New Delhi, June 5 -- On World Environment Day 2025, as governments and corporations tout green pledges, a quieter truth demands attention: Women across the globe - and particularly in climate-vulnerable countries like India - are bearing the brunt of a crisis they did little to cause.

A growing body of research has highlighted that women disproportionately bear the brunt of its devastating impacts. From heatwaves and floods to air thick with pollution, the effects of environmental degradation fall hardest on women, compounding longstanding inequalities, deepening economic precarity and fuelling a shadow crisis of gender-based violence.

Globally, studies consistently show that natural disasters, encompassing floods, droughts, heatwaves...