Climate Change, Oceans and Gender

Citation:

Oral, Nilufer. 2019. "Climate Change, Oceans and Gender." In Gender and the Law of the Sea, edited by Irini Papanicolopulu, 343-60. Leiden: Brill Nijhoff.

Author: Nilufer Oral

Abstract:

Climate change has traditionally been associated with the atmosphere. However, the important nexus between climate change and the ocean has gained increased recognition in the past few years. Climate change and the oceans brings into play two important but separate regimes: the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. UNCLOS was negotiated a decade before the 1992 UNFCCC. UNCLOS does address gender issues and it was not until the 2015 Paris Agreement that any acknowledgment was given to the place of gender in climate change. Specifically, the preamble of the Paris Agreement calls upon Parties, when taking action to address climate change, to “respect, promote and consider their respective obligations” inter alia “gender equality and empowerment of women. The chapter will provide a brief overview the relationship between climate change and oceans, looking at the existing climate change regime, disaster regime and law of the sea regime, and then examine the place of gender in relation to climate change and oceans in these respective regimes. The chapter will show that there is an imbalanced treatment of gender among the UNFCCC climate change regime, the disaster regime and that of the UNCLOS regime.

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Organizations

Year: 2019