As COP30 continues to unfold in Belém, a powerful and timely conversation is gaining traction: care work is central to climate justice. Across the summit, civil society, negotiators, and youth are demanding that caregiving and gender equity be more than afterthoughts in climate policy they must become foundational.
Care Work Meets Climate
Climate change is intensifying care demands, particularly for women and young people. In Sub‑Saharan Africa, for instance, women spend on average 4.15 hours a day on unpaid care and domestic work more than triple the time men spend. Globally, women still carry out roughly 76% of all unpaid care tasks, often at the expense of education, paid work, and civic participation. Over 700 million women are involved in unpaid work, These hidden burdens are not just personal or social issues: they represent a major barrier to resilience and economic empowerment.
At COP30, calls are growing to recognise care infrastructure such as health centres, schools, water and sanitation services as essential climate infrastructure. Climate disruption (floods, droughts, heat) doesn’t just threaten ecosystems it intensifies care needs, putting women and youth on the frontline.
Gender‑Responsive Climate Finance
Climate finance must be gender‑responsive. In Africa, the gender finance gap remains around US$42 billion with the issue exacerbated by the regions low climate finance flows. Without targeted investment, women-led adaptation and mitigation projects risk being underfunded, limiting their impact on community resilience. Countries like Rwanda and Uganda have begun piloting gender-tagged climate funds, demonstrating that strategic allocation can empower women while driving measurable climate outcomes.
In Zambia, for example, the clean energy firm WidEnergy Africa has a 60% female workforce, highlighting how targeted investments can empower women in the transition. Meanwhile, the African Development Bank has committed 35% of a US$90 million fund to female‑founded energy companies.
Youth and Inclusive Leadership
Young Africans are driving grassroots climate action. In Kenya, youth-led green organisations such as Green Teen Movement are planting tens of thousands of trees and mobilising climate-conscious communities showing that the next generation is not just waiting for change, but building it.
Another inspiring example comes from Patricia Kombo, whose PaTree Initiative in Kenya has planted over 10,000 trees, empowering young people through environmental education and reforestation.
On the COP30 front, youth leadership is already making waves: the COP30 Youth Task Force recently mobilised more than 200 young people in Addis Ababa to plant 300 saplings, demonstrating how collective action drives meaningful climate outcomes. Young women activists and leaders from across the continent are calling for stronger representation, gender-responsive climate finance, and recognition of the voices of girls and women as critical to climate justice.
Just Transition and Green Jobs
Africa’s green transition offers vast opportunity: a report by FSD Africa and Shortlist projects 3.3 million green jobs could be created by 2030, with many roles in renewables and sustainable agriculture. Women are already stepping into these roles in Sub‑Saharan Africa, only 13% of the high paying STEM jobs workforce is female, despite women making up over 30%. Expanding training and mentorship programmes for women and youth could bridge this gap, unlocking both economic empowerment and climate resilience. Initiatives like South Africa’s GREEN Solar Academy are already demonstrating how targeted skills development can enable women to thrive in the green economy.
Intersectional Climate Justice
COP30 is also amplifying the need to address intersecting inequalities whether based on gender, age, geography, or income. Climate policies that ignore this risk reinforcing long-standing vulnerabilities, rather than dismantling them.
In Kenya, the 2021 Time Use Survey by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics revealed that women spend seven more times on unpaid care and domestic work, compared to men. This imbalance restricts women’s economic participation and highlights how climate-related stressors (e.g., water scarcity) can worsen care burdens. Addressing this requires climate action that recognises and supports care labour, not just emissions reductions.
AfriCGE’s COP30 Side Event
On Day 5 of COP30, AfriCGE convened a powerful side event titled “From Care to Climate Justice: Centering Women’s Leadership in Building Resilient and Inclusive Transitions.” The session spotlighted how African women and youth are leading on care, climate resilience, and just transition and offered urgent policy prescriptions rooted in lived experience.
Key voices included:
- Amy Giliam Thorp (Power Shift Africa): “Floods and heatwaves intensify care demands. Women are on the frontline. NAPs rarely recognise care infrastructure, yet hospitals are climate infrastructure.”
- Mayor KR Phukuntsi (Tswelopele Municipality): “We are integrating care into municipal services. We must be decisive about budgeting for care.”
- Rose Kobusinge (Vital Crest Foundation): “Young African women carry care responsibilities even without children. We must not be left behind.”
- Shamiela Reid (Indalo Inclusive, South Africa): “Women are innovators, but they are not prioritised for investment.”
Their testimonies drove home a critical point: care work is climate work, and women’s leadership in care economies is central to Africa’s just transition.
Why This Matters
COP30 is shaping up as more than just a climate negotiation it’s a moment to reframe what climate justice really means. For many African communities, caregiving is not peripheral; it is central to resilience. AfriCGE’s event on COP30 Day 5 underscored that unless care unpaid and paid is embedded in climate policies, we risk building a transition that leaves women, youth, and frontline communities behind. The message is clear, investment in care, gender equity, and youth leadership isn’t just morally right, it is climatically necessary.
Looking Ahead
As COP30 moves into its second week, attention will increasingly turn to concrete commitments: financing gender-responsive adaptation, supporting youth-led initiatives, and embedding care infrastructure into national climate plans. The challenge is not just to talk about equity and resilience but to translate these discussions into measurable action. COP30 offers a platform to advance solutions that recognise, value, and invest in women, youth, and the care economy, ensuring that the next decade of climate action is both inclusive and transformative.
Author: Kennedy Simango
Research Analyst
