When things get bad, women get punished.

Climate-related crises in poorer countries increases violence and exploitation of women, says a recent report, and current attempts to address climate change fail to tackle this issue. This was the conclusion reached by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)…

“We found gender-based violence to be pervasive,” said Cate Owren, lead author of the report, to the publication, “and there is enough clear evidence to suggest that climate change is increasing gender-based violence.”

Naturally. When the situation worsens, the strong oppress the weak more than ever. Men are stronger than women.

The study found evidence that poorer countries struggle the most with handling events influenced by climate change — such as droughts, extreme natural disasters, and ecological changes that create food or water scarcity — and that the stress or struggle to manage these pressures can result in an increased rate of “gender-based violence.”

For the purposes of the study, “gender-based violence” included “domestic violence, sexual assault and rape, forced prostitution, forced marriage and child marriage, as well as other forms of exploitation of women.” These countries aren’t typically the largest contributors of carbon emissions in the world, but they face a disproportionate amount of harm from the climate crisis.

The rich countries do it to the poor countries, and the men in the poor countries do it to the women. Misery goes downward until the bottom is saturated.

Climate change can increase the frequency of disasters or make them more destructive, which hurts a community’s ability to bounce back. When this happens in a country where women already lack rights, the struggle to recover can lead to their exploitation. According to the study, nearly 12 million additional young girls are believed to be married off after natural disasters. And previous research by anti-slavery organizations have found that sex trafficking increases by 20-30 percent after a climate-related disaster.

It makes a kind of sense. Young girls get married off because that’s one less mouth to feed. Sex trafficking increases because it’s profitable and profit=more of the scarce resources.

Illegal activities, such as poaching and illegal resource extraction, also increase after climate-related devastation. These illegal activities, Owren found, are closely linked with the exploitation of women and young girls. In one example, the study detailed instances of fishermen in eastern and southern Africa who wouldn’t sell fish to women unless they paid with sex. Similar examples were found with illegal logging and charcoal industries in Congo as well as illegal mines in Colombia and Peru.

Never waste a woman, right?