At this time of year, in Russia’s far north Laptev Sea, the sun hovers near the horizon during the day, generating little warmth, as the region heads towards months of polar night. By late September or early October, the sea’s shallow waters should be a vast, frozen expanse.

But not this year. For the first time since records have been kept, open water still laps this coastline in late October though snow is already falling there.

Her triangular computer mouse finds the blue circular logo with the white camera on the bottom of her screen. She hovers over it for a second, taking a deep breath before clicking on the icon. Remembering the last program meeting, Marina Lubanov commits herself to listening more to the other participants, prepping herself to take a step back and really absorb what everyone is saying. With nervous excitement, she clicks on her zoom app and is launched into a meeting with other young professionals from her home country of Israel, and neighboring Jordan and Palestine.

The team of people tasked with coordinating the global climate change negotiations for the 26^th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in 2021, we recently learned, consists entirely of men. While not surprising to many feminists in this space, this blatant disregard of gender diversity and women’s perspectives in climate policy is all too common. And it reflects broader ignorance of how gender and climate change intersect.

Climate change is a threat multiplier; it is an underlying and exacerbating factor that makes things worse at a level that all actors, including security actors, need to pay attention to, said Geoff Dabelko, Professor and Associate Dean at the George V. Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University and Senior Advisor to the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program. He spoke in a recent interview about climate change and security as part of CimpaticoTV’s Climate Adaptation Channel.

“Despite national action plans and legislation in 84 countries, women remain undervalued in peacebuilding, and we know today [women are] seriously underrepresented in peace processes,” said Kathleen Kuehnast, Director of Gender Policy and Strategy at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), at a recent event with USIP and the U.S. Civil Society Working Group on Women, Peace and Security (U.S. CSWG).

In a video clip, seven fishermen climb into a wooden “Popo” boat that’s beached on the Republic of the Congo’s sandy shoreline. They start up the motor of the 40-foot, limo-length motorized canoe and head out into the Atlantic. The men aboard the weathered craft — its blue paint chipped and faded by years of salt and sun — could be out for a week.