Of those displaced by climate change, over 80% are women. Can applying sustainable architecture practices to our built environment help?
Before you start down this, a fair warning: what lies ahead is grim.
But if you want to continue, flex your imagination a moment: think you’re a woman living in a remote, rural pocket of the world. See, rural women, the UN tell us — and girls as well, sometimes as young as nine, sometimes lesser — bear primary responsibility for fetching firewood for fuel, or water from faraway wells. Sometimes, they have to trek long hours to bring back bare necessities.
Now say your small corner of the world is rocked by some natural disaster — this hardly needs any stretch of imagination. With climate change, you can have a Russian roulette spin of flood or drought, storm or wildfire. Go ahead, pick one.
So, imagine some climate change-triggered disaster, and supply to your part is immediately affected. Remember that firewood and that water you need to fetch? You now have to walk even further, venture into unfamiliar territory in search of — making you that much more vulnerable.
Or your home might lie in pieces, you might have to shift into a refugee camp or an internal displaced persons camp. This seriously increases your risk of gender-based violence, says the UN. Not to mention you now have limited access to crucial sexual and reproductive healthcare, further putting you at risk.
You were warned this would be grim.
Climate change: not gender neutral
This isn’t a competition of who suffers the most. But it is a cold, sad fact: women and girls are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. Of those displaced by climate change-related extreme weather events, over 80 per cent are women — that’s four in every five. Meanwhile, women and children are 14 times more likely to die from such extreme weather events.
It gets worse — imagine a slew of trigger warnings inserted here for this bit ahead.
UNFPA found sex trafficking spiked after cyclones and typhoons in certain parts of the world. UNDP found rates of domestic violence, sexual abuse and female genital mutilation grew during extended periods of droughts, floods and cyclones in some countries — even developed countries are not immune.
They also recorded a spike in child marriages — sadly, with resources limited, some families are cornered into marrying off their underage daughters. The unfortunate reality is, it’s one less mouth to feed.
A UN Women report launched at COP28 and brought up again at COP29 says that by 2050, in a worst-case scenario, climate change could push up to 158 million more women and girls into poverty — this on top of those with already restricted access to basic resources. It could also cause as many as 232 million to face food insecurity.
So, we know climate change exacerbates existing inequalities and vulnerabilities — it has a ‘threat multiplier’ effect. But where do we go from here?
Slowing the ticking clock situation
UN Women advocates women in fields with high environmental impact integrate climate-smart solutions in the work they do. So, government, policymakers, of course, but now more than ever the interplay between climate change and built environment is crucial.
See, designers, architects, they must switch gears, says the UN. They need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, they need to slash the carbon footprint of our built environment — a mammoth task. But efforts are underway — architects are embracing sustainable practices in their designs.
There’s biomimicry for one — that is, studying patterns and processes in nature to design greener buildings. A frequently mentioned example is the Singapore Arts Centre, more commonly called the Esplanade Theatre. Have you heard of the Durian fruit? It’s that smelly, smelly one, often banned in public transport and hotel lobbies — seriously, that smell can linger for days.
But the Singapore Arts Centre makes use of the fruit’s shell design, a spiky protective envelope. The centre has adapted the shell into a kinetic façade which matches the movements of the sun to protect the insides of the building from the country’s tropical heat, while still allowing natural light to filter through. This slashes the building’s energy consumption by 30 per cent and its artificial lighting by an impressive 55 per cent.
There’s also the push to use sustainable materials in construction — now that’s an industry with a serious carbon footprint. It accounts for a staggering 37 per cent of global emissions. And yet another major greenhouse gas emitter is the healthcare industry. So architects are now working to transfer the lion’s share of consultations into the metaverse.
They’re also embracing resilient building design: think flood-resistant foundations, storm-resistant windows, and earthquake-resistant buildings. There’s also the rise of blue-green infrastructure in urban planning to manage excess rainwater.
Basically, the steps we take to mitigate our carbon footprint in cities will reverberate down to that rural woman you imagined yourself to be. It could keep her safe. Because while we can’t quite eliminate gender inequality just yet, we can at least keep this ticking clock situation from picking up speed.
Davina Raisinghani | Jan 21, 2025
