Transforming land and water rights, improving rural livelihoods, and carving just responses to the climate crisis

Volume 33, Issue 1 | March 2025

 
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The intersection of gender, land rights, climate change, and governance remains a focal point of contemporary discussions on justice, sustainability, and development. In this special issue, scholars and practitioners collectively examine the intersection of gender, land rights, water rights, climate change, and governance. They highlight the structural inequalities that persist in land tenure, access to water, resource governance, and climate adaptation, while also demonstrating how women and marginalised groups actively resist these challenges through policy, advocacy, sustainable land management practices, and collective organising.
However, marginalised communities are not passive recipients of development; rather, they are active agents leading collective struggles for climate resilience, sustainable livelihoods, and rights to resources in the face of violence, often death. The studies included in this special issue provide a comparative lens on how these dynamics play out across diverse geographical and political contexts.

Gender & Development is published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. If you are interested in subscribing to the journal, please visit the Routledge website. (Please note the reduced subscription rates available for low and middle-income countries.)

Below, you can find free access to the Introduction, four articles, and the Resources and Book Reviews sections of the issue.

For free access to all of the articles, visit the Oxfam Policy & Practice website and search using the article title.

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Articles

Transforming land rights, improving rural livelihoods, and carving just responses to the climate crisis
Dina Najjar, Naomi Shadrack & Sara Ahmed

Women’s land tenure security and climate action: evidence, barriers to evidence, and the need for collaboration
Tatiana Gumucio, Krista Jacobs, Jolyne Sanjak, Rachel McMonagle & Beth Roberts

Land, law, and legacy: reconciling gender equality with tradition in Northern Uganda
Alexandra Foote

Decolonising women’s land rights: gender and landownership in pre-colonial Africa
Uchendu Eugene Chigbu

Women’s land rights in Ethiopia: supporting land degradation neutrality
Beth Roberts & Jennifer Brown

Reclaiming dignity: the struggle for recognition among women farmers and widows in Maharashtra
Palash Gughane

Compounding care burdens: women’s everyday experiences of climate preparedness and adaptation in Banaskantha, India
Vinitha Bachina, Megha Sheth & Shilpi Srivastava

Centring Indigenous women’s rights in climate justice: the importance of listening to the direct voices of Indigenous women
Yun Mane, Noimaniphone Lorbliayao, Suzette Mitchell & Di Kilsby

Flow, food, and flood: embodied aquaculture in a climate-stressed world
Cheyenne Kammerer, Bernadette P. Resurrección & Kanokwan Manorom

‘Muipuri pacoa, ketimaha romiiri’: the women in the Tukano Oriental Shamanism
Carolina Amaya, Ana María Zuluaga & Rely Adolga Mejía

Waters of resistance: decolonising perspectives on women’s territorial r-existence in southern Chile
Maite Hernando-Arrese & María Ignacia Ibarra

Helping rural women secure their land and resource rights: reach, benefit, empower, or transform?
Anne M. Larson & Ruth Meinzen-Dick

Exploring the potential of territorial funds to achieve equitable and inclusive direct climate and biodiversity finance
Iliana Monterroso

Dalit women and land rights in India
Beena Pallical & Grijesh Dinker

Storm in a water pot
Nafisa Barot

She Inherits, She Sells: community-based theatre to strengthen women’s land rights and entrepreneurship
Dina Najjar, Dorsaf Oueslati, Brahim Benrais & Zakaria Nidkazza

Resources

Here you can find additional materials related to the issue. These are compiled by Anandita Ghosh and Shivani Satija.

View Resources Section

Book Reviews

Some of Us Are Brave: Interviews and Conversations with Sistas on Life, Art and Struggle, Volume 1 by Thandisizwe Chimurenga. Reviewed by Njoki Wamai

The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian by Neha Dixit. Reviewed by Faiz Ullah