"She said that in Nepal, people see them with that same limited perspective. They see them as Kinnar women with powers or as sex workers, but they don’t see them as whole human beings," said Abinash Bikram Shah, director of Elephants in the Fog, on how a Kinnar mother inspired the film.
Lagos Island residents who said persistent blackouts made it difficult to cope with intense heat took to the streets on Tuesday to call for improved electricity access in affected Nigerian communities.
Multiple regional news outlets reported that the demonstrations had been led largely by women and fueled by complaints that unpredictable power supply made it impossible to preserve food, stay cool, and sleep during heat waves.
"Give us light. The heat is killing us," many could be heard chanting, according to Pulse Nigeria, which noted that the protest reflects growing concerns about insufficient power generation and distribution across the state.
In response to a post on social media from Vanguard News featuring a video of the action, one viewer commented, "Only the people that [have] solar are functioning."
The Lagos Island demonstration comes just days after state officials urged residents to prepare for extreme heat supercharged by pollution, urbanization, and this year's Super El Niño weather pattern. A new report from the Climate Impact Lab found that the weather pattern could cause more than 31,000 additional heat-related deaths in Nigeria between September 2026 and February 2027.
Covering the Lagos demonstration, broadcast journalist Esther Nwankwo said on Nigeria Info FM this week, "I can only imagine how terrible it is for pregnant women right now … especially those that have crossed into the second trimester, third trimester."
Among the health risks linked to extreme heat exposure are preterm birth, stillbirth, low birth weight, and pregnancy hypertension. A recent Forbes report outlined strategies to help reduce these risks, including scaling up public heat education, integrating heat mitigation into maternal care, protecting health care providers from the heat themselves, and, of course, cutting down on the planet-warming emissions driving the climate crisis.
Global 50/50 has found that key climate and health monitoring networks are failing to comprehensively track sex and gender data. The new "Counted Out" report from the independent think tank suggests this oversight is leaving some of the world's most vulnerable populations neglected by the policymakers and funders who could improve their well-being.
Global 50/50 reviewed 211 indicators under four leading frameworks: the Belém Adaptation Indicators, the World Health Organization's Health and Climate Change Global Survey, the Global Climate and Health Alliance's Healthy NDC Scorecards, and the Lancet Countdown. Its audit found that the vast majority "[failed] to see sex and gender."
These monitoring frameworks help provide the information that shapes programs, policy changes, and financial investments intended to protect and improve lives. By studying differences across identities — such as how sex and gender can play a role in the effects of heat exposure as temperatures rise — decision-makers can better tailor solutions to address the most critical needs.
Meanwhile, Global 50/50 wants sector professionals to know it might be easier than they think to incorporate more detailed tracking. Among their report's messages: leaving sex and gender data out can lead to inaccurate takeaways, much of the data gap can be closed with information already available, and "the window to write sex and gender into the architecture is open now."
The impact of more frequent and intense extreme heat on pregnancy and specifically on the risk of preterm birth is well established and gaining attention around the world. A recent systematic review found that a 1°C increase in heat exposure is tied to 4% higher odds of preterm birth.
Globally, preterm birth — defined as delivery before 37 weeks of gestation — is the leading cause of mortality in infants and children under five. It is also strongly associated with lifelong adverse health and learning outcomes. While roughly one in 10 babies around the world are born preterm, Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa bear the highest rates of preterm births at 13.2% and 10.1%, respectively.
A new report by the international research firm Zero Carbon Analytics — or ZCA — analyzed preterm births associated with an April 2024 heat wave in India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines and found an increase of over 16,000 additional preterm births as compared to the same time period over the previous 30 years.
The ZCA analysis includes study findings from the World Weather Attribution scientific collaboration that found human-caused climate change made the April 2024 extreme heat event 45 times more likely to occur, with an estimated 10,600 preterm births across the three countries that would not have occurred without human-induced global warming.
As paraphrased by the Bangladesh Post, report lead author Joanne Bentley-McKune said that "the estimates could help identify areas where greater health care capacity was needed" and that "improved antenatal care and early-warning systems should be prioritized."
As hotter, longer heat waves are projected to get worse, countries that have contributed little to human-caused climate change are set to continue being disproportionately affected. Yet they are also leading the way in introducing and scaling up heat protections for pregnant people and children, including heat-specific training and mobile guidance tools for health care providers, heat insurance, cooling infrastructure, and incorporating pregnancy-related recommendations into subnational heat action plans.
The World Health Organization and global partners recently established guidance and monitoring frameworks to track heat impacts on children and pregnant people, and leaders are calling for urgent action in planning, policy, and adaptation, a topic expected to be part of the discussions during the 31st Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change — also known as COP31 — beginning in Turkey next week.
Last weekend's Raya Tani Festival in Jakarta celebrated Indonesia's female farmers and their role in climate resilience while calling for decision-makers to close gender gaps and invest in the women sustaining food systems.
Organized by the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, U.N. Women, the PIJAR Foundation, and World Food Forum Indonesia, the festival commemorated the International Year of the Woman Farmer and World Food Day through activities including farmers' talks, policy dialogues with farmers, and a farmers' market.
According to a U.N. news release, in Indonesia, 38% of all farmers are women, totaling 14.8 million farmers.
"Capacity building in the field of climate-smart agriculture, coupled with expanded access to financing, seeds, and land for farmers, including young farmers and women farmers, is an absolute necessity," said Fajar Nuradi, Assistant Deputy for Food Production and Climate Change at Indonesia's Coordinating Ministry for Food Affairs, at the festival, per Tempo.
In late September, heavy rainfall and flooding hit almost half of Cambodia's provinces, reportedly displacing nearly 5,000 people. That's also the number of dignity kits distributed to those living in temporary shelters, as they cope with both extreme weather and the impacts of a border crisis with Thailand.
A joint effort of the U.N. Population Fund, the Japanese Government, and Cambodian authorities, the kits reportedly contained self-care items, including menstrual products and soap. According to Kiripost, the traditional krama and sarong clothing items were also included, and the kits came with "clear, practical guidance on accessing Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights services, reporting [gender-based violence], and understanding Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse."
Disruptive weather disasters are a well-documented risk factor for increased rates of human trafficking, sexual exploitation, child marriage, and other forms of gender-based violence, or GBV.
Conflict can also compound these climate-linked risks.
At the end of 2025, when Thailand and Cambodia signed a ceasefire agreement to stop fighting at the border, more than 500,000 people were estimated to have been displaced by the conflict. In July, a U.N. expert said that more than 20,000 Cambodians remained unable to return home.
Meanwhile, extreme weather in the region has strained conditions for those still living in temporary shelters.
Torrential rains and flash floods have also inundated parts of neighboring Thailand since mid-September and displaced up to, if not more than, 7,000 people, according to the Associated Press, which reported another round of downpours in the region on Oct. 26.
Cannes Film Festival jury-prize winner Elephants in the Fog traces the story of Pirati, the matriarch of a Kinnar household in Nepal, as she works to mobilize neighbors and authorities to search for her chosen-daughter Apsara, another member of the third-gender community who has gone missing following a nighttime patrol for wild elephants.
Recently screened at locations in the U.S. and Canada, the film asks viewers to join the search for an individual whose life has been largely invisibilized by mainstream society. Similar to the third-gender Hijra community in India, the Kinnar community has been largely marginalized from the formal labor market while also believed to possess spiritual powers that make their blessings sacred and sought-after.
Nepalese writer and director Abinash Bikram Shah told FRED Film Radio in May that the Kinnar community heavily influenced the making of the film.
"During my research period, I met this mother from the community, and she told me the story of the blind man and the elephant. And she said, ‘You know, a blind man doesn’t know how an elephant looks … The blind man has to feel … and the elephant is so big that he cannot even touch it completely. So if [he] touches the leg, [he'll] think the elephant will look like a pillar. If [he] touches the tail, for [him], the elephant will look like rope.'"
Shah went on to explain, "She said that in Nepal, people see [the Kinnar community] with that same limited perspective. They see them as Kinnar women with powers or as sex workers, but they don’t see them as whole human beings."
The film comes at a time when many communities, researchers, and officials in the region are looking for ways to protect residents from wild elephant attacks. Increasingly, dangerous encounters with the large mammals have been linked to changes in climate, habitat, and migration. People living and farming close to the forest edge may face particular dangers, and patrolling for the elephants as well as implementing detection and warning systems can help residents to stay alert and protect each other as well as the animals.
"At its heart, the film is rooted in the lived realities of the Kinnar community, individuals who, though pushed to the margins, forge resilient and deeply meaningful chosen families," Shah previously told Variety.
A recent study may help address the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), HIV, and gender-based violence (GBV) challenges faced by millions of climate-related migrants and internally displaced persons in Southern Africa.
Published by the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration, the study looked at the pre-migration, in-transit, and arrival phases of movement due to climate-related disasters to identify unique SRHR, HIV, and GBV needs and interventions across Eswatini, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Recommendations for improving health care infrastructure and protecting migrants and internally displaced persons include: developing disaster preparedness plans that take SRHR, HIV, and GBV into account; stockpiling essential medicines; extending clinic hours; developing gender-sensitive displacement camp designs; and cooperating across borders to strengthen continuity of care.
The region remains the most severely affected by the HIV epidemic while violence against women and girls persists at high levels. With more extreme drought from the Super El Niño weather pattern predicted for the area well into 2027, prioritizing vulnerable populations experiencing climate-related migration carries significant strategic urgency.
Researchers in Japan have released a new report on their effort to shrink water testing down to the size of a smartphone accessory.
Published last month in Biosensors and Bioelectronics, the report from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology describes the development of a compact prototype to test water for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
Commonly called "forever chemicals" for their persistence in habitats and human bodies, exposure to certain levels of the substances has been linked to reproductive health concerns, developmental delays, hormonal impacts, and heightened risks for some cancers, including testicular cancer.
Together with being persistent, they are also fairly widespread, showing up in numerous household goods, industrial products, and drinking water sources.
According to an institute press release, this new testing device has been designed to be small, low-cost, and easy to produce. In just a matter of hours, researchers were able to screen-print 100 electrodes onto repurposed fabric for the prototype.
"These were then coated with PFAS-specific [molecularly imprinted polymers] and connected to commercially available potentiostats, which measure electrical signals and can plug directly into a smartphone or laptop," the release explained.
Testing drinking water at home for PFAS has become more accessible to consumers in some countries in recent years, but it remains costly, time-consuming, and reliant on outside facilities not available everywhere.
While these results from Okinawa researchers are still early and only reflect testing for two types of PFAS — PFOA and PFOS — the potential for a portable, hand-held, and easy-to-make-and-use tool could one day improve access to "forever chemicals" testing at the household level and in remote settings.
This digest was curated and formatted by Gracie Leavitt. It was written and edited by Gracie Leavitt and Kirsten Krueger.
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, and LGBTQ+ communities — especially individuals 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 and environment crises and concerns that can disproportionately affect boys and men.
But there's a whole lot going on around the world, and this weekly brief isn't intended to be exhaustive but rather your chance to spend just a few moments on a handful of items — including the ideas that might make a difference. We appreciate your feedback and observations.
"Communities that are most affected by climate change are showing the world how to adapt," Bijal Brahmbhatt of Earthshot Prize finalist Mahila Housing Trust said in a short video recently shared on social media.
"He who destroyed the forests sleeps in air-conditioned rooms. He who toiled the soil wraps himself in a damp cloth." These are among the lyrics of the Sollisai Sistahs, an all-women rap group from Tamil Nadu featured on the new Climate Emergency Mixtape.
"We're concerned about what these effects might mean for contraceptive users exposed to ambient heat for many hours at a time, day after day, with little ability to adapt or recover … which is an unfortunate reality for many women living and working in [LMICs]," researcher Cara Schulte told CG.
"In Zimbabwe, contraceptive pills were being sold by staff to buy food during the drought. In drought-affected communities, 54% of girls and young women had seen more unintended pregnancy, against 29% elsewhere," Reena Ghelani, CEO of Plan International, told CG.
