As COP30 opens in the Amazon, new research highlights a stark injustice: women and low-income households in the Global South are bearing the true costs of the climate crisis, while governments and the corporations most responsible for emissions largely avoid accountability. Studies conducted by Hivos and local partners in Brazil and Zambia, involving 236 households, reveal that climate impacts are directly felt within homes, with women absorbing the burden through unpaid care, rising expenses, lost income, and recurring debt. This “hidden climate bill” remains largely invisible in national climate planning and global finance systems.
In Zambia, households spend 10–30% of their annual income recovering from climate shocks, while women in Brazil’s informal economy lose up to 40% of their monthly income during extreme weather events. Families often skip meals or fall into debt to cope, demonstrating that the immediate costs of climate impacts are borne disproportionately by those least responsible for causing them. Women are increasingly tasked with rebuilding homes, securing food, caring for children and elders, and managing emotional and mental stress, all without institutional support.
The research underscores how existing climate and economic structures exacerbate power imbalances. Women, informal workers, rural families, and young girls carry the brunt of adaptation and survival costs, while fossil fuel corporations continue to profit and public budgets remain inadequate to address household-level losses. Climate finance mechanisms are largely focused on mitigation and large-scale projects, leaving household spending on adaptation unrecognized and unsupported.
To address this inequity, the study recommends that national governments adopt Climate Bills frameworks to identify and track household-level climate costs, integrate gender-responsive budgeting, redirect fossil fuel subsidies toward resilience and care systems, and provide direct funding to grassroots and women-led initiatives. International climate finance institutions should recognize household adaptation spending as a core indicator of unmet needs, expand direct access for women-led and local organizations, reform governance structures to ensure meaningful participation of frontline communities, and support innovative financing solutions like debt cancellation and justice-centered investments.
As world leaders convene at COP30 in Belém, the research emphasizes that the true costs of climate inaction are felt daily within homes through hunger, debt, and unpaid labor. The COP must become a turning point where responsibility is shifted from vulnerable households to those most accountable for emissions, ensuring that women and families receive the recognition, resources, and protections necessary to survive and thrive in a changing climate. Climate Bills are not just policy tools—they are obligations of justice, demanding that no woman should pay for the climate crisis with her labor or her children’s future.
