Vaibhav Sonone
One afternoon in Mavai block of Mandla district, I was sitting with a group of Baiga women, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), listening to a conversation that was both deeply insightful and, at the same time, was not connecting to policy. I could not speak their language fluently, but I understood enough to follow their concern: this year’s rainfall would be irregular, and they needed to prepare (how they came to know, this is one of the areas that need to be explored).
One woman spoke about building bori bandhan on a small seasonal stream to retain water. Another said she would shift to desi seeds, knowing that hybrid varieties require more water. Others added their own strategies, small, deliberate choices shaped by years of observing forests, soils, and changing rainfall patterns. These were not abstract ideas; they were practical climate adaptation strategies rooted in lived experience.
As I listened, I felt a sense of hope. Surely, I thought, these insights would become part of the village’s collective planning, reflected in the Gram Panchayat Development Plan, discussed under MGNREGS works, or raised in the Gram Sabha. This, after all, is what decentralized climate governance promises. Two weeks later, the Gram Sabha was held. None of these women was present. The Panchayat Secretary read out a pre-set agenda from the state government. A few male members spoke, and within an hour, the meeting ended.
When I later asked the women why they had not attended, one replied quietly: “What is the point? No one listens to us.” That moment has stayed with me and raised a big question about whose knowledge shapes climate decisions.
Women in Climate Planning: Present but Peripheral
Singh et al (2021) highlighted that across India, climate and livelihood policies increasingly recognize women, but largely as vulnerable groups or beneficiaries. Women are visible in policy documents, State Action Plans on Climate Change, watershed programmes, and rural livelihood missions as recipients of support or participants in implementation. While this recognition is important, it reflects a limited framing of women’s role in climate adaptation.
So, a question arises- why is women’s leadership missing at grassroot? In most climate-linked governance spaces, Gram Sabhas, GPDP processes, forest rights implementation, or watershed committees, women’s participation rarely translates into influence over priorities, budgets, or decision-making. So, in my opinion, our policy mistakenly considers the presence to be equal to power.
My field observations are that this policy gap is particularly pronounced in tribal and PVTG regions. Social norms, language barriers, time poverty, and institutional design combine to restrict women’s voices. Meetings are often procedural, agendas are pre-determined, and facilitation does little to enable inclusive deliberation. As a result, women’s ecological knowledge remains informal, shared in courtyards and fields, but excluded from formal decision-making space.
Why Women’s Leadership Matters for Climate Adaptation
The marginalization of women’s voices is not only a gender equity issue; it is a climate governance failure (Parsons et al 2025). Women in rural and tribal areas are central to managing water, forests, food security, and household resilience (Agarwal, 2009). They are often the first to notice changes in rainfall patterns, forest availability, or crop performance because these changes directly affect their daily work (Rao et al, 2017).
When climate policies rely on women’s labor but exclude them from decision-making space, leads to adaptation strategies becoming technocratic and disconnected from reality. Infrastructure-heavy approaches may overlook local risk perceptions (Lele et al 2018). Crop and water plans may ignore strategies that communities already trust and practice. Climate adaptation, in such cases, becomes something designed for communities rather than with them.
Leadership matters because it determines whose knowledge shapes collective action. Treating women only as beneficiaries confines their role to implementation. Recognizing them as leaders allows their knowledge to influence planning, prioritization, and accountability, strengthening adaptation outcomes for entire communities.
Rethinking Local Climate Governance
India’s emphasis on decentralized planning offers an important opportunity. Instruments such as GPDPs, Gram Sabhas, Joint Forest Management Committees and MGNREGS are increasingly discussed as vehicles for climate-resilient development. Yet, without addressing gendered power relations within these institutions, their potential remains largely unfulfilled.
Meaningful inclusion requires more than encouraging women to attend meetings. It requires asking difficult questions: Who sets the agenda? Who speaks? Who decides? And whose knowledge is considered legitimate? Without institutional mechanisms to address these questions, participation remains symbolic.
Women’s collectives, such as self-help groups and forest user groups, offer a pathway forward. When recognized not just as delivery platforms but as governance institutions, they can anchor climate planning in real life. This shift, however, requires policy commitment: gender-responsive budgeting, outcome indicators for women’s leadership, and clear accountability within climate and livelihood programmes.
From Local Solutions to Collective Decisions
The Baiga women I met in Mandla were already responding to climate uncertainty with care and foresight. They were reading changes in rainfall, adjusting cropping choices, and planning water conservation in ways shaped by deep ecological knowledge and lived experience. The tragedy is not that solutions are missing, but that there is little institutional space for these solutions to inform collective decisions. Their strategies remain individual and informal, even though they hold clear relevance for village-level planning and climate adaptation.
This gap points to a larger truth: climate resilience is not only about managing ecosystems, building infrastructure, or introducing new technologies. It is equally about redistributing power within the institutions that govern climate responses. When women’s knowledge circulates only within homes, fields, or informal conversations, and not within Gram Sabhas, GPDP processes, or climate-linked programmes, policy remains disconnected from ground realities. As research shows, climate policies that recognize women primarily as beneficiaries rather than decision-makers risk reproducing existing inequalities and undermining adaptation outcomes (Singh et al., 2021).
Emerging literature and field evidence consistently highlight that women’s leadership strengthens climate governance by anchoring it in everyday realities (Singh et al., 2017; Rao et al., 2017; Parsons et al., 2025). Recognizing women as leaders is therefore not an optional or symbolic add-on to climate policy. It is central to building adaptation strategies that are effective, equitable, and locally grounded.
Redistributing power means ensuring that women shape agendas, including their traditional knowledge, influence priorities, and participate in decision-making, not merely implement plans which are designed by a top-down approach. Without this shift, climate policy will continue to overlook some of the most credible and context-specific solutions already present within communities.
Bibliography
Singh, C., Solomon, D., & Rao, N. (2021). How does climate change adaptation policy in India consider gender? An analysis of 28 state action plans. Climate Policy, 21(7), 958–975.
Parsons, M., Godden, N. J., Henrique, K. P., et al. (2025). Participatory approaches to climate adaptation, resilience, and mitigation: A systematic review. Ambio, 54, 2005–2020.
Agarwal, B. (2009). Gender and forest conservation: The impact of women’s participation in community forest governance. Ecological Economics, 68(11), 2785–2799.
Rao, N., Lawson, E. T., Raditloaneng, W. N., Solomon, D., & Angula, M. N. (2019). Gendered vulnerabilities to climate change: Insights from semi-arid regions of Africa and Asia. Climate and Development, 11(1), 14–26.
Lele, S., Brondízio, E. S., Byrne, J., Mace, G. M., & Martinez-Alier, J. (2018). Rethinking environmentalism: Linking justice, sustainability, and diversity. Global Environmental Change, 53, 1–5.
About the contributor
Vaibhav Sonone is a Development Practitioner and Commonwealth Scholar (University of Leeds, UK). He is presently, an executive at Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) Mandla (Madhya Pradesh).
Disclaimer
All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organization, neither PRADAN nor IMPRI.
Read more at IMPRI
The Unjust Climate: How History, Faith, and Power Shape our Planetary Crisis
Agroforestry-Based Policy Interventions for Climate-Resilient Dryland Agriculture in India
Acknowledgement
The author appreciates the PRADAN Mandla team and Snehal Tanpure for their support.
The article was posted by Varisha Sharma, a research intern at IMPRI
