A new study shows how the effects of climate change on income and adaptation in rural areas vary by gender, wealth and age. According to the latest FAO analysis, if climate change is not addressed, the gap in agricultural productivity and wages between women and men will widen greatly in the coming years.

Disproportionate effect

Climate change is disproportionately affecting the incomes of rural women, people living in poverty and older populations because their ability to react and adapt to extreme weather events is uneven, a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture (FAO) finds.

The Unfair Climate report highlights a stark reality: every year in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), women heads of households in rural areas suffer significantly greater financial losses than men. On average, female-headed households lose 8% more income to heat stress and 3% more to flooding than male-headed households.

This translates into a per capita reduction of US$83 due to heat stress and US$35 due to flooding, totaling US$37 billion and US$16 billion respectively across all LMICs.

If average temperatures were to rise by just 1°C, these women would face a staggering 34% greater loss of their total income compared to men. Given the significant differences in agricultural productivity and wages between women and men, the study suggests that, if not addressed, climate change will widen these gaps considerably in the coming years.

FAO analyzed socioeconomic data from over 100,000 rural households (representing more than 950 million people) in 24 LMIC countries. By integrating this information with 70 years of georeferenced daily precipitation and temperature data, the report examines how various climate stressors influence people's incomes, labor force and coping strategies, differentiation by wealth, gender and age.

Socio-economic status at risk

The impact differs not only by gender, but also by socio-economic status, according to the data. Heat stress, or overexposure to high temperatures, exacerbates income disparity among rural households classified as poor, who suffer a 5% higher loss ($17 per capita) than their better-off neighbors, and the figures for flooding are similar. Extreme temperatures, meanwhile, make child labor worse and increase unpaid work for women in poor households.

"Social differences based on location, wealth, gender and age have a strong but little understood impact on the vulnerability of rural populations to the impacts of the climate crisis. These findings highlight the urgent need to devote substantially more financial resources and political attention to the issues of inclusion and resilience in global and national climate action," said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu.

Indeed, barriers such as access to resources, services and employment opportunities affect the ability of rural populations to adapt and cope with climate change. For example, discriminatory rules and policies place a disproportionate burden on women for caregiving and domestic responsibilities, limit their land rights, prevent them from making decisions about their work, and deny them access to information, finance, technology, and other essential services.

Similarly, households headed by young people find it easier to find off-farm work opportunities in extreme weather conditions compared to older households. This makes their income less susceptible to these events.

Extreme weather also forces poor rural households to resort to maladaptive coping strategies. These may include reducing income streams, selling livestock and moving expenses from their farms. These actions, however, exacerbate their vulnerability to climate change in the long term.

Action must be taken

The report suggests that addressing these challenges requires targeted interventions to empower diverse rural populations to engage in climate adaptation measures.

The study finds that rural people and their climate vulnerabilities are barely visible in national climate plans. In the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) of the 24 countries analyzed in the report, only 6% of the 4,164 proposed climate actions mention women, 2% explicitly mention youth, less than 1% mention poor people and approximative 6 percent refers to farmers in rural communities.

Similarly, of the total climate finance targeted in 2017/18, only 7.5% went to climate change adaptation; less than 3 percent for agriculture, forestry and other land uses, or other agriculture-related investments; only 1.7 percent, worth about $10 billion, went to small-scale producers.

Agricultural policies also miss the opportunity to address gender equality and women's empowerment and intersecting vulnerabilities such as climate change. A review of agricultural policies in 68 low- and middle-income countries by the FAO last year found that about 80 percent of policies did not take women and climate change into account.

Among several policy highlights, the report calls for investment in policies and programs that address the multidimensional climate vulnerabilities of rural populations and their specific constraints, including limited access to productive resources. It also recommends linking social protection programs with advisory services that can encourage adaptation and compensate farmers for losses, such as cash-based social assistance programs.

Gender-transformative methodologies that directly challenge discriminatory gender norms could also address entrenched discrimination that often prevents women from exercising full agency over the economic decisions that affect their lives.

Inclusive climate action is embedded in the FAO Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan and the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-2031, where addressing the impacts of climate change is integrated into efforts to achieve the four best things: better production, nutrition better, a better environment and a better life for all.

Similarly, FAO's Global Roadmap for achieving SDG 2 without breaching the 1.5°C threshold states that gender inequalities, climate action and nutrition are simultaneous considerations, and actions must encompass these dimensions and promote inclusiveness for women, youth and indigenous peoples.

Other key findings of the report

● In an average year, poor households lose 4.4 percent of their total income to flooding compared to wealthier households.

● Temperature increase increases the dependence of poor households on climate-sensitive agriculture compared to that of non-poor households. A 1°C increase in average temperatures leads to a 53 percent increase in farm income of poor households and a 33 percent decrease in their off-farm income compared to non-poor households.

●Women who manage land are as capable as men of adopting climate-adaptive agricultural practices, but often lose more income and off-farm opportunities when exposed to extreme weather events. Each day of extremely high temperature reduces the total value of crops produced by women farmers by 3% compared to men.

●In an average year, youth-headed households see total income increase by 3% due to flooding and 6% due to heat stress compared to older households.

● Heat stress causes young rural households in low- and middle-income countries to increase their annual off-farm income by $47 billion compared to other households.

● Extreme temperatures push children to increase their weekly working time by 49 minutes compared to full-age adults, especially in the off-farm sector, closely mirroring the increase in women's workload.