Climate Justice is Gender Justice
The Natural Resource Women Platform (NRWP) is deeply concerned about Liberia’s decision to vote against the recent United Nations General Assembly resolution supporting the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on climate change.
For a country like Liberia, this decision is difficult to understand. Liberia is one of the countries already experiencing the impacts of the climate crisis. At the same time, the country continues to call for climate finance, support for loss and damage, forest protection, green investment, and stronger climate resilience. Therefore, voting against a resolution that seeks to strengthen climate accountability raises serious concerns about consistency and commitment.
For NRWP, this issue goes beyond diplomacy. It goes to the heart of justice for women, rural and coastal communities, forest-dependent people, and others already living with the effects of climate change.
Climate change is not gender-neutral. Across Liberia, women are among those carrying the heaviest burdens. Rural women, women farmers, coastal women, forest-dependent women, market women, and women in natural resource communities are already facing food insecurity, flooding, coastal erosion, water stress, loss of livelihoods, displacement, and increasing unpaid care work.
These are not abstract climate impacts. They affect women’s farms, homes, health, income, safety, leadership, and ability to care for their families and communities.
Why This Matters for Women
Women are on the front lines of Liberia’s climate crisis.
They grow food, manage household water, preserve seeds, care for families, organize communities, and protect natural resources. When the climate crisis worsens, women are often the first to feel the pressure and the last to receive support.
When crops fail, women farmers lose income and food for their families. When the sea comes closer, coastal women face displacement and the loss of homes. When forests are destroyed or their access is restricted, forest-dependent women lose access to medicine, food, cultural resources, and livelihoods. When food prices rise, market women and mothers carry the burden of feeding households with less.
Girls and young women also become more vulnerable when families lose income and stability.
This is why climate justice must include gender justice. Any discussion about climate responsibility, finance, adaptation, and loss and damage must include women’s voices and leadership.
Liberia’s Climate Commitments Must Be Reflected in Its Actions
Liberia has made important climate commitments through its national and international climate frameworks. These include its Nationally Determined Contributions, forest protection priorities, adaptation commitments, and the Climate Change Gender Action Plan.
These commitments speak to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, protecting forests and biodiversity, expanding renewable energy, promoting clean cooking solutions, strengthening community resilience, supporting vulnerable groups, and ensuring women’s participation in climate decision-making.
NRWP believes Liberia’s international climate positions must reflect these commitments.
A country cannot call for climate finance and loss and damage support while taking positions that weaken global climate accountability. Liberia must be consistent in both words and actions.
A Question of Accountability
Liberia’s vote against the UN climate justice resolution risks weakening the country’s credibility in international climate negotiations.
It also raises an important question:
How can Liberia ask the international community for climate finance, loss and damage support, and solidarity, while voting against a resolution that supports climate justice and accountability?
For women and frontline communities, this is not only a foreign policy issue. It affects Liberia’s moral authority to speak for those most affected by climate change.
If Liberia wants the world to support its climate-vulnerable communities, then Liberia must also stand with global efforts that demand responsibility, justice, and protection for vulnerable people.
NRWP’s Position
NRWP believes Liberia must stand with communities already facing the climate crisis, especially women, who bear many of its daily burdens.
Climate decisions must be transparent, inclusive, gender-responsive, and aligned with Liberia’s national commitments.
Women must not be excluded from decisions that affect their land, homes, farms, forests, food systems, livelihoods, and future.
“For women in rural and climate-affected communities, climate justice is not a slogan. It is about food, land, safety, livelihoods, and survival. Liberia must not take international positions that weaken the very justice our communities are asking for.”
NRWP Calls on the Government of Liberia to:
- Publicly explain why Liberia voted against the UN climate justice resolution.
- Reaffirm Liberia’s commitment to climate justice, gender equality, and the protection of vulnerable communities;
- Ensure that women, rural communities, youth, civil society, and frontline groups are consulted before major international climate decisions are taken;
- Fully implement Liberia’s Climate Change Gender Action Plan and ensure that climate finance reaches women and local communities;
- Align Liberia’s international climate positions with its NDC, adaptation priorities, forest protection commitments, and calls for loss and damage support.