The majority of the world's poorest 1.5 billion people -- those who live on less than $1 a day -- are women, and they survive on subsistence-level farming. This is no coincidence. Though women's farms tend to be small, "women produce far more of the world's food than they are given credit for -- especially in developing countries," the authors state. In Zimbabwe and Benin, for instance, women account for more than 70 percent of all agricultural workers.

For these women, the land is their livelihood, even if they rent land rather than own it. If it becomes unusable, perhaps through flooding or through the changing coastlines, or less valuable, perhaps because of changes in temperature or dryness that stop or slow crop growth, the farmer's economic stability immediately plummets. And, because their wealth is rooted in a single place, migrating, perhaps because of an upswing in extreme weather, also causes an immediate economic crisis.

If we want to help women who are going to be on the front lines of climate change, then we should focus our efforts on improving the lot of small farmers -- and there are a number of ways to do that. Start schools that take into account the seasonal and cyclical nature of farming, so that a girl forced to leave school during a busy period doesn't need to drop out, but can come back. Send agricultural scientists out to rural areas to train farmers on the techniques that will work in their new environments. And invest more money in developing new agricultural techniques for rapidly changing local environmental needs.