"Abortion care must be explicitly included in climate and disaster response frameworks as a core health service," researchers Tamara Fetters of Ipas and Ruvani Jayaweera of Ibis Reproductive Health 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.
Last month, CG spoke with Iranian-Canadian journalist Nik Kowsar about how a years-long drought has been exacerbating a man-made water crisis in Iran, with disproportionate impacts on women and girls. As the government brought a deadly crackdown on protesters demonstrating against economic disaster across the country in recent weeks, some have pointed to ecological collapse as one driver of the unrest.
"Economic and environmental grievances are inseparable when your tap runs dry and your crops die," Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, told Inside Climate News.
According to CNN, at least 2,400 protesters have been killed. United States President Donald Trump had threatened to intervene but told reporters on Wednesday night that he's now been told the killing "is stopping — it’s stopped — it’s stopping," the Guardian reported.
CG reported last week on how the energy- and water-hungry operations powering the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok to nonconsensually "nudify" images of women and minors on the social media platform X could also be polluting the planet. Since then, Malaysia and Indonesia became the first countries to block access to the chatbot while actions advanced in the U.S. Now, X says it is restricting related uses of Grok "in those jurisdictions where it's illegal."
Investigations into the situation have also been launched in the United Kingdom and the state of California, while the U.S. Senate passed, in a bipartisan effort, a bill to enable victims to sue over such deepfakes. The bill next goes to the House for a vote.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, announced this week that Grok would be a part of its network.
On Wednesday, before X announced updated restrictions, a coalition of advocacy groups called on Apple and Google to remove Grok and X from app stores.
In December, CG spoke with the Guttmacher Institute about how proposed water policies — not based on evidence of environmental harm — could impact access to medication abortion in the U.S. On Wednesday, Senator Patty Murray criticized the claims of contamination at a Senate committee hearing.
CG has previously reported on potential linkages between microplastics and reproductive health. If you caught the season premiere of the hit medical show The Pitt last week, you heard the topic come up.
Within the first 10 minutes, fictional emergency room physician Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch described how a plastic medical practice dummy would one day be "used to make Frisbees and water bottles and end up as microplastics in our brains and reproductive organs."
"Maine is poised to improve the safety and health of consumer goods in Maine and around the world," Emily Carey Perez de Alejo, executive director of local watchdog group Defend Our Health, told CG.
With a state ban on products containing intentionally-added per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — or PFAS — expanded to include 10 additional product categories as of January 1, the group is seeking to ensure the new rules are fully enforced. Exposure to certain "forever chemicals" has been linked to serious health conditions, including cancers and reproductive health concerns.
Among the consumer goods that may no longer be shipped to or sold in Maine stores are PFAS-containing cookware, cleaning products, cosmetics, and menstrual products. And while one aim of this and similar bans may be to protect local populations and ecosystems, another outcome down the line could be the reshaping of product manufacturing more broadly.
Now, Carey Perez de Alejo says, you can help in the effort — from home.
Findings published in The Lancet last May indicate that "displaced people seek abortion care at higher rates but face limited options and extreme risks from resorting to unsafe methods," according to a news release from Ipas, which led the research. The study focused on the refugee settlements of Bidibidi in Uganda and Kakuma in Kenya, where conflict "was the initial cause of … displacement," two of the co-authors, Tamara Fetters and Ruvani Jayaweera, told CG. But they also told CG that climate change could be a key compounding factor — and offer a framework to improve research.
"Disruptions in infrastructure, transportation, and refugee health systems resulting from the climate crisis have exacerbated insecurity and increased the need for safe abortion services," said Fetters and Jayaweera. "Our work shows that in crisis settings, people lack access to [World Health Organization]-recommended methods of abortion and resort to unsafe methods. Abortion care must be explicitly included in climate and disaster response frameworks as a core health service."
Ipas has said the study is the first to "estimate abortion incidence using respondent-driven sampling in a humanitarian context." The RDS method involves a small initial group of study participants referring others in their network to take part. An aim is to foster trust and build a participant group that reflects the experiences of people too often left out of essential research.
The researchers have published their framework for the method in BMJ Open.
The Borneo Post reported that firefighters rescued a woman and a girl from the Sangan Health Clinic in the island state of Sarawak. They used a "boat owned by a member of the public" to bring the two to safety after water levels rose following heavy rains — hardly the first time a borrowed vessel has been used for a flood mission.
In November, volunteers in Vietnam reportedly borrowed boats from residents to save hundreds from rising waters in a remote village. Last month, high schoolers in Washington state said they borrowed a boat to deliver sandbags to mitigate damage from the region's historic floods. In an example, perhaps, of lacking public infrastructure as well as community care, locally borrowed watercrafts — and the people who know how to use them — may be able to save lives.
While others at the Sarawak clinic declined rescue on Saturday, emergency centers have continued to fill as thousands in the area have been evacuated throughout the week.
As proliferating pollution intensifies extreme weather and rising seas, low-lying communities across Malaysia are under threat. In 2026, meanwhile, Sarawak is set to impose a carbon tax on "regulated facilities in the oil, gas, and energy sectors," with the proceeds funneled into a Climate Change Fund, according to the Sarawak Tribune.
The Trump administration announced on January 7 that the U.S. would be withdrawing from 66 international organizations and treaties, many focused on climate action and gender equity. The presidential memorandum identified the bodies — including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the United Nations Population Fund, which focuses on sexual and reproductive health — as "contrary to the interests" of the U.S. Organizations such as the Women's Environment & Development Organization have since spoken out.
"Rather than plundering the planet on behalf of a few, we recognize the clarion need to meet this crisis with collective action, and the obligation we have to contribute and collaborate in generating lasting solutions at every level of governance," WEDO wrote in a statement shared on LinkedIn.
The U.S. withdrawals may leave critical funding in question, a theme among related efforts over the past year. But some experts say the move to pull out of the UNFCCC in particular may be illegal.
In any case, Sue Biniaz, former State Department principal deputy special envoy for climate, told the Guardian, "Climate action won't stop because of the latest U.S. treaty withdrawal, either in the U.S. or globally."
Analysis from Oxfam indicates that the wealthiest 1% generated a huge amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide in just the first 10 days of the year, thereby exhausting their "annual carbon budget," according to a press release. Oxfam noted that those causing the least climate harm — "including communities in poorer and climate-vulnerable countries, Indigenous groups, women and girls" — are set to be the most impacted by the crisis. But the organization has recommendations for addressing the warming caused by the "super-rich."
Oxfam has called for increased taxes on the wealthiest people and on fossil fuel companies. It also wants to "punitively tax" if not outright ban highly polluting private jets and superyachts.
Restricting the luxury goods is hardly a new idea but potentially a very effective — and popular — one. Superyachts may emit as much carbon as entire nations.
"The UK government has a straightforward path to cutting carbon emissions and reducing inequality: Focus on the richest polluters," said Beth John, of Oxfam, in a statement. "By reining in the extreme carbon excesses of the super‑rich, world leaders can start to steer global climate efforts back on course and deliver meaningful benefits for both people and the planet."
According to the organization, the world's wealthiest 0.1% had exhausted their annual carbon budget by January 3.
In two social media posts last week, Inuvialuit model and content creator Willow Allen shared about the brutally cold weather and precarious energy issues impacting her home in Inuvik. In the town of about 3,000 in Canada's Northwest Territories, a main source of fuel is propane, according to CBC News. But as temperatures dropped to -40°F, blizzard conditions blocked propane trucks in transit.
Residents already experiencing some below-average temperatures were called on to stay safe but still reduce heating in homes and businesses to conserve energy. With help from highway crews, CBC reported, some propane had reached Inuvik as of earlier this week.
Mayor Peter Clarkson "blamed the dwindling propane supply on things such as the late freeze-up of the ice road crossing, as well as blizzard conditions," according to the outlet, but also said the gas company would have answers.
Residents were also asked to conserve energy by reducing oven use, limiting hot showers, and closing window blinds and drapes. Interestingly, in a 2021 publication in Discover Sustainability, the co-authors noted, "Women have higher responsibility in the household energy use in most societies," with women often tasked with managing the home. Meanwhile, high home energy costs reportedly disproportionately impact women.
Avery Colvert launched Altadena Girls with a single post on Instagram in the wake of the Los Angeles-area wildfires last January. As 19th News reported, the then-eighth-grader had already lost her family's Tennessee home to a flood when she saw her new California schoolmates losing their own to the unprecedented fires. But she noticed essential donations of food and water still left her peers without the items they needed to "feel confident and like themselves again," she wrote in her post, calling for personal care and beauty items. But Colvert didn't stop there.
Celebrities — including Paris Hilton — and more responded with donations. And since the fires ripped through L.A., Colvert, now 15, and her mother have opened the brick-and-mortar Altadena Girls as a community center that enables her peers to ask for what they want and need. "It's OK to say, 'I like this sweater instead of that one,'" Colvert told 19th News. "Girls are allowed to have opinions."
In a profile in Vogue in October, the teenager noted that supporting dignity entailed not only meeting basic needs but also self-expression. The community center now hosts not only personal care products but also events such as dance classes. And the impact of providing a gathering space after kids lost familiar homes can't be downplayed either.
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 non-binary 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 welcome with gratitude 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.
"Using the Earth's resources to power tools that facilitate violence against women is a clear case of environmental and social injustice," Brionté McCorkle, executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters, told CG.
"The world is waiting for the ideas generated by young women of the Himalayas," wrote scientists Durgesh Pant and Darshana Joshi in an op-ed published in the Garhwal Post.
"I hope I can be a little bit of proof to you that combining who you are and what you’re good at to fight for the change you want to see in the world works."
"We need to get this done for the younger generation."
