‘Up and Up!’ Gender-Responsive Climate Action in Bangladesh and the Way Forward

How has the legal landscape for gender-responsive climate action in Bangladesh been shaped, and what is the way forward? This chapter aims to answer the questions based on the current reality that even though climate change affects everyone within a social system; due to existing multi-dimensional social injustices that both feed off and feed into climate impacts, women likely shoulder more disproportionate burdens in comparison to men. At the same time, supported by patriarchal norms, gender can dictate roles, responsibilities, barriers and vulnerabilities in many societies, including Bangladesh. As such, women in Bangladesh experience both direct and secondary effects of climate change, first through food, water and livelihood insecurities and secondarily through gender-based discrimination and treatments. To minimise this two-fold blow, women in Bangladesh require climate action that contributes to their development and empowerment. At the international scale, Bangladesh as a party to the United Nations Frameworks Convention on Climate Change and its landmark Paris Agreement upholds various mandatory obligations and non-mandatory recommendations to ensure gender-responsive climate action. At the national scale, Bangladesh has enacted and developed several legal and policy frameworks that incorporate gender considerations into climate action. However, this chapter concludes that there is room for improvement as most of these provisions, strategies, and plans are generic, gender-specific and lack intersectionality.