Climate change, gender inequality feature in budget priorities

Climate change disproportionately affects poor and marginalised households, particularly women, who are linked to agriculture and natural resource management.

As providers of food, water, and energy for their families, women carry the heaviest burdens when these resources are degraded. Extreme weather events and shifting ecological systems result in longer working hours, reduced livelihoods, and increased risks to health and well-being.

Yet, women's vulnerability is not an innate characteristic. It is the product of structural gender inequalities—including unequal access to land, financial resources, education, health care, and decision-making power—that reduce their ability to adapt and build resilience. Women smallholder farmers, who constitute the majority of the rural poor, are among the most vulnerable to climate risks but often receive the least support from policy or finance.

The Missed Opportunity of Excluding Women

Despite women's central role in sustaining communities and ecosystems, climate policy and finance rarely recognise them as agents of change. Too often, women are mentioned in the context of adaptation alone, rather than as contributors to mitigation, climate innovation, and green growth.

Studies from South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America demonstrate that when women participate in forest governance, outcomes improve, sustainable management practices increase, ecological conditions regenerate, and illegal harvesting declines. Similarly, women entrepreneurs and small-scale producers have shown the capacity to drive climate-smart agriculture and renewable energy transitions. Failing to recognise these contributions results in missed opportunities to reduce emissions and enhance resilience.

Ten years after the Paris Agreement, gender remains a seldom-tackled cross-cutting priority. Only about a third of countries have integrated gender across mitigation and adaptation strategies, and women's roles in climate mitigation remain vastly underappreciated.

Why Investing in Women is Smart Climate Policy

Investing in women delivers triple dividends: advancing gender equality, enhancing climate resilience, and contributing to poverty reduction. Evidence shows that improving women's access to resources, finance, and decision-making yields multiplier effects for climate action and development. For instance:

• Adaptation: Women farmers with access to credit and extension services adopt climate-smart practices faster.
• Mitigation: Women's involvement in natural resource management leads to lower deforestation and better soil health.
• Resilience: Households with empowered women rebound more quickly after climate shocks.

Prioritizing women in climate action is not only a matter of justice, but also a matter of efficiency and impact. Gender-responsive climate finance can stretch limited funds further by simultaneously addressing climate and development challenges.

The Data Gap

One major barrier to scaling investments is the lack of robust, disaggregated data on the impacts of women's contributions to climate mitigation and adaptation. In addition, specific data is required on how climate change impacts women in the diverse context of Bangladesh. Mapping climate solutions that align with women's existing roles in agriculture, land use, and small enterprise is critical for building an investment case.

Bangladesh: Budget Priorities at a Crossroads

Bangladesh, one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, has made important strides in gender-responsive budgeting. For Fiscal Year (FY) 2025–26, the gender budget allocation stands at Tk 260,767 crore, representing a commitment of around 30% of the national budget. However, this figure marks a decline from Tk 271,818.6 crore in the previous fiscal year, raising concerns that progress on women's empowerment could stall.

Bangladesh FY 2025-26 Budget Allocations

Climate Budget (Tk 41,208.97 crore)

Gender Budget (Tk 260,767 crore)

On the climate side, the government has allocated Tk 41,208.97 crore, or 10.07% of the total budget, for climate-related activities across 25 ministries and divisions. While this is a step forward, experts stress that financing remains far below what is needed to meet the escalating costs of climate adaptation and mitigation. Unlike the gender budget, there is no set target for climate finance as a share of the national budget.

This disconnect reveals a critical policy gap: gender and climate are being financed in parallel, rather than through a synergistic framework that maximises co-benefits.

Recommendations for Bangladesh Going Forward

Integrate Gender into Climate Finance Framework

1. Establish a clear national target for climate finance allocation, similar to the gender budget benchmark.
   • Mandate gender-responsive planning and reporting across all climate-related programmes and initiatives.
2.   Prioritise Women Smallholder Farmers and Natural Resource Managers
3. • Expand women's access to land titles, agricultural credit, and extension services for climate-smart agriculture.
   • Promote women-led cooperatives in agroforestry, fisheries, and renewable energy.
4. Support Women Entrepreneurs in Green Sectors
5. • Provide concessional loans, grants, and mentoring for women-led start-ups in renewable energy, sustainable textiles, and eco-tourism.
   • Incentivise women's participation in green supply chains to diversify value creation and reduce climate risk.
6. Mobilise Innovative Financing Mechanisms
7. • Pilot gender-responsive climate bonds and outcome-linked funds that tie disbursements to both emission reductions and women's empowerment indicators.
   • Facilitate community access to voluntary carbon markets, ensuring fair compensation for women's contributions to reforestation and carbon sequestration.
8. Strengthen Data and Evidence
9. • Invest in sex-disaggregated data collection on climate impacts and women's roles in mitigation/adaptation.
   • Commission impact evaluations of women-focused climate interventions to attract further investment.
10. Recognise and Compensate Women's Knowledge
11. • Institutionalize the role of women's organizations in climate planning processes.
    • Ensure that women receive equitable financial returns for their contributions to ecosystem restoration and sustainable farming practices.
12. Aligning the gender budget with the national climate policies documents
13. • Ensure that the gender budget framework is aligned with national climate policies, such as the National Adaptation Plan (NAP), the National Determined Contribution (NDC), and the updated BCCSAP.

Bangladesh stands at a pivotal moment. With climate vulnerability rising and fiscal space limited, the government cannot afford to treat gender and climate as separate policy streams. Investing in women is not a secondary issue, but a strategic imperative for achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Aligning climate and gender budgets, scaling women-focused programs, and innovating financial mechanisms can transform women from under-resourced victims into recognized leaders of climate solutions. Doing so will deliver not just resilience for women, but resilience for Bangladesh as a whole.