examining concrete design, planning and implementation considerations, successful lessons, and pitfalls. |
| 04 Case Studies and Scenario-Based Exercises | Through context-rich case studies drawn from diverse geographies, participants explore real-world challenges at the intersection of gender, climate, and security. Each scenario encourages collaborative problem-solving, critical reflection, and systems thinking to strengthen adaptive, inclusive, and locally grounded approaches. |
| Gender, Climate, and Security Case Studies
The case studies engage participants in analyzing real-world examples from diverse Global South contexts to explore the links between gender, climate, and security. Through group discussions, participants identify context-specific risks, vulnerabilities, and underlying inequalities faced by women and other marginalized groups. They then work together to propose practical, gender-responsive solutions and strategies to make climate and peace interventions more inclusive and effective. Access the publication through this link. |
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| 05 Interactive Games | Designed to make learning participatory and engaging, these interactive games foster empathy, teamwork, and reflection. They help participants internalize complex concepts—such as vulnerability, resilience, intersectionality, inclusivity and wellbeing—by simulating problem-solving and complex thinking in a dynamic, human-centered way. |
| Character Cards for Climate Security: A Gender-Responsive, People-Centered Training Tool
Character Cards merge art, storytelling, and research to build awareness and understanding on how climate risks, vulnerabilities, and resilience intersect and differ across gender, identity, and geography. The game features 12 characters—each portraying a unique lived experience shaped by climate, peace, security, and displacement contexts Access the publication through this link . |
How to use this training module?
- The Gender and Climate Security Training Module follows a modular or plug-and-play approach, allowing trainers to select and combine different components based on their specific objectives and audience. You can choose to use a single activity, such as a game, case study, or session, as a standalone resource, or mix and match several elements to design a full training agenda. This modular structure makes the toolkit easy to integrate into existing training activities and adaptable to a variety of learning settings.
- Each training resource—whether it’s the PowerWalk, the Climate Security Character Cards, or the Gender and Climate Security case studies—includes clear guidance on its training objectives, target audience, time requirements, and application steps. This structure helps trainers easily identify which tools best align with their specific training goals and participant needs.
Who is this module designed for?
A. Primary Users
The primary users of this module are facilitators and trainers engaged in designing and delivering capacity-building sessions, workshops, and trainings on:
- Climate security and resilience,
- Gender equality and social inclusion (GESI),
- Humanitarian, peacebuilding, and development programming.
B. Targeted Trainees
The targeted trainees include a broad range of professionals and practitioners working in climate-affected or fragile contexts, such as:
- Policymakers, government officials, and local authorities involved in climate adaptation, social protection, or local development planning.
- Program and project managers from international and local NGOs, UN agencies, and donor-funded initiatives.
- Practitioners and field staff engaged in humanitarian response, peacebuilding, or livelihood programming.
- Early-career researchers and analysts seeking to strengthen their understanding of gender-responsive and people-centered approaches to climate risk and resilience.
Looking Ahead
This module represents the first building block in an evolving capacity-building effort. Over the coming year, we plan to expand this body of work by developing additional training resources and complementary materials to enrich the Gender and Climate Security training module. This is an incremental and growing initiative—one that will continue to evolve.
Author: Salma Kadry, Climate, Peace, and Security Specialist, Alliance of Bioversity & CIAT
This work is being implemented by CGIAR researchers from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT and was carried out with support of the CGIAR Gender Equality and Inclusion Accelerator, and the Climate Action and the Food Frontiers and Security Science Programs. We would like to thank all funders who supported this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund: https://www.cgiar.org/funders/