Re-politicizing the Gender and Climate Change Debate

Noémi Gonda’s article addresses a practical problem in climate policy: gender-blind adaptation is no longer easy to defend, yet many projects still translate gender into technical indicators, training quotas, or lists of vulnerable groups. Using adaptation policies and projects in Nicaragua, she shows that including women in a project does not necessarily address the power relations that produce climate injustice.

The article uses feminist political ecology to analyze how power works in adaptation practice. Gonda focuses on emotions, subjectivities, local knowledge, and political choices, asking whether adaptation projects reproduce existing orders or open possibilities for more democratic and equitable ways of living together.

For FemRes, this piece forms a reading path with Arora-Jonsson and MacGregor: first identify simplified narratives of women’s vulnerability or virtue, then ask how research and policy can re-politicize climate justice. It is especially useful for readers interested in development projects, the Global South, local governance, and ecological transformation.