Education for all: LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative (LHI) Research Guide: Climate change & education

The impacts of accelerating climate change across Canada are unequally distributed between populations and regions. Emerging evidence shows climate change and resultant policies to be worsening gendered social and economic inequities between women and men, with women's participation largely absent in climate change research and decision-making. These dynamics are resulting in negative impacts for women's well-being, with Indigenous and historically marginalized women at increased risk of experiencing health inequities as a result of climate change.

Climate change is acknowledged as the largest threat to our societies in the coming decades, potentially affecting large and diverse groups of urban residents in this century of urbanization. As urban areas house highly diverse people with differing vulnerabilities, intensifying climate change is likely to shift the focus of discussions from a general urban perspective to who in cities will be affected by climate change, and how. This brings the urban equity question to the forefront. Here we assess how climate change events may amplify urban inequity. We find that heatwaves, but also flooding, landslides, and even mitigation and adaptation measures, affect specific population groups more than others. As underlying sensitivity factors we consistently identify socioeconomic status and gender. We synthesize the findings with regard to equity types – meaning outcome-based, process-oriented and context-related equity – and suggest solutions for avoiding increased equity and justice concerns as a result of climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation.