All Protocol Observed Many thank you to UNDP and UN

Women for the invitation to South Centre to participate in this very important global conference on women and Social Inclusion: From Beijing to Post 2015.

Muchas Gracias for the wonderful welcome and hospitality by the Argentina government.

Thus far it has been a very rich and enlightening experience, especially learning of the Latin American Experiences

Updated: 23/01/08

What is South Centre?• Intergovernmental Independent Think-Tank for Developing Countries.

• Created in 1995. Has grown out of the work and experience of the South Commission.

• Eminent Personalities: Julius Nyerere (President of Tanzania), Manmohan Singh (Prime Minister of India), Boutros Boutros-Ghali (U.N. Secretary General, Luis Fernando Jaramillo, Vice-President of Colombia).

• 51 Member States from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

• Current Chairperson: Mr. Benjamin Mkapa (President of Tanzania).

• Board Members: Charles Soludo (Nigeria), Omar El Arini (Egypt), Rubens Ricupero (Brazil), Ransford Smith (Jamaica), Yang Wenchang (China), Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (Philippines)

•Executive Director: Martin Khor (Malaysia)

Working for whom?

Member States and other developing countries

Regional and thematic groupings of developing countries in various international forums:

G-77, LDCs, G-33, ACP, African Union, SADC,COMESA, MERCOSUR, SIDS and others.

Key Audience: Policymakers in the Capitals (Ministry of Trade, Ministry of Foreign Affairs…..) Diplomatic representations in Geneva, New York and Brussels UN and other multilateral development agencies Academic and research institutions NGOs and civil society Private sector

Implications of the response to Climate change for women’s poverty and inclusion in post 2015

Mariama WilliamsSouth Centre

Gender and Climate Change

Outline

I. Gender and Climate change: Making the Linkages

II. Towards Gender sensitive global and National Climate Change Policy

Climate Change/Climate change policy and women’s empowerment and inclusion in the post 2015

I. Climate change and Gender: Making the Linkages

Gender differentiated impacts of extreme weather events etc.

Gender and climate change Adaptation

Gender and Climate change Mitigation

Gender and climate related technology Development and transfer

Gender differentiated Impacts

Extreme weather events, rising sea levels, threats to water and food production, all have differential impacts on the lives of women and men. Women and men have different capabilities, opportunities and access to resources to facilitate the adaptation to changing climate which adversely impacts the availability of food, fuel and water.

Gender differentiated Impacts 2

Women, due to historical discrimination and biases in both the formal and informal labour markets as well as cultural and social practices, have less assets, income and savings to deal with the loss and damages from extreme weather events. Climate change-related events that impact water resource to communities place increasing burden on women’s care and social reproduction work.

Gender differentiated Impacts 3

The IPCC’s AR4 notes that climate change is likely to directly impact children and pregnant women because they are particularly susceptible to vector and water-borne diseases. WHO argues that pregnant women are more susceptible and die from malaria and water-borne diseases than the general population.

Gender differentiated Impacts 4

Women, as a group, relative to men, as a group, have different possibilities for recovering from frequent and intensive periods of droughts, floods and hurricanes.

Women and children die disproportionately more than men from extreme weather events such as floods, hurricanes and storms (Neumayer and Plumper, 2007).  

Gender differentiated Impacts 5

In some countries, the effects of climate change also place women and girls at greater risks for bodily injury, rape and harassment when they must travel further and further away from home to secure household drinking water, fuel and food

Climate change and its inter-linkages to SDGs and FfD

It is extremely important to recognise that climate change and policies to address it inter-relate to other areas that are critical for women’s empowerment and social inclusion: Fiscal policy, trade, agri/food security, social protection and the SDGs generally

Climate change is goal 13 of SDG and climate finance has implication for ODA

Adaptation 1) increase resilience; 2) decrease impacts

of disasters 3) coping and relief to experience when damage occurs.

Women are dynamic actors in projects and programmes particularly related to adaptation, such as crop and livestock selection, crop shifting and soil preservation, the use of traditional water harvesting techniques and the efficient use of water.

Adaptation Women, as the managers of

household energy and water supplies, must adapt to the changing climate conditions.

Women, as farmers and major producers of food, must also adapt production and growing practices that ensure food security, in spite of climate change.

Yet women in communities continue to have in adequate decision-making with regard to adaptation decision-making at local, sector, national, regional and international local levels

Mitigation Focus: create incentives for consumers

and producers to reduce GHG emissions/ encourage transition to low carbon, clean and efficient energy development and the enhancement of both natural and man-made greenhouse gas sinks.

While the former focuses on industrial pro-duction, energy generation and end use energy intensive sectors such as transportation, the latter revolves around a large number of activities such as agricultural production, deforestation, land-use changes that are important for the lives and livelihoods of women and men in quite distinct ways.

Mitigation 2

Mitigation within the context of sustainable development can help to promote gender equity and women’s empowerment by addressing at least four issues: 1) women’s and men’s energy needs and

uses; 2) women’s and men’s employment and

entrepreneurship—though there are potential challenges and constraints in the agriculture, energy and power sectors; 3) incorporating women’s and men’s traditional knowledge and practices into mitigation strategies and policy frameworks;

4) paying focused attention on ensuring gender equity in the use, conservation and management of forests.

Mitigation 3 Some mitigation actions, such as the

provision of clean and modern energy services, save women’s and men’s time and lives and promote better health.

Other mitigation actions such as those implemented to affect land use, and land-use change can shift the balance of economic and social resource distribution between women and men and among different communities and hence can exacerbate inequality.

Technology and Gender

In the area of technology women play important role in cost effective Soft technology (i.e., Crop rotation patterns)

and Hard Technology (i.e. Drought resistant crop varieties, Seawalls and irrigation techniques).

Technology & Gender “African women are particularly known to possess

indigenous knowledge which helps to maintain household food security, particularly in times of drought and famine. They often rely on indigenous plants that are more tolerant to droughts and pests, providing a reserve for extended periods of economic hardship. In southern Sudan, for example, women are directly responsible for the selection of all sorghum seeds saved for planting each year. They preserve a spread of varieties of seeds that will ensure resistance to the range of conditions that may arise in any given growing season.”

Source: IPCC WGII Cross Sectoral Studies Chapter.

Climate Finance

Equal access to critical financial mechanism is bothnecessary and important for women’s

empowerment and for sustainable climate change actions in the long run.

Otherwise, climate change remediable and strategic actions will not be sustainable. Therefore climate change financing, in as much

as it seeks to promote global benefits, must also seek to ensure benefits to women and men in the formal, informal and household sectors of the economy.

It is important that climate change financing focuses as well on transforming and upgrading the livelihoods of women and men on the ground in order to engender the necessary behavioural, institutional and policy changes that are important for securing climate change objectives.

II. Towards Gender sensitive global and National Climate Change Policy

Global Climate policy framework: UNFCCC:

Pillars: Adaptation, Mitigation, Tech & Finance plus capacity

Gender Decision 2012The Lima Work Programme 2015

Gender sensitisation of the Green Climate Fund etc.

Climate Change POLICYThe architecture and governance framework of climate change: UNFCCC OPERATIONAL PILLARS AND THEMES ADAPTATION & Loss and Damage

MITIGATION: CDM, REDD FINANCE: GEF, Green climate Fund etc.

TECHNOLOGY CAPACITY BUILDING COMMUNICATION: EDUCATION &

OUTREACH

GENDER Decisions 23/CP.18 /Lima work program on gender and climate change, Gender Policy & Action Plan of the Green Climate fund

GENDER DECISION

The COP adopted a goal of gender balance in bodies established pursuant to the Convention….in order to improvewomen’s participation and inform more effective climate change policy that addresses the needs of women and men equally

The Lima Work Programme on Gender

A two-year work programme for promoting gender balance and achieving gender-responsive climate policy, developed for the purpose of guiding the effective participation of women in the bodies established under the Convention,

Elements of the LWPG

Strengthen the existing work on gender balance in the thematic priority areas (participation & capacity building, adaptation, Mitigation, TD&T)In-session workshops on Mitigation & TD&T (June 2015) and adaptation and capacity building (2016)Hiring of senior gender focal point in the UNFCCC secretariat

Fund-wide Gender-sensitization of the Green Climate Fund

Status of resource mobilized: $10.2 B (over 4 years); 50:50 Adaptation & Mitigation.5 Implementing entities approved; Readiness in process.

As of May Gender Policy & Gender Action Planned approved

Gender advocates working with secretariat to ensure gender indicators in the performance measurement Framework of the fund

Elements of GCF Gender Policy and Gender Action Plan

The Gender Policy has six principles: Three-fold commitment (understand gender and

climate change issues; adopt tools and method to promote gender equality and reduce gender disparity in climate funding: and measure the outcomes and impact of GCF activities on women’s and men’s resilience to climate change

Comprehensive scope and coverage: ALL climate funding activities

Accountability of ALL entities that carries out the GCF mission for gender results; and redress mechanism for gender related compliance and grievances

GCF GS elements2 Country Ownership: working through NDAs and

focal points –in alignment with national gender policies and priorities and GCF gender policy.

Competencies: gender balance in ALL funds operations; secretariat in-house gender expertise at senior staff level; gender and climate expertise in all committees, esp. Accreditation Panel, Investment committee, risk management committed and the PSAG etc. (Readiness and preparatory support available to NDAs and FPs in this context)

Resource Allocation of the Fund should contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment (including targeted funding to support women’s climate change adaptation and Mitigation initiatives

GCF Gender Action Plan

The Gender Action Plan has six priority areas Governance and institutional structure: Operational guidelines: guidelines,

including socio economic and gender assessments/ESS…

Capacity building: gender training for board and staff

Outputs, outcomes, impacts and ‘paradigm-shifting objectives for monitoring, reporting and evaluation

Resource allocation and budgeting Knowledge generation and

communications

III. Climate Change/Climate change policy and women’s empowerment and inclusion in the post 2015

Promoting gender equity based analysis in agreements and in financing institutions

The Paris 2015 agreement

CC and Women’s Empowerment and Inclusion post 2015

There is a need to rebalance priorities and to accelerate both adaptation and mitigation programmes and projects in order to meet the immediate and medium term needs of women, men and children in communities while at the same time making the transition to low-carbon development pathways.

Change/Climate change policy and women’s empowerment and inclusion

in the post 2015

As the next frontier in climate policy is pursued beyond 2015, there is much work to be done elaborating the vulnerability and risks that men and wom-en face in developing countries and ensuring that policy frameworks and instruments more fully integrate gender and women empowerment perspectives.  

Climate change policy and women’s empowerment and inclusion in the post

2015

In this context, there will be need for careful calibration between adaptation and mitigation policies and outcomes.

 Greater involvement of women in the selection, design, production and implementation of climate proofing projects undertaken in their communities and localities; ensure that climate enhanced marketing and storage facilities

Climate change policy and women’s empowerment and inclusion in the post 2015

are accessible to women at the time of day that is appropriate for women and with the needed complementary services such as transportation.

These undertaking can have very dynamic results for improving the long term adaptive capacity of the sector (i.e., agriculture, water supply) and the community as a whole. Project reviewers, sponsors and funders should be trained to evaluate project documents from these gender sensitive lens.

The trajectory towards gender sensitive and gender equitable climate governance policy, including adaptation and mitigation policy, involves developing activities around at least four important pillars:

1) improving women ‘s role in climate governance, through gender balance in representation and improved capacity building for climate negotiations for women;

2) programs and training for enhancing the skill set of women to undertake adaptation and mitigation and assessments;

3) timely and strategic interventions around climate protection and building resilience and 4) ensuring adequate climate finance, that is publicly sourced, non-debt creating and easily accessible, flows to developing countries; and

4) ensuring gender equity in the flow of this finance.

Drawing on the existing frameworks, enhancing their strong points and building in processes and mechanism to mitigating weaker aspects can provide significant leverage points toward gender sensitizing the current climate change financing architecture.

Thank You!

williams@southcentre.int