Transforming land rights, improving rural livelihoods, andcarving just responses to the climate crisis

The intersection of gender, land rights, climate change, and governance remains a focal point of contemporary discussions on justice, sustainability, and development. Women, despite their extensive contributions to agriculture, water management, and environmental conservation, continue to face systemic exclusion from control and decision-making around land tenure and climate adaptation policies and practices. Indigenous, Black, and Dalit women face further exclusion, dispossessions, and displacements in the context of commodification of land and water resources. Despite the presence of international laws that guarantee the rights of Indigenous peoples to self-determination, territories, and resources, governments, along with extractive industries such as mining, energy, oil, and housing corporations, have been seizing community-held land and forests across North America, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), Africa, and Asia (Smith and Allen Citation2023; United Nations (UN) Citation2022; Veit Citation2018). This systemic dispossession, driven by land grabs orchestrated by states and corporations, particularly targeting Indigenous communities, exacerbates their vulnerability by rendering them landless and destitute.

In this context, women face additional layers of marginalisation, as historical injustices, legal discrimination, and climate-induced pressures further restrict their access to land and resources. Women’s struggles over land and water rights are also deeply embedded in the aforementioned contexts. While many countries have enacted gender-progressive policies regarding land and water rights, a significant implementation gap persists, particularly for rural and Indigenous women (Remteng et al. Citation2021). Moreover, gender disparities in access to finance, agricultural training, irrigation, and climate adaptation resources continue to exacerbate rural poverty, food, and water insecurity (Doss Citation2017; Lecoutere et al. Citation2023).

Current research highlights the urgent need to examine how land and water rights, rural livelihoods, and climate justice intersect (Acevedo-Guerrero et al. Citation2025; Acosta et al. Citation2025), which is the focus of this special issue titled, ‘Transforming land and water rights, improving rural livelihoods and carving just responses to the climate crisis’. The critical link between women’s land tenure security and efforts towards climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience (Tantoh et al. Citation2021), as well as its role in enhancing rural livelihoods and improving farming practices, is increasingly recognised by policymakers, development organisations, and scholars (Acevedo-Guerrero et al. Citation2025; Goli et al. Citation2025; Han, Zhang, and Zhang Citation2019; McLain et al. Citation2021). Additionally, women’s access to land often determines their access to water for irrigation (Acevedo-Guerrero et al. Citation2025). Despite this critical connection, women’s rights to land are highly uneven and fragmented. Women make up nearly 40 per cent of the agricultural workforce globally, yet own less than 15 per cent of all land on average, with stark disparities across regions (FAO Citation2022). These inequities, deeply embedded in patriarchal, colonial, and neoliberal governance structures, restrict women’s access to livestock, credit, water resources, irrigation programmes, and agricultural training (FAO and CGIAR Citation2018). Furthermore, climate change intensifies these disparities, as it reduces land access, increases food insecurity, and forces women to take on additional unpaid labour burdens while being excluded from decision-making related to adaptation strategies (Huyer Citation2021; Landesa Citation2023).

This special issue of Gender & Development includes contributions from Benin, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Laos PDR, Malawi, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Thailand, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia. The 15 articles and essays by 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. Marginalised communities are thus 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 (Shadrack and Chakma Citation2023; Tandon et al. Citation2023). The studies included in this special issue provide a comparative lens on how these dynamics play out across diverse geographical and political contexts.

This introduction synthesises and contrasts key themes from various contributions in this special issue, identifying four central areas of analysis: (1) structural exclusion from land and resource rights, (2) challenging neoliberal approaches to land and water by valuing community-generated knowledge and action, (3) gendered vulnerabilities and the invisibility of care work in climate adaptation, and (4) women’s resistance, collective action, and gender transformative climate policies that centre women’s land rights and agency in shaping sustainable futures. Such collective action and policies will enable transformative leadership that would address power relations and structures, provide an environment to promote social accountability, respect rural and Indigenous women’s knowledge, and support collective action.