In research on climate change, extreme events, and social and health impacts, people with disabilities often remain an afterthought in adaptation efforts or are performatively accounted for with little to no groundtruthing. This gap is most troublesome in the context of increasingly frequent and severe heat events. Critical scholarly advances at the juncture of human geography, disability and global health studies, and urban climate justice show how the lived experiences of heat of those with a disability, intertwined with systemic marginalization and intersectional discrimination, are routinely invisibilized. In this joint research in Western Australia, we analyze such experiences of thermal injustice, drawing on the feminist and anticolonial praxis of storytelling. Our aim is to counter structures of violence and expendability that negate the daily, corporeal struggles of people with disabilities in intolerable climates. We offer disability-inclusive heat preparedness as a transformational approach for better weathering and embodying thermal care.

Response by Kirsten Anker to Janet Salisbury’s discussion paper, Independent mediation for united action on Climate Change

In 1915, just as the War was heating up – the War that we now know abruptly ended the Golden Age in Europe, cost 40 million lives, impoverished nations and set the stage for even more tragedy over the next century – a group of women came together to try to stop it

One of the important ambitions of the Women’s Climate Congress is to enjoin women from the diverse communities in Australia, to come together on behalf of the Earth and our descendants, in the face of climate heating. And we especially wish for the involvement of First Nations women: those who belong to the 250+ different nations in our continent, and who have been so afflicted by settler invasion, and the consequent extreme harm to their lands and waters and atmosphere.

The challenges facing experts such as planners, environmental engineers, policy makers, economists and others in creating sustainable solutions are manifest. The current emphasis on integrated approaches requires experts, with often highly divergent areas of technical expertise, to work together. These experts are often primarily focussed on “what” they see needs to be done; however, “how” they talk to and engage with one another can hold the key to whether they are able to effectively achieve significant and useful outcomes.

WCC was pleased to be involved with other national women’s organisations in preparing Beijing +30 Australian NGO Report 2024: Working Together for Equality.

Led by Carole Shaw and Leonie Noble from the NGO Women’s Rights & Gender Equality Caucus – Australia, this remarkable national collaboration included 15 other women’s organisations and many individuals.

The monitoring and evaluation report provides the women's NGO perspective on Australia’s progress in implementing the 1994 women’s conference Beijing Declaration and Plan of Action, especially over the last 5 years and provides recommendations for forward strategies in 5 key areas of gender equality:

- Shared prosperity and decent work
- Freedom from violence
- Participation, accountability and gender responsive institutions
- Gender, climate change, disasters and environmental management
- Peaceful and inclusive societies.

It has been submitted to the Australian Government, and will feed into an Asia-Pacific regional process leading up to the global 2025 UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in March 2025, which will be a major Beijing +30 review.

WCC Steering Circle members Kirsten Anker and Mary Picard were part of the small team that prepared Chapter 4 on ‘Gender, climate change, disasters and environmental management’. The report recommendations include a key part of WCC’s advocacy on unified national planning to tackle climate change, proposing that Australian governments need to:

‘Move to a more unified national planning process on climate change adaptation across sectors, at different levels of government, across party lines and with businesses, industries and community leaders that ensures women are in leadership positions at all levels. This is proposed as the most effective way to achieve policy coherence on gender equality and climate change adaptation.’

See also our WCC submission to the National Adaptation Plan Issues Paper, which raises some of the same issues.