Summary

The increased vulnerability to hazards over the past 21st century shows that the climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) approach is inadequate to address the needs of the sexual and gender minority (SGM) communities, which include cis-women and trans-women communities. In the last 10 years since the 2000s, empirical evidence of SGM’s role in CCA-DRR has emerged, leading to the urgency for more gender-responsive CCA-DRR. Nevertheless, the SGM communities still face gender inequalities due to rooted patriarchal norms such as marginalization, subordination, and stigmatization. They are discriminated against and excluded from the decision-making process, which significantly affects the cis-women and SGM groups with limited access to knowledge, information, and resources in facing disaster and climate crises. The urge to combine the social capital of the SGM communities and gender-responsive CCA-DRR needs concrete and well-detailed transformational steps. For instance, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, the Keluarga Besar Waria Yogyakarta (KEBAYA) community established the Waria Crisis Centre as an extra effort for the transgender community to take CCA-DRR actions. It also focuses on designing plans to respond to disasters and anticipating several things related to the stigmatization, discrimination, the frequent violence toward, and the persecution of transgender people, especially trans women. Meanwhile, the richness of community social capital in the cis- and trans-women’s groups, such as tangible and intangible social networks, empowers their roles in CCA-DRR contexts. Both empirical evidences indicated SGM communities have a significant knowledge base due to their social capital; norms, trust, and networking lead to increased community awareness toward natural hazards, social solidarity, and disaster risk information. Furthermore, accommodating marginalized gender participation and empowerment to optimize their social capital must be through mutual cooperation and encouraging, motivating, and raising awareness of the potential to develop transformation in CCA-DRR and society as a whole.