Equitable survival: Climate action needs to be gender just
The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled in favour of KlimaSeniorinnen (Senior Women for Climate Protection), an association of more than 2,000 Swiss women, all above the age of 64, who had filed a case against the Swiss government for its failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions, which has put them at a greater risk of dying during heatwaves because of their age and gender. The ruling made the Swiss government accountable for violating its citizens’ Right to Life and Health, and created a binding legal precedent for all 46 countries that are part of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Swiss government, however, argued that decisions on climate policy should be taken by democratically-elected lawmakers, not by courts. The world has been warming up at an average rate of about 0.2° Celsius per decade since the late 1970s.
Europe has emerged as a major climatic hotspot, almost 1° Celsius worse off than the corresponding global increase. A study in Europe that assessed the sex-and age-specific mortality burden during a period of record-breaking temperatures from 30 May to 4 September 2022 found a spike in heat-related deaths in older age groups, especially of women.
A 2014 study in India revealed that more women than men died during a 2010 heat wave in Ahmedabad, when temperatures reached 47.8° Celsius and heat-related hospital admissions of newborns went up by 43%. Arsht-Rock research work in India, Nigeria and the US has forecast that heat could claim the lives of 204,000 women annually across these three countries alone by 2050.
In India, in an extremely hot year, the toll may go up to 131,000, which would be about 1.1% of total deaths. The Swiss ethnologist Elisabeth Stern, an active member of the
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