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Delivering on gender equality: the missing piece in climate and food systems policy

  • Publication | 2026
Global Food and Nutrition Security

This brief examines the structural failures in climate and food systems policy and finance that leave women in climate-vulnerable agrifood contexts, from smallholder farmers to informal market vendors and post-harvest workers, most exposed and least supported.

Key Messages:

  • Food security, climate adaptation and agrifood system resilience largely depend on women producers – yet the policies, finance and institutions governing those systems are not designed to support.
  • A decade of gender provisions in climate agreements, agricultural programmes and finance instruments has produced gender language, not gender-responsive action. Structural, rather than symbolic inclusion is what the evidence demands and what this brief proposes.
  • Climate finance was built for formal economies and systematically excludes the informal sector and community networks where most women in agrifood systems operate. The just transition framework, which aims to protect workers bearing the greatest costs of economic and ecological transformation, offers the opening needed to reach them.
  • The arguments for change are established, but the political architecture to act on them is not. The Belém Action Mechanism, the Kampala Declaration and the UN Food Systems Summit follow-up process and its next review cycle offer distinct but complementary openings, and COP31 and COP32 provide the multilateral moments at which coordinated action can produce binding, funded commitments.
Resources
More information and links
Authors
Maryam Rezaei, Shahzoda Alikhanova
Publisher
ODI Global
Geographic coverageGlobal
Available from

01 Jul 2026

Knowledge service | MetadataGlobal Food and Nutrition Security | Sustainable Food SystemsGender Equality and Food Systems | Climate actionGender-transformative approach
Digital Europa Thesaurus (DET)adaptation to climate changeclimate changeresiliencegender equality
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