The International Day of Care and Support, celebrated every October 29th and established by a United Nations General Assembly Resolution in 2023, reminds us that care is not a private matter: it is a critical social infrastructure that sustains life and the resilience of our communities. In Latin America and the Caribbean, this date takes on special meaning in a context marked by two interconnected crises: the care crisis and the climate crisis.

The Tlatelolco Commitment (2025), adopted by countries in our region during the XVI Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, acknowledges this reality and calls for progress toward a care society as a new paradigm for sustainable development, one that places the sustainability of life and the planet at its center. Echoing Advisory Opinion 31/25 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Commitment refers for the first time to care as a human right, which implies that States have the obligation to ensure accessible, equitable, and sustainable care and support systems, especially for women, persons with disabilities, informal workers, and migrants.

This regional roadmap calls on us to collectively build a new paradigm: a care society that deeply transforms our political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental structures. With a long-term vision, it establishes a Decade of Action (2025–2035) in Latin America and the Caribbean to accelerate the achievement of substantive gender equality and the care society. In this context, it makes a clear call to the United Nations system to support States in designing and implementing transformative public care policies, and explicitly mentions UNDP’s role in paragraphs 59, 61, and 64 of the document.

Care and the Climate Crisis: A Joint Agenda for Resilience and Gender Equality

In Latin America, the frequency of extreme weather events has increased significantly, from an annual average of 14.5 between 1963 and 1999 to 41.9 between 2000 and 2023. This growing exposure to disasters highlights the urgency of addressing their impacts on populations, particularly on women and groups in situations of greater vulnerability, and of strengthening community resilience. Existing data, though still limited, reflects this reality: women are 14 times more likely to die during climate disasters than men and represent 80% of people displaced due to climate disasters and conflicts.

Biodiversity loss and every hurricane, drought, or forest fire reorganize daily life and multiply the invisible care tasks that sustain community survival. Women, particularly in rural, indigenous, and coastal areas, bear these tasks disproportionately and are often on the frontlines of the climate crisis:

• In Guerrero, Mexico, after Hurricane Otis, indigenous and afro-mexican women activated informal networks to secure water, food, and community health when formal systems collapsed. These women turned care into a strategy for resilience.
• In Uruguay, during the longest drought of the past decade, rural women sustained family agriculture and community well-being while promoting sustainable practices such as crop rotation and seed conservation.
• In the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, the cheneras -Maya women beekeepers- turned beekeeping into a collective action to defend biodiversity against agroindustry and climate change.

These stories reveal an uncomfortable truth: in Latin America and the Caribbean, much of climate adaptation rests on the shoulders of millions of women whose unpaid care work sustains entire communities amid the climate crisis. Without recognition or compensation, they absorb the human cost of extreme weather events. Despite being key to resilience, women still hold less than 15% of the world’s land, limiting their adaptive capacity and exposing them to losing their livelihoods.

The COP30, to be held in Brazil in November, presents a historic opportunity to recognize the central role of care in climate action. During the conference, States will discuss the adoption of a new Gender Action Plan under the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender, which has the potential to transform the conditions under which women care and live, and is crucial to ensuring a just and green transition that leaves no one behind.

Care as Critical Infrastructure for Resilience

The implementation of comprehensive care policies—with a gender, territorial, and intersectional approach—can simultaneously reduce gender gaps and strengthen communities’ capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. When care and support services and networks are not interrupted during and after disasters, person with care needs—such as children, persons with disabilities, and older adults—are better protected, and women have more time to participate in and lead community recovery efforts.

In this context, care and support systems emerge as critical infrastructure for climate resilience. Recognizing this transformative potential, the UNDP Regional Hub in Panama has developed the initiative “Care in Disaster Risk Management Contexts: Care Solutions Package”, which seeks to integrate care across all stages of disaster risk management.

As part of this initiative, and with funding from the UNDP Hurricane Preparedness Mechanism, a georeferenced mapping of care service supply and demand, as well as service quality, is being implemented in Villanueva (Honduras), linked to the area’s risk map. In parallel, this week capacity-building activities are being carried out with public institutions, civil society organizations, and the private sector to incorporate the care approach into disaster risk management.

Through initiatives such as these, UNDP provides technical assistance, strengthens local capacities, and supports community networks to ensure that responses are not only immediate but also sustainable. Through programmes aimed at building resilience and promoting gender equality, UNDP supports the integration of the care perspective into climate adaptation and early recovery strategies—ensuring that women’s voices and knowledge are central to these solutions.