Indigenous women play a fundamental role in climate change adaptation and mitigation. In many Indigenous worldviews, biodiversity preservation is not a policy objective but a way of life, grounded in the understanding that humans are part of nature rather than separate from it. Women’s contributions vary among different communities but generally relate to the production of ecological knowledge and collective practices inherent to those communities.
Environmental leadership has historically been a significant aspect of Indigenous women’s roles within their communities, even before colonialism. Jesuit priests and settlers reported the influence that Indigenous women held in family dynamics, politics, decision-making, and ceremonial practices. In today’s world, they continue to be central in political activities, land-based practices, and community leadership.
However, this role exists alongside a disproportionate vulnerability to climate-related disasters. International institutions such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations have consistently shown that Indigenous populations face heightened risks to food systems, water access, health, and cultural survival. Poverty rates among Indigenous communities remain significantly higher than the global average, further intensifying their exposure to climate change. This economic and social marginalisation often limits their access to resources, infrastructure, and political support needed to adapt to environmental issues, particularly in rural areas where livelihoods depend directly on land and natural resources. At the same time, environmental issues such as climate change itself deepen existing inequalities by undermining agricultural productivity, food security, and economic stability, creating a cycle in which vulnerability and marginalisation continuously reinforce one another.
How, then, can those who are essential to adaptive solutions remain among the most affected by climate change? Why does recognition of their importance so rarely translate into meaningful inclusion in decision-making?
Knowledge, Survival, and Vulnerability
The persistence of these contradictions cannot be understood without acknowledging the legacy of colonialism. Historical patterns of resource exploitation and imposed governance structures continue to influence present-day inequalities, determining who holds power in climate governance today.
Within this context, vulnerability has emerged as a central concept in climate discourse. The IPCC defines vulnerability as the propensity of individuals and communities to suffer harm when exposed to hazards. Crucially, vulnerability is not simply a result of exposure to environmental risks. It is produced by social, economic, political, and historical conditions. Communities are not inherently vulnerable. They are made vulnerable through marginalisation.
This understanding calls for a multidimensional approach. The impacts of climate change are conditioned by overlapping structural factors that determine access to resources, decision-making power, and adaptive capacity.
Intersectionality provides a useful concept to capture this complexity. Originating in critical race and feminist theory, it explains how multiple systems of oppression, such as gender, race, class, and colonial legacies, interact to produce differentiated experiences of harm. In the context of climate change, this means that environmental risks are never experienced in isolation but are influenced by broader structures of inequality.
For Indigenous women, this situation results in a dual positioning. They are acknowledged both as highly vulnerable individuals and as essential contributors to climate adaptation. However, these roles are not equally represented in policy frameworks. While their vulnerability is widely recognized, their agency in adaptation strategies - defined as their capacity to make decisions - and their epistemic authority - referring to the acknowledgment and meaningful integration of their knowledge - often remain unaddressed.
Bridging Continents: Indigenous Women and Gender-Inclusive Climate Change Action, the Nigerian-Brazilian Experience.
In Nigeria, climate change disproportionately affects indigenous women due to entrenched gender hierarchies, increasing their risks of food insecurity, water scarcity, and health issues. Cultural norms often position women as subordinate, exacerbating their vulnerability and marginalization in the socio-economic and political sphere.
To address some of these issues, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Environment developed the National Action Plan on Gender and Climate Change to integrate gender considerations into climate policies. Despite its intentions, the Action Plan lacks enforceable legal mechanisms to ensure equal rights for men and women.
Further, the Climate Change Act created the National Council on Climate Change to oversee climate governance, though its broad mandate may dilute accountability and responsibility, potentially undermining its effectiveness. The Act demonstrates a deficit in substantive provisions required for gender mainstreaming and safeguarding of Indigenous women’s epistemic contributions.
In comparison, Brazil offers a complex legal framework that formally recognises Indigenous rights while only partially integrating Indigenous knowledge into climate governance. The 1988 Federal Constitution marked a turning point by recognising Indigenous peoples’ rights to traditionally occupied lands, which today account for approximately 13 per cent of the national territory. This territorial recognition is reinforced by the National Policy on Climate Change and its subsequent National Adaptation Plan[3.1], which acknowledge that certain groups, including Indigenous peoples, are disproportionately vulnerable to climate impacts.
However, this recognition largely operates within a vulnerability framework. While the National Adaptation Plan includes a dedicated chapter on ‘vulnerable populations,’ its treatment of Indigenous peoples remains relatively limited, raising questions about the depth of their inclusion in adaptation planning.
After the 2022 elections, political developments have signalled a shift toward greater Indigenous representation. The appointment of Sônia Guajajara as Brazil’s first Minister of Indigenous Peoples represents a historic step towards the creation of an institutional platform to advance Indigenous participation in climate governance. Indeed, she is constantly advocating for the legal demarcation of Indigenous peoples’ lands, especially through the National Policy for the Environmental and Territorial Management of Indigenous Lands. This instrument, active since 2012, explicitly values Indigenous knowledge and promotes autonomy in land and resource governance.
Decolonial Ecofeminism: a Possible Solution?
Climate change introduces transformations of unprecedented scale and speed. No single knowledge system, whether scientific or Indigenous, is sufficient in isolation. Effective adaptation requires the integration of diverse forms of knowledge. However, most climate adaptation frameworks tend to be technocratic and universalist in orientation. They prioritise standardised solutions, expert-driven knowledge, and scalable interventions. In addressing these limitations, more than significant inclusion and integration is needed.
This would require more than consultative mechanisms or formal recognition. It would include Indigenous women 's knowledge in climate policies and create governance processes in which they are able to define priorities and actively contribute to climate adaptation strategies. This may take the form of co-designed adaptation policies, stronger community-led governance structures, and institutional mechanisms that recognise plural knowledge systems on equal terms.
Decolonial and ecofeminist perspectives offer important insights. As they capture the interconnected nature of systems of oppression, they challenge dominant frameworks that separate humans from nature and prioritise hierarchical forms of knowledge. They emphasise relational understandings of the world, in which ecological, social, and cultural dimensions are inseparable.
Whether existing climate governance frameworks can accommodate such transformations remains an open question, particularly where they are tied to entrenched legal, political, and economic structures. The challenge, then, is not only to include Indigenous women within current systems, but to reconsider how those systems themselves are designed.
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This blog post is based on the paper to be presented at the conference Sustainability Law: Law’s Response to the Convergence of Crises, 16-18 September 2026, at the University of Oslo
