Conflict, environment and climate crises are increasingly interacting, resulting in deepened inequalities and vulnerabilities of women, LGBTQI+ and other marginalised groups, alongside exploitation and degradation of the planet. Women’s rights organisations have long demonstrated how gender equality is essential to sustainable peace and climate resilience. While they work to respond to the impact of armed conflict, they are also at the forefront of defending land, biodiversity, and the environment. Their leadership is critical not only for mitigating environmental and climate crises but also for shaping inclusive and equitable systems that prioritise care, justice, and sustainability. While women’s rights organisations have seen these connections for years, an evidence base for these connections is only now beginning to build.

Feminist movements are increasingly bridging silos, linking women’s rights and environmental activism, strategising together, and generating the gendered data missing from climate discourse. At policy level, actors such as the European Centre for Development Policy Management and the Women and Gender Constituency of the UNFCCC, are highlighting the gendered impacts of climate change and conflict and the need for gender- sensitive climate finance, particularly in international negotiations like the COP.3 The efforts are too few. The urgency to build peaceful, sustainable, and just societies has never been greater, and it cannot be achieved if women, in all their diversities, remain sidelined.

For 30 years, The Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation has worked alongside women’s rights organisations on the frontlines of these crises, supporting their efforts for peace, justice and equality.

This brief examines how the Women, Peace and Security agenda can help address the interlinked challenges of climate, environment and conflict.