"As an African American grandmother and mother, I am appalled that the EPA is abandoning its duty to protect everyone's public health and welfare by revoking the endangerment finding," Almeta Cooper of Moms Clean Air Force told CG.
There's a whole lot going on around the world: This weekly brief from Climate, Gendered isn't intended to be exhaustive but rather your chance to spend just a few moments on a handful of items with the potential to disproportionately impact over half the global population — plus, the ideas that might make a difference.
Note: Some details in this week's coverage of potential reproductive health care and outcomes surveillance at a water treatment facility may be upsetting for some readers.
Last Thursday, CG covered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's repeal of its own 2009 "endangerment finding." The scientific determination — still widely supported by researchers — provided the foundation for the EPA's authority to regulate planet-warming pollution.
That week, multiple state chapters of the advocacy group Moms Clean Air Force, which aims to fight air pollution while championing maternal and child health, condemned the EPA's decision. Field organizers in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Arizona spoke out.
CG followed up with Almeta Cooper, National Manager for Health Justice at Moms Clean Air Force, about why the organization has been vocal on this issue.
"As an African American grandmother and mother, I am appalled that the EPA is abandoning its duty to protect everyone's public health and welfare by revoking the endangerment finding," Cooper told CG via email.
"Tackling climate pollution has been a part of the EPA's main responsibilities under both Republican and Democratic administrations," Cooper continued, noting that the Clean Air Act dates back to bipartisan enactments in the 1970s. "The EPA’s radical reversal in fighting climate pollution is not based on science, doesn’t protect public health, and puts everyone’s health in danger now and in the future!"
Cooper said that the reversal ignores the disproportionate effects of emissions like tailpipe pollution on Black, Brown, and low-income communities and instead privileges the interests of oil companies and industrial polluters. But, she told CG, Moms Clean Air Force has mobilized to address the issue — and the organization isn't alone.
The group is organizing, she said, with more than 205 national and local organizations to demand that the U.S. Congress hold EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin accountable "for corrupting the EPA's mission."
Even as funding and further regulations are rolled back, Cooper said that millions of mothers, fathers, and caregivers "are not giving up or giving in." In some cases, that may involve legal action.
Abigail Dillen, the president of the environmental law nonprofit Earthjustice, said in a press release last week, "Earthjustice and our partners will see the Trump administration in court" over the endangerment finding. This week, a "coalition of health and environmental groups" sued the administration over the rollback, according to a release from the Center for Biological Diversity.
And while perhaps not immediately related to the repeal, at this week's coordinated protests against "sportswashing" at stadiums across the U.S., where teams play while being sponsored by fossil fuel companies, one 83-year-old mother held a sign asking, "Did You Know There Is a Climate Crisis?" according to Climate-Colored Goggles.
"In addition to the demand for oversight at Congressional public hearings, Moms continue to show up to give testimony, to sign petitions, and to talk with their friends and neighbors to encourage them to do the same," Cooper told CG.
"For example, Moms members support the nation's nearly 25 million school children being transported in clean energy electric school buses to protect our children and their bus drivers from the harms caused by diesel-powered buses and their tailpipe pollution that is known to be cancer-causing."
As for individual car and truck use, a proposal from the Trump administration to roll back fuel efficiency standards — which Copper has also spoken to — poses another hurdle for those working to curb planet-warming pollution.
While automaker Ford is part of the industry alliance backing this plan, its reported efforts to make electric vehicles a little more affordable could help improve equitable access to cleaner transportation down the road. It could also model some of the steps companies might take to broaden the clean energy transition outside of government decisions.
"Women and girls bear disproportionate health and safety risks, including physical burns, contact with contaminated waste, and exposure to toxic emissions from plastic combustion," Chizoba Obianuju Oranu, a researcher at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, told CG about the hazards of plastic waste being used as a household fuel.
Oranu is a co-author of a recent study on the prevalence of the practice, which lead author Bishal Bharadwaj has said "is far more widespread than anyone realized." But both Oranu and Bharadwaj told CG there are promising paths for addressing the issue impacting communities experiencing inequitable access to cleaner energy and trash clean-up.
"Often access to clean energy and improvement of waste management are considered different aspects of development, and efforts are siloed," Bharadwaj told CG about one of the problems underlying the prevalence of plastic waste being used as a household fuel. But this also points to a potential solution: Agencies that integrate clean energy access with safe trash management could help improve public health, reduce emissions, and tidy litter.
Unusually heavy rainfall triggered devastating floods in Malawi at the end of 2025 and the start of 2026. In Nkhotakota District alone, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said last week, at least 49,104 people were affected by the floods while at least 12 died and 10,912 were displaced into 14 camps.
Among the many challenges in crisis settings is access to menstrual care. According to The Sunday Times, a regional newspaper, multiple camps lacked sufficient bathroom facilities and period products. The outlet reported that Wilson Moleni, the Commissioner of the country's Department of Disaster Management Affairs — or DoDMA — acknowledged that relief kits did not include menstrual supplies and said it would consider including these items in the future.
CG asked the international humanitarian organization CARE about how emergency kits like the kind it assembles might help to meet this need.
Moleni met with CARE Malawi back in December and reviewed the organization's kits. The organization shared about the meeting on social media in a post that showed Moleni exploring the contents of the Emergency Contingency Plan packages, or ECPs.
Just a few weeks later, CARE Malawi also posted about supporting flood-affected residents of camps in Nkhotakota by distributing 250 of the kits, which contained "shelter materials such as tarpaulins and ropes, household essentials including kitchen utensils and a makeshift cookstove, and sanitation and hygiene items like soap, water treatment solutions, collapsible pails and jugs, and sanitary wear for women."
Pamela Kuwali, CARE Country Director in Malawi, told CG that these sanitary items included reusable pads, disposable pads, and underwear, but, as reported by The Sunday Times, need outstripped demand, with thousands of families displaced.
"While menstrual hygiene is often acknowledged in humanitarian settings, it is not always addressed adequately or prioritized at the same level as other relief items, despite being essential for dignity, health, and protection," Kuwali said via email. "CARE is working to close this gap by providing comprehensive packages that include multiple essentials women and girls need when households lose everything during floods or other shocks."
Lack of access to safe menstrual care can heighten the risks of infection, stigma, and harassment. These hazards underscore the importance of expanding post-disaster access.
"Scaling up would involve expanded procurement and pre-positioning of menstrual products, dedicated funding for dignity kits, stronger needs assessments that capture menstrual health requirements, and coordinated engagement with government and partners to ensure wider coverage and sustained support beyond initial emergency distributions," Kuwali explained.
With DoDMA aware of recent unmet needs and with Moleni saying the department would consider integrating menstrual supplies into disaster response, those actions may not be far off in Malawi.
"Discussions have been held on strengthening and expanding emergency response packages like the one CARE has curated, and DoDMA has been very supportive of more comprehensive, gender-responsive approaches to disaster recovery," Kuwali noted. "However, as is often the case in large-scale emergencies, resource availability and funding constraints remain a key challenge in scaling up these supplies to meet the full level of post-disaster need across affected communities."
CG reached out to DoDMA about what it would take for menstrual supplies to be incorporated more comprehensively into government disaster response but had not heard back at the time of publication.
On February 13, authorities announced the discovery of human fetal remains at a water treatment facility in Sumter County, South Carolina. On February 17, the country coroner said the gestation of the fetus appeared to have been around 13 to 15 weeks. As Abortion, Every Day pointed out, "a fetus or embryo that early on in pregnancy has no ability to breathe."
An investigation remains ongoing, according to local news outlet WLTX, which also reported that the Sumter County Sheriff's Office has solicited the public for information about the situation. South Carolina currently enforces, with limited exceptions, a six-week abortion ban, and authorities there and in some other states have previously investigated suspected self-managed abortion.
Though this case may have been the result of a miscarriage, FOX Carolina News reported that local anti-abortion group Pro-Life Greenville called on state lawmakers this week to pass House Bill 5067. The bill would "require the Department of Environmental Services to conduct testing for urinary metabolites in certain wastewater treatment facilities," ostensibly with the goal of testing for abortion medications or indications of abortion.
CG asked the Guttmacher Institute for its take on the situation, given the research and policy organization's analysis suggesting that anti-abortion groups and lawmakers have been working to leverage water regulations — not based on evidence of environmental harm — to monitor and potentially restrict abortion across the U.S.
Candace Gibson, Director of State Policy at Guttmacher, told CG in a statement that the organization could not "comment on the specifics of an ongoing investigation." She continued, "Assertions framed as environmental concern must not distract from the well-documented and dangerous contaminants that have long threatened water systems particularly for Black and Brown communities, including industrial and agricultural byproducts."
Gibson said the "surveillance and politicization" of "people’s decisions about pregnancy and miscarriage care" is part of a trend her organization has been tracking.
"Allowing so-called 'environmental protection' to become yet another tool to monitor and control pregnant people’s bodies is deeply concerning. Environmental protection should never be weaponized to stigmatize people's pregnancies or to undermine access to essential health care."
In addition to calls for legislation passage, recent events in South Carolina show how otherwise essential environmental mechanisms, such as water treatment, can be sites of surveillance and possibly policing of reproductive care and outcomes.
Official policies across Pacific countries may be leaving women out of key climate adaptation strategies and the benefits they can bring.
Nature-based solutions — or NbS, which leverage nature itself to reduce the risks of rising global temperatures — have been championed in recent years by researchers, policymakers, and funders as approaches with the potential to drive real change. They can include installing living shorelines to mitigate coastal erosion, restoring wetlands to reduce flooding, and conserving mangroves to protect biodiversity, buffer against encroaching waters, and sequester carbon.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, NbS can provide "one third of climate mitigation needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement." As such, these activities can take up a considerable portion of adaptation planning.
But researchers Will Smith, of Plan International Australia, and Kirstin Kreyscher, of Deakin University, conducted a systematic review of 14 national adaptation plans and related policies for countries across the Pacific and say their results show women could be "sidelined by this NbS agenda."
That's what they recently wrote at Devpolicy Blog, where they suggested this could happen in part because institutions aren't aware of many NbS efforts women have already been driving informally in their communities. CG asked Smith and Kreyscher about the research they say is needed to address these knowledge gaps.
"Obviously, this information exists within communities but because this knowledge isn’t formally authorized by Western scientific institutions in the form of peer-reviewed papers or research projects, it’s difficult to draw into policy development processes," the researchers told CG via email.
Leaving gender out of NbS policies risks duplicating efforts or invisibilizing preexisting projects and leaders. It could mean critical initiatives lack the expertise and decision-making that women and other marginalized groups can provide. It could mean these same groups miss out on career and funding opportunities.
CG asked Smith and Kreyscher what it would take for governments and other institutions to learn more about NbS organizing already powered by women across the Pacific. They said long-term investment is key.
"Currently, knowledge gaps are often addressed reactively, relying on short-term consultancies and rapid production of outputs that neglect the critical aspects of evidence generation," the researchers said. "This approach fails to produce a high-quality, long-term evidence base, nor does it foster a multi-stakeholder research agenda and local capacity building necessary for decolonial, ethically sound research in the Pacific."
While Smith and Kreyscher advocate for the inclusion of women in regional climate policies, regional bodies are advocating for girls to pursue climate careers too.
"Every cyclone, every flood, and every drought reminds us that science saves lives," Patricia Mallam of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme recently told the Samoan Observer.
"We need Pacific women and girls at the centre of that work. We need smart, courageous women leading in hydro-meteorology, climate, fisheries, and disaster response — not watching from the sidelines, but designing the forecasts, making the calls, and shaping the decisions that keep our families and villages safe."
Previous research has indicated that exposure to air pollution may be associated with higher obesity risks, including in women as well as in children born to mothers exposed during pregnancy.
Now, a study of Korean adults published in the February issue of Obesity Facts suggests that exposure to particulate matter pollution 10 micrometers and smaller — or PM10 — and sulfur dioxide "is associated with increased visceral fat and a higher visceral-to-subcutaneous fat ratio, particularly in men."
According to a 2024 description from Harvard Health Publishing, visceral fat is "found in the spaces surrounding the liver, intestines, and other organs." Increased amounts of this type of fat — versus subcutaneous fat, which is found just beneath the skin — has been linked to heightened risks of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
These risks are intertwined with additional air pollution risks and the hazards of climate change too. Sources of particulate matter and sulfur dioxide can include Earth-warming emissions from fossil fuel combustion. According to the California Air Resources Board, "PM10 also includes dust from construction sites, landfills and agriculture, wildfires and brush/waste burning, industrial sources, wind-blown dust from open lands, pollen and fragments of bacteria."
The good news is that efforts to mitigate this pollution — including a just clean energy transition and equitable electric vehicle scale-up — could benefit both human and planetary health. The study's co-authors wrote that their "findings underscore the importance of reducing air pollution exposure to promote better metabolic health." They also called for continued research "to explore this relationship across populations with diverse environments and lifestyles."
Past research has examined the relationship between air pollution exposure, obesity risks, and socioeconomic status.
One goal at Climate, Gendered is to bring a spotlight to the reality that proliferating pollution, increasing temperatures, rising seas, extreme weather, habitat loss, and more can uniquely and disproportionately impact girls, women, trans communities, and nonbinary people — especially those from communities of color, Indigenous people, disabled people, immigrants and displaced people, people experiencing poverty, and residents of low- and middle-income countries. We're also interested in the climate crises and concerns that can disproportionately affect men and boys.
This work cannot be done alone or in silos. We appreciate your feedback and observations. And please feel encouraged to share one way you noticed this week that climate and gender connect — and share CG with a friend.
"Immediate actions must include data collection and support for survivors, which should encompass mental health, medical, and legal services to ensure they receive justice," nonprofit leader Carine Jocelyn told CG about addressing gendered violence at the nexus of armed unrest, poverty, and climate.
"This decision is yet another example of the harmful sentiment that gender or 'social issues' are marginal or distractions," WEDO told CG about reports the treasury didn't contribute to the African Development Fund over climate, gender.
"Climate justice and social injustice are completely interlinked," said Isabel González Whitaker of Moms Clean Air Force during a virtual event focused largely on the actions of federal agents across the U.S. targeting immigrants and others.
"We stress the importance of including and recognizing the voices of women leaders as key actors within their communities," said Catalina Vargas, CARE's country director in Colombia, which borders Venezuela, in a statement to CG.
