“Before the famine my life was better. I was a man in my own country,” Abdi Abdullahi Hussein, a Somali refugee living in Kenya, tells The Climate Reality Project. “When you have livestock and a farm and it all disappears, it feels like falling off a cliff.”

Since the end of World War II, the number of wars between states has declined significantly, but the number of intrastate civil conflicts – as seen in Syria and Afghanistan – has increased.

Although separated by a thousand miles, the women of the Malaysian state of Sarawak and the Filipino island of Mindoro are united by a major struggle: climate change. As rainfall patterns grow increasingly unpredictable, natural disasters become more frequent, and drought ravages once-arable land, women are on the frontlines in both communities.

More often than not in the discourse around gender and climate change, the word “gender” is used primarily to refer to women. There is no disputing that women are acutely vulnerable to the effects of climate change in ways that are different than men and sometimes hidden. However, this interchangeable use of words neglects other dimensions of gender, sexual orientation, and sexual identity. As a result, we are missing important ways gender impacts people’s experiences with climate change.

The once-every-three-years Women Deliver conference has become a major coalescing force for various global health and development efforts aimed at women and girls. “We operate at a global level, influencing the agenda” by focusing on the “four Cs”: convening, communicating, capacity-building, and catalyzing, said Susan Papp, director of policy and advocacy for Women Deliver. [Video Below]

Struggling to save their failing crops. Walking farther afield to fetch clean water. Protecting their families from devastating storms and violent conflicts. “Women are usually the support systems for our family…we are the last to leave in the event of a catastrophe, which is why women and families are disproportionately hurt by climate catastrophes,” said Wilson Center President, Director, and CEO Jane Harman on June 23 during a conference on women and climate change. [Video Below]

A working paper by Eoin Mcguire (Brown University) and Marshall Burke (Stanford University) examines the impact of food price increases on conflict in Africa. Under the hypothesis that negative income shocks contribute to the outbreak of conflict, the authors compare the effect of significant increases in food prices in communities that predominantly produce food to the effect in those that predominantly consume food. In food producing areas, conflict driven by food surplus allocations increased but conflict driven by territorial factors decreased.

Last month, the world came to Copenhagen to focus on how to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for girls and women. The Women Deliver Conference, the largest gathering on girls’ and women’s health and rights in the last decade, was a huge success. Convening over 5,700 likeminded people from 169 countries was important to reenergize the movement and inspire action. Preaching to the converted is sometimes important. But now it’s time to focus on those who are not yet converted.