“Look at the World Through Women’s Eyes”

Briefing Paper on “Environmental Conservation, Protection and Re-Halibilitation, by Liane Schalatek, Heinrich Böll Stiftung Washington, DC

The Need to “Climate Mainstream” the Beijing Platform of Action and to Provide

Gender-Responsive Climate-Relevant Financing

ISSUES What are the main issues you want to raise? Why are they are pivotal? Give key statistics with sources in footnotes. Twenty-five years after the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPA), it is clear that any feminist and women’s action agenda coming out of the Beijing+25 review must be “climate mainstreamed” to deal with this existential threat to humanity in a way the original BPA was not yet prepared to do. Over the past several decades, the climate crisis has grown exponentially. We are hurdling very quickly towards the point of no return with respect to devastating climate change impacts at the same time as we are struck by a biodiversity crisis and increasing social inequality, all perpetuated and driven by the current global fossil-fuel-driven growth-centric economic and financial systems focused on privatizing gains, socializing losses and commodifying nature and people, while benefitting only a few (the 1 percent top earners globally) at the expense of the many and the environment. The 2018 special report1 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that we have only until 2030 to transform our consumption, production and investment patterns and move away from fossil fuel to have a chance to keep global warming to 1.5 degree centigrade – with devastating impacts if we don’t. In 2019, we were already at 1.1 degree centigrade warming over pre-industrial levels2, with 18 of the hottest years ever recorded having happened since 2000; “hundred-year-floods” or “once-in-a-lifetime-hurricanes/typhoons” are taking place with increasing frequency. No less than broad systemic change is needed, guided by the principles of justice, solidarity and accountability and based on human-rights based frameworks and actions. Already, the impacts of the climate crisis affect people severely all over the world and the poorest countries and people the most. The loss and damage in terms of life, livelihoods, culture, and future livability in communities around the world is already staggering. For many frontline communities, most of them communities of color and with population groups that are politically, legally and economically marginalized, the climate crisis has become a matter of survival. The enjoyment of basic human rights such as the right to food, the right to water, the right to a decent livelihood, the right to development, and a wide range of social, economic, cultural and political rights for

1 IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission

pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/. 2 See https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/wmo-confirms-2019-second-hottest-year-record.

https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/wmo-confirms-2019-second-hottest-year-record

current and future generations which are enshrined in core human rights conventions3 is undermined by the climate crisis. The gendered dimension of the climate crisis is also clear. Women and girls form the majority of the world’s 2.1 billion people still living in poverty increasingly understood as multidimensional and of the 736 million in abject poverty with less than USD 2 a day

4, most of them in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. They are also the majority

of the just under 1 billion people without access to electricity and the 2.6 billion without clean cooking facilities5.

Women and girls, due to the persistent cultural, social, political, economic and legal inequalities and discriminations, many laid out 25 years ago in the action chapters of the Beijing Platform for Action, are often disproportionally affected by climate change impacts. At the same time their unique capabilities and solutions to address the climate emergency are often not heard or disregarded, and they remain severely underrepresented in and often entirely excluded from decision-making on climate policies and necessary climate finance investments. Climate justice, social and economic justice and gender justice are thus inseparable and can only be achieved conjointly. This becomes also evident when looking at the financial flows necessary to deal with the climate crisis and when taking a gender-informed look at how much money is available, for what, who receives access to climate finance and what gender-responsive climate financing should look like. The Paris Agreement6 from 2015 clearly laid out in its Art. 2.1.c. the need of making all finance flows, public and private, consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate-resilient development. This remains elusive. For example, internationally more than twice as much money per year is invested in fossil fuels than in renewable energy. Climate-compatible investment holdings are miniscule amounts of global stock assets under management, amounting to just USD 203 billion in low-carbon investment, or 0.3 percent of the USD 71 trillion under investment in 2018.7 Thus, clearly, even desirable measures such as massive divestment from extractive and fossil-fuel activities and an end to fossil fuel subsidies as well as ensuring that all development and infrastructure spending is climate compatible and long-term institutional investors such as pension funds acknowledge climate risks, while necessary, are not enough to create the systemic change needed. Instead patterns of exploitative and unsustainable productions fueled by the shareholder capitalism, corporate creed and profit-seeking short-termism must be confronted to transform the global economic and financial system towards sustainability, rights and equity with respect for nature and ecological balance. The strength of movement building and the mobilization of citizens around the world, including the youth spearheading a reinvigorated call for interconnected justice in the face of the climate crisis (“Fridays for Future”, “Sunrise Movement”) that we saw over the past years, are signs of hope that this can be achieved over time and with persistence, including via the power of citizens to vote.

3 See https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CoreInstruments.aspx.

4 https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview.

5 https://www.iea.org/reports/sdg7-data-and-projections.

6 https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/paris_nov_2015/application/pdf/paris_agreement_english_.pdf

7 The Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) Biennial Assessment (2018) puts annual investment flows into renewable energy in the y ears 2015-

2015 at USD 295 billion versus USD 742 billion invested in fossil-fuels, with another USD 373 billion in fossil-fuel subsidies. And of USD 71 trillion stocks under management (f.ex. in pension funds) only USD 203 billion is in low-carbon investments. https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/51904%20-%20UNFCCC%20BA%202018%20-%20Summary%20Final.pdf.

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CoreInstruments.aspxhttps://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overviewhttps://www.iea.org/reports/sdg7-data-and-projectionshttps://unfccc.int/files/meetings/paris_nov_2015/application/pdf/paris_agreement_english_.pdfhttps://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/51904%20-%20UNFCCC%20BA%202018%20-%20Summary%20Final.pdf

While ultimately all finance flows must be climate-compatible, and operate in a revised financial and economic system, and this has to remain the primary goal of feminist advocacy in the face of the climate crisis, it is important to focus attention and the advocacy of women’s groups and feminist toward an already occurring subset of financial investments and its contribution to address the climate crisis. This is why women’s human rights defenders, gender experts and feminist advocates need to engage with how dedicated climate finance – loosely defined as financial resources targeted at dealing with mitigation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and at increasing the resilience and reducing the vulnerability of people and ecosystems to deal with climate impacts – is generated, governed and used. The push has to be to ensure that all climate finance and climate finance mechanisms are fully gender-responsive, human-rights centered and equitable/climate-just. A climate justice approach to climate finance recognizes that developing countries have historically contributed the least to the massive GHG emissions that caused the climate crisis. In particular Least Developed Countries (LCDs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which are already the worst affected by climate change, have benefitted very little from fossil-fuel driven economic development. Thus, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) mandates that developed countries support developing countries financially in their climate actions. By 2020 this support is supposed to reach USD 100 billion per year and should increase significantly after 2025. To be clear: This amount is insufficient to deal with the financing needs of developing countries to address the climate crisis, or to deal with the significant loss and damage poor countries and communities have already suffered through extreme weather events (by same calculation just to address loss and damage some USD 300 billion will be needed annually by 20308). Large scale financing needs to be mobilized, including through alternative financing sources, such as financial transaction taxes (also meant to curb financial speculation) or a climate damages tax (targeting the “carbon majors”, those multinational corporations responsible through fossil fuel extraction more than 70 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions)9, while current illicit financial flows, such as tax evasion and avoidance to tax havens (by some estimates up to USD 600 billion per year10) need to be curbed. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that even the USD 100 billion per year in climate finance prioritized as public funding can be reached in 2020 through finance provision that is additional (= on top of) other financing obligations developed countries are facing, such as for sufficient official development assistance (ODA), including in supporting the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Too often in the past, the same scarce public resources have been simply relabeled (from development to climate purposes). Nevertheless, while the amount of dedicated public climate finance, particularly in multilateral climate funds, is nowhere near enough

11, it can provide an important signaling function for other climate-relevant investment

pattern when it supports the right climate actions, and in a way that is human-rights centered, inclusive and

8See https://civilsocietyreview.org/report2019/.

9 https://www.stampoutpoverty.org/the-climate-damages-tax-a-guide-to-what-it-is-and-how-it-works/.

10 https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/09/tackling-global-tax-havens-shaxon.htm

11 For an overview, see Charlene Watson and Liane Schalatek (2020), Climate Finance Fundamentals 2: The Global Climate Finance Architecture.

Available at: https://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BENG%5D%20DIGITAL.pdf (also available in French at https://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BFR%5D%20DIGITAL.pdf and Spanish at https://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BESP%5D%20DIGITAL_0.pdf).

https://civilsocietyreview.org/report2019/https://www.stampoutpoverty.org/the-climate-damages-tax-a-guide-to-what-it-is-and-how-it-works/https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/09/tackling-global-tax-havens-shaxon.htmhttps://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BENG%5D%20DIGITAL.pdfhttps://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BFR%5D%20DIGITAL.pdfhttps://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BESP%5D%20DIGITAL_0.pdf

gender-responsive and supportive of the broader political, regulatory and cultural and behavioral shifts needed to address the climate crisis in a systemic way.

BREAKING SILOS Give examples of how your issues are linked to all themes below. Please highlight human rights and specific subgroups(intersectional) affected. You may include data on women and girls in situations of heightened vulnerability (disaster, conflict, political turmoil) The following analysis attempts to lay out some of the relevant issue linkages without any claim to be comprehensive. The examples given are instead meant to illustrate some of the larger underlying normative and political observations and recommendations.

1. Inclusive development, shared prosperity and decent work

The IPCC in its 5th assessment12 underscores that climate change hazards increase existing gender inequalities, thereby contributing to the greater climate change vulnerability of many women. This is largely due to persisting gender norms and widespread gender discriminations that deny women income, legal rights, access to resources or political participation, while assigning them the primary role in caring for their families and providing for their livelihoods, leading to women’s marginalisation in many communities. The climate crisis thus exacerbates existing exclusions, including those brought on by a whole range of factors intersecting with gender cultural roles, gender identities and sexual orientation such as social status or class/caste, race, ethnicity, religion or belief, age or health to limit or restrict access to resources, including natural resources on which many of the poor (overwhelmingly female) depend as their primary source of food and income, financial assets and services. The climate crisis aggravates and in many instances nullifies existing efforts and advances over the past decade for more inclusive development, including the possibility to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. It is therefore imperative that all public finance used for investment in climate actions seeks to address development and climate outcomes conjointly and in a way that is human-rights-centered, socially inclusive and gender-responsive and pursues multiple benefits without a false hierarchy between climate outcomes (such as emission reductions) as the “higher” and main objective and development or social, including gender outcomes as subordinated “co-benefits”. The reasons for such a demand to comprehensively address climate issues are obvious. First, climate finance is not operating in a normative vacuum. Most of the countries (‘Parties’) that are either providing or receiving climate finance resources are not only signatories to the UNFCCC, but (with a few noteworthy exceptions13) also signatories to major human rights conventions, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). They are therefore mandated to apply corresponding obligations in a coherent manner. Second, with the shortage of available (public) climate finance, it is important to use scarce funding in the most effective, efficient and equitable manner possible and in a way that is sustainable and sustained. This requires a dedicated focus on protecting and advancing human rights and

12

Available at https://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/. 13

The United States, Iran, Palau and Sudan, while parties to the UNFCCC, have not signed or ratified CEDAW.

https://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/

providing benefits of such investments to local communities, and often politically disenfranchised and marginalized population groups, such as women, Indigenous Peoples or people living with disabilities. Take the issue of food security and access to land in its gendered dimensions for example. A rights-based approach to increasing the resilience of food production in times of more frequent weather extremes with droughts and floods that threaten food security must focus on the fact that the majority of food produced in many developing countries comes from smallholder farmers, many of them women that produce food for their communities and families on rain-fed plots without irrigation. It must also recognize that in times of food insecurity it is often women and girls who go without food first. In order to increase food security threatened by climate change, successful adaptation measures must therefore recognize and overcome male-dominated structures that often govern land-ownership to promote the access of women and other marginalized and traditionally excluded groups to more fertile land, agricultural extension services or finance for agricultural inputs and the way scarce food resources are accessed and distributed within families and communities. The FAO estimates that if women had the same access to productive agricultural services as men, they could increase the yield of their agricultural production up to 30 percent, with an enormous impact on the reduction of hunger globally.14 Inclusive development and shared prosperity with respect to climate financing also means the opportunity for women and men to equally access and benefit from climate investments and thus increase efforts to target provision of climate finance to women as farmers, entrepreneurs, producers, stewards of the environment, consumers and household managers in a way that recognizes and supports their engagement in the fight against the climate crisis and in increments (such as micro or small grants for community actions or small loans for local businesses) and with conditions that support them. According to some studies, only less than 10 percent of all climate finance currently even reaches the local level.15 An even smaller percentage is supporting women-led local climate solutions. Thus, one core recommendation is to ensure direct access for local women’s groups to micro or small grants to support climate priorities for their communities, for example through a dedicated micro- or small grants mechanism established at various climate funds, thus providing public funds for public goods provision benefiting local communities. Similarly, a private sector approach to climate financing must integrate gender considerations centrally. A gender-responsive private sector climate finance strategy must respond to the fact that women entrepreneurs are disproportionally represented in the informal sector as well as engaged in or owning micro- and small-scale enterprises and targeting their businesses most often to community or local service provision rather than as part of supply chains for industrial (export) production. Targeting financial products and services for climate investments accordingly, such in the form of micro- or small-scale loans with increased loan maturity and reduced interest rates (and loan forgiveness in the case of climate emergencies), as well as addressing the lack of collateral that hinders many women or other marginalized groups or minorities from accessing credits in the first place, ensures more equal opportunities for women entrepreneurs to climate financing resources and thus more local- and community-level investments to address climate change.

14 FAO(2011). The State of Food and Agriculture: Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development. Available at: http://www.fao.org/publications/sofa/2010-11/en/. FAO (2016). The State of Food and Agriculture: Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. Available at: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6030e.pdf. 15

IIED(2017). Money where it matters. Financing the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement through local finance. Available at: https://pubs.iied.org/17419IIED/

http://www.fao.org/publications/sofa/2010-11/en/http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6030e.pdfhttps://pubs.iied.org/17419IIED/

2. Poverty eradication, social protection and social services

Persistent poverty and exclusion, which disproportionally affects women and girls, aggravates the vulnerability to climate change impacts and the ability to adapt to increased risks to livelihoods, food systems or disasters. In order to be able to build resiliency to the climate crisis, social protection systems and support structures are needed. Many of these have been structurally underfunded or undermined already before the impacts of the climate crisis became apparent as a result of the decades long neoliberal push by the Bretton Woods institutions for privatization of basic services and the reduction of the basic service provision of the state due to high indebtedness and austerity mandates many developing countries are facing. The climate crisis without deliberate measures thus reinforces and or even expands existing poverty and can negate previous gains in addressing and reducing poverty. Take the health dimensions of climate change and their disproportionate impact on the physical and mental health of women for example, many of them directly related to the care burden of women and the related cultural expectations of women to support families and their communities. Not only is the mortality of women (short-term and in terms of decreased life expectancy) a multitude higher than men’s during and in the aftermath of extreme weather events16, women also bear the physical brunt of many climate change impacts (such as increased burden to collect water or fire wood in times of growing scarcity of those resources). Indoor air pollution due to inefficient and dirty biomass such as wood or dung for cooking and heating, on which still 2.6 billion people around the world depend, exposes women (and children) to higher risk of premature death.17 Climate change also increases the spread of vector-borne diseases such as malaria, to which women are more susceptible. They also bear a disproportionate share of the burden of caring for other sick family and community members, especially in the absence of or due to weakness of public health systems. And the increased salinization of drinking water due to sea-level rise, or unhygienic water affects the maternal and reproductive health of women and pregnancy outcomes18 as well as increases the care burden of women to provide for their families basic needs. It is therefore essential that climate investments address poverty eradication, social protection and public good service provision as an integral part of building resilience and helping frontline communities, including women and marginalized groups to adapt to climate impacts and as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This means for example that mitigation projects should not focus on maximizing emissions reductions as their sole/main investment imperative, but instead target emissions reductions in a way that addresses women’s special concerns, such as in the context of providing cleaner home cooking and heating solutions. A particular focus should be on addressing energy poverty (the persistent lack of access to electricity still affecting 860 million people worldwide) through providing local communities and disenfranchised and poor population groups with access to clean, renewable energy solutions, such as those provided by off-grid or mini-grid decentralized solar or wind power systems for rural areas, as schemes that are participatory and at rates that are affordable and socially progressive.

16

UNDP (2016), Gender, adaptation and disaster risk reduction; available at: https://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/gender/Gender%20and%20Environment/UNDP%20Gender,%20Adaptation%20and%20DRR%20Policy%20Brief%202-WEB.pdf. 17

See https://www.cleancookingalliance.org/impact-areas/environment/ ; https://www.cleancookingalliance.org/impact-areas/women/; and https://www.cleancookingalliance.org/binary-data/RESOURCE/file/000/000/352-1.pdf. 18

United Nations Population Fund (2015), State of the World Population: Shelter from the Storm; available at: https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/sowp/downloads/State_of_World_Population_2015_EN.pdf

https://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/gender/Gender%20and%20Environment/UNDP%20Gender,%20Adaptation%20and%20DRR%20Policy%20Brief%202-WEB.pdfhttps://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/gender/Gender%20and%20Environment/UNDP%20Gender,%20Adaptation%20and%20DRR%20Policy%20Brief%202-WEB.pdfhttps://www.cleancookingalliance.org/impact-areas/environment/https://www.cleancookingalliance.org/impact-areas/women/https://www.cleancookingalliance.org/binary-data/RESOURCE/file/000/000/352-1.pdfhttps://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/sowp/downloads/State_of_World_Population_2015_EN.pdf

For adaptation investments, this means pushing back on a narrative, unfortunately prevalent in current climate funding mechanisms, that support for social protection is a development expenditure and thus not relevant as part of a proper climate investment. Gender advocates and feminists have therefore to defend full cost adaptation financing and counter the current prevailing practice that assumes an existing development baseline (to be funded elsewhere) and then provides funding for resilience building and adaptation measures only as “incremental cost.” Not only is this dichotomy between climate and development false a false one with respect to any of the adaptation projects most beneficial to women, local communities and marginalized population groups, such as those addressing water, health or food risks, such an irrational juxtaposition is counterproductive. Additionally, the required co-investments and the articulation of a “climate rationale” impose heavy barriers to the realization of such gender-responsive, socially inclusive and equitable climate investments. Particularly for community or women’s groups, such requirements serve as an insurmountable barrier to accessing climate finance.

3. Freedom from violence, stigma and stereotypes Gender-based violence (GBV) increases in times of poverty, stress and emergencies in post-disaster situations, both of which are stoked by the growing impacts of the climate crisis. Child, early and forces marriages can occur as a harmful coping or “adaptation” strategy among those who suffer from economic stress due to disasters and the slow onset adverse effects of the climate crisis. Climate-induced migration is also increasing the danger for women climate refugees, such as in in displacement centers or emergency shelters. Climate investments have been so far slow to address the dangers of or deal with the causes of GBV. For example, an adaptation investment might focus on the building of emergency shelters, but it might not provide funding for the social support structure needed to run and staff such shelters and their ability to address patterns of GBV occurring during climate-related disasters and the rebuilding phase thereafter. In most developing countries receiving climate finance, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons are even more uniquely vulnerable due to stigmatization, discrimination and often criminalization and prosecution19. They might for example be excluded from recovery, compensation, education or support efforts in response to climate impacts, or not even given access to emergency shelters. This exclusion unfortunately extends to climate finance mechanisms. While by now all dedicated multilateral climate funds have gender policies which should apply to all their investments20, those overwhelmingly follow a binary gender approach. Significant pushback by a number of socially conservative developing countries has prevented such gender policies to recognize both intersectionality as well as more encompassing understanding of gender roles and identities cognizant of and respecting the rights and needs of LGBTQI persons. Lastly, with respect to women in the climate investment space, as evidenced in the approach of many climate investments, a dominant narrative persists that stereotypically portrays women as victims of the climate crisis, but does not focus sufficiently on their agency, leadership and capability in addressing the climate crisis, much of it already ongoing, unrecognized and uncompensated such as strategies to cope with and adapt to climate change,

19

See https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/map-of-criminalisation/. 20

See Liane Schalatek (2019), Climate Finance Fundamental 10: Gender and Climate Finance. Available in English, French and Spanish at: https://us.boell.org/en/climate-finance-fundamentals.

https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/map-of-criminalisation/https://us.boell.org/en/climate-finance-fundamentals

for example by saving and switching to drought-resistant seeds, safeguarding biodiversity, employing low impact or organic soil management techniques, or leading community-based reforestation and restoration efforts. Especially the leadership of indigenous women with indigenous communities protecting and caring for 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity is not sufficiently acknowledged and supported. And as farmers, entrepreneurs, producers, consumers and household managers, women are powerful stakeholders in implementing low-carbon pathways in developing countries. This makes women important actors deserving of financial focus in the fight against global warming.

4. Participation, accountability and gender-responsive institutions

While there has been significant progress over the past years with the integration of gender considerations into the climate process under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)21, the participation of women in climate negotiations22 and climate policy and climate finance decision-making is still too low, especially in leadership positions, both at the international and national levels. On the national level, women’s machineries are still insufficiently involved in the development of climate plans and the setting of climate investment priorities (such as Nationally Designated Contributions, NDCs, highlighting a country’s promised contribution to the collective implementation of the Paris Agreement or National Adaptation Plans, NAPs). 23 On the international level, accountability tools and efforts such as the UNFCCC Lima gender work programme on gender and a new five-year gender action plan24, as well as the gender policies and gender action plans that all major multilateral climate funds possess25, have somewhat helped to narrow a gender gap, but have yet to close it. Especially on the international level and under the UNFCCC process, while accountability and reporting efforts focus on selective and often segmented individual technical integration actions (such as participation in a capacity-building event, or the publication of a brochure)26 or largely quantitative measures, such as increasing the number of female participants among countries’ delegations at the climate negotiations27, less of a focus is on mandates addressing the underlying power imbalances and structural barriers perpetuating gender inequality and the exclusion of women in climate policy frameworks comprehensively and structurally, such as questions related to access to resources, political power and participation and protection of women’s rights. Nevertheless, while the observed progress in the climate process with raising awareness on the gender dimension of climate change over the past decade is too slow and too limited for many feminists and gender advocates, who have much more far reaching proposals28, it is apparently already too much for many parties in the climate negotiations. In fact, some of the gains over the past decade have provoked a backlash against efforts to more centrally anchor human rights

21

WEDO (2018), Pocket guide to gender equality under the UNFCCC; available at: https://wedo.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2018-Edition-of-Pocket-Guide-to-Gender_1.pdf. 22

https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/CP2019_09E.pdf 23

https://www.ndcs.undp.org/content/ndc-support-programme/en/home/our-work/focal/cross-cutting-gender.html. 24

UNFCCC (2019). Gender composition. Report by the Secretariat; available at: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cp2019_L03E.pdf 25

See Liane Schalatek (2019), Gender and Climate Change, CFF 10, available at: https://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2019-11/CFF10%202019%20%5BENG%5D%20DIGITAL.pdf 26

UNFCCC (2019). Progress in integrating a gender perspective in constituted bodies processes. Synthesis report by the secretar iat; available at: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cp2019_08E.pdf 27

UNFCCC (2019). Gender composition. Report by the Secretariat; available at: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cp2019_L03E.pdf 28

See in particular the elaboration of a comprehensive set of proposals by the UNFCCC Women and Gender Constituency at http://womengenderclimate.org/resources/.

https://wedo.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2018-Edition-of-Pocket-Guide-to-Gender_1.pdfhttps://wedo.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2018-Edition-of-Pocket-Guide-to-Gender_1.pdfhttps://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/CP2019_09E.pdfhttps://www.ndcs.undp.org/content/ndc-support-programme/en/home/our-work/focal/cross-cutting-gender.htmlhttps://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cp2019_L03E.pdfhttps://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2019-11/CFF10%202019%20%5BENG%5D%20DIGITAL.pdfhttps://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2019-11/CFF10%202019%20%5BENG%5D%20DIGITAL.pdfhttps://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cp2019_08E.pdfhttps://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cp2019_L03E.pdfhttp://womengenderclimate.org/resources/

and women’s rights as the normative framing for all climate actions and climate investments. This can be seen in the pushback against integrating human rights into the rulebook for the implementation of the Paris Agreement

29;

or in efforts, such as in the case of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) as the main multilateral climate fund for its implementation, to recently “update” the GCF’s gender policy by surgically excising or contextualizing any reference to women’s rights as unalienable, universal human rights with corresponding obligations in finance recipient countries.

30

For feminists and gender advocates in those climate (finance) spaces, vigilance is thus needed. Especially the proliferation of gender policies or gender action plans, while important contributors to more accountability on gender equality, can also be a distraction from some of the areas, where feminist advocates need to become more finance/financial instrument literate and savvy. Take the example of the GCF again. As it enters its first replenishment period (2020-2023), over the next four years it aims to shift its investment strategy towards riskier private sector engagement such as equity investments or guarantee schemes as well as its reliance on blended finance to attract and leverage private finance. This planned increase in the GCF’s risk appetite comes with increased risks for the transparency, accountability and potential human rights violations of supported investments, with reduced opportunities for comprehensive and sustained participation of local stakeholders, including women and Indigenous Peoples, throughout the investment cycle. Shifting more funding towards large-scale private sector and public-private partnership investments also means fewer resources and related operational policies facilitate the direct access of grant financing for community groups and women’s organizations in increments and with reporting requirements that they need. Thus, while a climate fund gender policy might stipulate some technical requirements, such as a gender impact analysis or a project/program-specific gender action plan, the intent of the policy, namely contribution to gender equality through climate investments, could be more than countervailed, if not blatantly undermined, by the wrong prioritization and foci of supported investment approaches. Several of these, such as market-based carbon offsetting approaches are viewed critically by many gender and climate experts and feminist advocates as false solutions perpetuating business-as-usual and diverting financing and attention from the larger systemic shifts needed in addressing underlying destructive power structures.

5. Peace and inclusive societies Globally some 60 percent of the worldwide more than 70 million people displaced by conflict and crises, including more than 41 million internally displaced people (IDP) and 26 million refugees, are women and girls.31 They also form the majority of the more than 168 million plus vulnerable people around the world identified by the UN in late 2019 as in need of humanitarian assistance – largely due to armed conflicts and extreme climate events.32 In many cases, such as the civil war in Syria with millions of victims or the conflict in Darfur, this is the direct result of the confluence of the both armed conflict and climate-induced disasters as extreme droughts and resource conflicts for example over shrinking availability of water or arable land grow with the climate crisis. Climate change

29

https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/903.pdf 30

https://www.greenclimate.fund/sites/default/files/document/gcf-gender-policy.pdf 31

https://www.womensrefugeecommission.org/press-releases/statement-from-womens-refugee-commission-covid-19-pandemic/ 32

Global Humanitarian Review 2020, available at: https://www.unocha.org/sites/unocha/files/GHO-2020_v9.1.pdf.

https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/903.pdfhttps://www.greenclimate.fund/sites/default/files/document/gcf-gender-policy.pdfhttps://www.womensrefugeecommission.org/press-releases/statement-from-womens-refugee-commission-covid-19-pandemic/https://www.unocha.org/sites/unocha/files/GHO-2020_v9.1.pdf

aggravates conflict and insecurity. There are many studies that have highlighted the relationship between climate change and violent conflict.

33 While climate refugees are not officially defined, recognized or protected under

international law, their number is steadily growing.34 Thus, addressing climate change and equitable access to essential resources like water and farm land for both men and women displaced by climate-related armed conflict and disasters and building resilient livelihoods for them and their communities must be a core peace building imperative for the world community and for the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda. Related financing and investments must acknowledge and strengthen women’s leadership and central participation in peace building and conflict prevention and resolution efforts, such as recognized in UN Security Council Resolution 1325. The confluence of a peace and climate change agenda is most clearly illustrated by the concept of human security. It referrs to the right of people and communities to feel safe and secure, including by addressing multiple dimensions such as freedom from fear, freedom from want and freedom from indignity as noted in UNGA resolution 66/290 and by calling for “people-centred, comprehensive, context-specific and prevention-oriented responses that strengthen the protection and empowerment of all people.”35 With respect to the provision of dedicated public climate finance globally, the link to militarization and armed conflict is also evident: states must urgently reduce and redirect military expenditures to address the climate crisis and the multiple intersecting inequalities and injustices on global, national, local and interpersonal levels both through the increased provision of international new and additional assistance in the case of developed countries, but also by increasing domestic efforts in developing countries. More than 130 developed and developing countries have planned military spending in 2020. World military expenditure continues to grow with more than USD 1.8 trillion alone in 2018.36 The 10 biggest military spenders having budgeted a combined USD 1.4 trillion for defense budgets in 2020 alone include countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany or France37, which have all been derelict in adequately fulfilling climate finance and development finance obligations in support of developing countries in a just, and equitable manner – including in a manner that would be commensurate with their economic power (build in large part on extractivism and colonialism) and related historic responsibility for the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for anthropogenic climate change.

6. Environmental conservation, protection and rehabilitation While on the face of it the investments in targeted climate actions made via dedicated climate funds such as the GCF or the Global Environment Facility (GEF) – to name but a few38 – are all about environmental conservation,

33

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13062019/climate-change-global-security-violent-conflict-risk-study-military-threat-multiplier 34

https://www.internal-displacement.org/database/displacement-data. 35

https://www.un.org/humansecurity/what-is-human-security/. 36

https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2019/world-military-expenditure-grows-18-trillion-2018 37

https://www.globalfirepower.com/defense-spending-budget.asp. 38

For a more detailed elaboration of multilateral dedicated climate funds see Charlene Watson and Liane Schalatek (2020), Climate Finance Fundamentals 2: The Global Climate Finance Architecture. Available at: https://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BENG%5D%20DIGITAL.pdf (also available in French at https://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BFR%5D%20DIGITAL.pdf and Spanish at https://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BESP%5D%20DIGITAL_0.pdf).

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13062019/climate-change-global-security-violent-conflict-risk-study-military-threat-multiplierhttps://www.internal-displacement.org/database/displacement-datahttps://www.un.org/humansecurity/what-is-human-security/https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2019/world-military-expenditure-grows-18-trillion-2018https://www.globalfirepower.com/defense-spending-budget.asphttps://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BENG%5D%20DIGITAL.pdfhttps://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BENG%5D%20DIGITAL.pdfhttps://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BFR%5D%20DIGITAL.pdfhttps://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BFR%5D%20DIGITAL.pdfhttps://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BESP%5D%20DIGITAL_0.pdfhttps://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/CFF2%202019%20%5BESP%5D%20DIGITAL_0.pdf

protection and rehabilitation in the name of addressing climate change, a closer look at some of the instruments championed and measures funded often reveals that prioritization of some concerns or results (such a accounting of CO2 reductions) over a more holistic right-centered approach to climate protection (that combines efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with human empowerment, gender equality, biodiversity protection and the resilience of people and ecosystems) will undermine the human rights and livelihoods of women and their communities while further damaging the environment. Carbon offsetting and trading schemes, which look at the cheapest way to reduce the most GHG emissions anywhere in the world, thereby allowing the major emitters, namely developed countries and polluting industries, to try to “buy their way out” of their own obligations to fundamentally shift the way they produce and consume and to do so swiftly, are an example of such misguided solutions to the climate emergency as they provide the illusion of a quick fix39. They divert attention from the accountability and responsibility of the main global polluters while presenting market-based solutions as the cure thus serving to delay and divert from the fundamental changes to the economic and financial systems needed to overcome the interrelated climate, social inequality and biodiversity crises. The REDD+ approach40 to forest protection which focuses in most funded measures too narrowly on results-based payment for forest-related emissions reductions and allows for example for “reforestation” of forests destroyed by commercial logging or the expansion of industrial agriculture through the planting of invasive species in mono-culture plantations, is a devastating example of “environmental protection” gone wrong in the name of dealing with the climate crisis. It is all too frequently coupled with human rights violations such as denying the rights of traditional forest dwelling communities to live in, from and with the forest.

41

Instead, financing for climate measures is then at its best, for example in efforts to protect forests and safeguard local livelihoods, when it takes the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, including their right to free prior and informed consent (FPIC) as well as their knowledge and experiences into account in designing, implementing and monitoring such projects and programs in a participatory manner; when it balances the need to reduce GHG emissions with the broader needs to support gender equality and women’s empowerment, to strengthen social protection systems, to strengthen economic participation and sustained equitable benefits as well as with broader environmental concerns such as biodiversity protection and ecosystem integrity. To have sustained outcomes and be effective, equitable and rights-based, climate investments must focus on multiple benefits instead of perpetuating carbon-centric market-based approaches.

39

https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/carbon-offsets-are-not-our-get-out-jail-free-card. 40

REDD+ is an international climate change mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, which also recognizes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. The idea is to make forests more valuable standing than they would be cut down by creating a financial value for the carbon stored in the trees. Once this carbon is standardized and quantified, REDD+ allows polluters to purchase carbon offsets from countries in the South instead of reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions at source. Further criticism of the scheme centers on REDD+ endangering Indigenous Peoples and forest-based communities, collective territories, cultures and environments by turning biodiverse multifunctional forest ecosystems into carbon stocks. For a comprehensive critique of the current status of REDD+ finance practice, see https://wrm.org.uy/articles-from-the-wrm-bulletin/section1/redd-a-scheme-rotten-at-the-core/ 41

See for a critical engagement with REDD+ and human rights violations for example https://globalforestcoalition.org/ or https://redd-monitor.org/.

https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/carbon-offsets-are-not-our-get-out-jail-free-cardhttps://wrm.org.uy/articles-from-the-wrm-bulletin/section1/redd-a-scheme-rotten-at-the-core/https://wrm.org.uy/articles-from-the-wrm-bulletin/section1/redd-a-scheme-rotten-at-the-core/https://globalforestcoalition.org/https://redd-monitor.org/https://redd-monitor.org/

ACTIONS What are the top actions that would make an impact across 6 themes? For governments? private sector? civil society? The existing economic and financial growth-focused system based on a shareholder economy that incentivizes and prioritizes short-termism, extractivism and the exploitation of people and the natural environment over long-term sustainability and that takes for granted and undervalues care work must be fundamentally transformed. It has to be replaced with a care-centered economy focusing on the well-being of people and the planet and a financial system build on solidarity of equal stakeholders with universal human rights, but with common but differentiated respective responsibilities reflecting differences among people internationally and within societies with respect to existing privileges, wealth and advantages. This fundamental shift can be sped up through strengthening through the expansion of ongoing efforts to reform the financial and fiscal systems globally and nationally, for example through a progressive tax system that taxes capital (such as through a wealth tax for corporations and high-net-worth individuals or a financial transaction tax to hinder financial speculation) instead of a current regressive taxation focus on people’s work and basic consumption needs. Such a care-centered economic development would shift the focus away from economic growth as the main parameter of success and progress to one where the focus is on the economy being able to provide “just enough” for a decent livelihood for all (see the concept of ‘buen vivir’42) while respecting and protecting the environment and acknowledging and building on the knowledge and wisdom of Indigenous Peoples. Governments and the private sector need to be held accountable – including by civil society groups, but also by mandatory multilateral agreements with enforcement power and citizen’s litigation effort – for ensuring that all economic and investment decisions are compatible with human-rights and the imperative to address climate change. Transparent financial disclosure for the climate change and human rights compatibility of all investment decisions undertaken by governments (for example with respect to public procurement and in state-owned enterprises) must become standard practice and a regulatory requirement for the private sector to engage domestically and internationally. This means for example expanding current collective efforts for disclosures of climate-related financial risk43 to include human rights consideration and compliance, which is currently entirely missing. An effort to make all financial flows compatible with human rights and with requirements to solve the climate crisis and other environmental emergencies (and thus expands the narrow climate-related mandate as articulated and signed on to by the international community in the Paris Agreement in 2015), also means continued and accelerated disinvestment from fossil fuels as well as an end to production fossil fuel subsidies and the socially targeted replacement of consumption fossil fuel subsidies with a view to facilitate affordable and comprehensive gender-responsive access to clean energy alternatives. Addressing the climate crisis in a way that does not aggravate and exacerbate existing inequalities and injustices, including gender inequality and discrimination of women, and ensures fairness and equity for all is only possible with a rights-centered approach that put people and planet over profits, including through the provision of adequate, new and additional financing on top of sufficient development assistance provided by developed

42

The concept is elaborated for example here: https://www.boell.de/en/2014/01/06/buen-vivir-short-introduction. 43

See for example the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), https://www.fsb-tcfd.org/.

https://www.boell.de/en/2014/01/06/buen-vivir-short-introductionhttps://www.fsb-tcfd.org/

countries and channeled through dedicated climate financing instruments. Such funding has to be provided predominantly as full-cost grants, pursue multiple benefits and holistic approaches that think climate protection, development outcomes and women’s empowerment together and are directly accessible to local communities and feminist and women’s group in financing tranches (as small grants or small loans) and at financing and implementation conditions that are supportive of the fulfillment of their local needs, rights and priorities. Dedicated climate financing instruments, funds and mechanisms should really be the standard-setters by provide a signaling function to the wider universe of financing institutions and mechanisms, including MDBs and DFIs with which they collaborate as implementation partners, by following some key principles and actions that enshrine a human-rights based approach, gender equality and the empowerment of women as guiding principles and a cross-cutting mandate for all their investment and policy decisions, include, inter alia, the following44:

A beneficiary and people-centered approach to adaptation and mitigation measures, paying particular attention to some of the small-scale and community-based actions, in which women are over-represented, including in the informal sectors and as owners of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries and ensuring that the concessionality of public funding is passed to women as beneficiaries. In mitigation, this means a focus on providing energy access via renewables as a way to address the persistent energy poverty of many women.

Explicit gender criteria in performance objectives and results measurement frameworks and for the evaluation of funding options. Such criteria must include a mandatory gender analysis of the proposed project or program, a fully costed project/program-specific gender action plan, a gendered budget and some clear quantitative and qualitative indicators measuring how projects and programs contribute to gender equality objectives, as well as the systematic collection of gender-disaggregated data. Indicators need to be both project and program specific, as well as allow for aggregate monitoring and evaluation of gender equality impacts on the fund portfolio level.

Gender-balance and gender-expertise of fund decision-making bodies, of an institution’s staff as well as its technical advisory bodies and panels to ensure that gender equality principles are integrated in the development of funding, accreditation, and programming guidelines and are considered in program and project review, funding approvals, and the monitoring, reporting, verification and evaluation of a mechanism’s funding portfolio.

Special efforts to seek the meaningful input and participation of women as key stakeholders and beneficiaries in fund-related country coordinating mechanisms to determine a country’s funding priorities and throughout the funding cycle of a program or project from design to implementation to monitoring and evaluation, including through a special focus on participatory monitoring approaches.

Gender-responsive funding guidelines, allocation criteria and financial instruments for each thematic funding window or sub-fund. Sector-specific or specialized requests-for-proposals need to make the gender responsiveness of submitted proposals a key decision criterion. Likewise, climate fund boards need to send a clear message that they will not consider a proposal for approval unless it does sufficiently integrate gender.

44 As elaborated in CFF10, Gender and Climate Finance, available at: https://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2019-11/CFF10%202019%20%5BENG%5D%20DIGITAL.pdf

https://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2019-11/CFF10%202019%20%5BENG%5D%20DIGITAL.pdfhttps://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/2019-11/CFF10%202019%20%5BENG%5D%20DIGITAL.pdf

Approaches to increase the access of local women’s groups to fund resources, such as through small grant approaches under enhanced direct access efforts, green credit lines for women entrepreneurs, or by facilitating their collaboration with accredited implementing agencies as executing partner with local gender expertise for certain project/program components.

A regular audit of the gender impacts of funding allocations in order to ensure balance between mitigation and adaptation activities and gender-responsive delivery across different scales and geographical foci of activities.

A robust set of social, gender and environmental safeguards and guidelines and capacity-building support for their implementation that guarantee gender equality, women’s rights and women’s full and meaningful participation. These safeguards should comply with existing international obligations, including on human and women’s rights, labor standards and environmental law.

Independent evaluation and recourse mechanisms easily accessible to groups and individuals, including women, affected by climate change funding in recipient countries to allow them to voice their grievances and seek compensation and restitution.

Many of these multiple steps outlined above could be taken immediately, since the obstacles to their implementation are not issues of technical feasibility, but issues related to a lack of political will and courage due to the hold of powerful special interests over decision-makers and the current collusion of political and economic elites profiting from the continuation of the status quo in too many countries. Joint and persistent advocacy efforts of feminist and women’s group in the context of efforts around Beijing+25 and other core UN processes like the UNFCCC international climate regime, the SDG or the Financing for Development processes are necessary to move beyond the business-as-usual and affect systemic change.

POLICY AND LEGAL DEFENSE What are the most important UN policy documents and human rights treaties to support these actions? Specify recommendations and text as adopted (e.g. CEDAW articles and General Recommendations). Note: this is a non-exhaustive list, some relevant documents and decisions can be found inter alia at the following: Gender Equality in Environmental Agreements

Gender equality is recognized as a crosscutting issue in major multilateral environmental agreements. The 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development acknowledged in Principle 20 women’s “vital role in environmental management and development” with Agenda 21 focusing in its Chapter 24 on women’s considerable knowledge and experience in managing and conserving natural resources.45 All Rio Conventions over time have underscored the key role gender equality and the empowerment of women specifically play in the

45

UNGA (1992), Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) Annex I: Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, A/CONF.151/26 (Vol. I); UNCED (1992), Agenda 21, available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/milestones/unced. In 1992, the Rio+ 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in 2012 confirmed that gender equality and the effective participation of women are important for effective action on all aspects of sustainable development.

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/milestones/unced

realization of the respective objectives of these various conventions.46 Likewise, the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development recognizes gender equality and women’s empowerment both as its own sustainable development goal (SDG 5) as well as a catalyst for reaching other goals, including SDG 13 on urgent action to combat climate change.47

United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Over the past 15 years, a number of decisions by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have addressed the gender dimensions of climate change.

48 In 2010, the Conference of Parties (COP) in

decision 1/CP.16 as part of the Cancun Agreements recognized that gender equality and the effective participation of women are important for long-term cooperative action on all aspects of climate change.49 In 2012, Doha decision 23/CP.18 decreed the promotion of gender balance and improving the participation of women in UNFCCC negotiations and in the representation of Parties in bodies established pursuant to the Convention or the Kyoto Protocol “so that gender-responsive climate policy responds to the differing needs of men and women in national and local contexts.”50

A work program on gender in the UNFCCC, established in 2014 in Lima with decision 18/CP.2051, was extended in decision 21/CP.2252 until 2019. The Lima Work Programme was further strengthened at COP 23 in Bonn with decision 3/CP.23 through the adoption of a multi-year Gender Action Plan53 seeking “to advance women’s full, equal and meaningful participation and promote gender-responsive climate policy and the mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the implementation of the Convention and the work of Parties, the secretariat, United Nations entities and all stakeholders at all levels.” At COP 25, Parties adopted the five-year ‘Enhanced Lima Work Programme on gender and its gender action plan’, and invited “relevant public and private entities to increase the gender-responsiveness of climate finance with a view to strengthening the capacity of women”.54 It recognizes the need for progressing gender-responsive actions across all areas of the Convention and with respect to the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement in its Preamble prominently underscored that “climate change is a common concern of humankind” and that “Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity. “ In Article 7.5, it

46

UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) articles 5, 10 and 18, the Gender Action Plan (UNCCD decision 30/COP.13) as well as UNCCD COP decisions 9/COP.10 and 9/COP.11. See: https://www.unccd.int/official-documents. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) decisions IX/8, X/19, XI/2, XIII/1, and the CBD 2015-2020 Gender Action Plan (decision XII/7), see https://www.cbd.int/decisions/. 47

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld. 48

See https://unfccc.int/topics/gender/resources/documentation-on-gender-and-climate-change; also WEDO (2014), UNFCCC Decisions and Conclusions: Existing Mandates and Entry Points for Gender Equality. http://www.wedo.org/wp-content/uploads/GE-Publication-ENG-Interactive.pdf. 49

UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.16, paragraph 7. 50

UNFCCC, Decision 13/CP.18; https://unfccc.int/files/bodies/election_and_membership/application/pdf/cop18_gender_balance.pdf. 51

UNFCCC, Decision 18/CP.20; https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/lima_dec_2014/decisions/application/pdf/auv_cop20_gender.pdf. 52

UNFCCC Decision 21/CP.22; https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/pages_17-20_from_10a02.pdf. 53

UNFCCC, Decision 3/CP.23; https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/decision_3_cp23.pdf. 54

UNFCCC, Decision -/CP. 25; https://unfccc.int/resource/cop25/cop25_auv_13gender.pdf; see specifically para. 14.

https://www.unccd.int/official-documentshttps://www.cbd.int/decisions/https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworldhttps://unfccc.int/topics/gender/resources/documentation-on-gender-and-climate-changehttp://www.wedo.org/wp-content/uploads/GE-Publication-ENG-Interactive.pdfhttp://www.wedo.org/wp-content/uploads/GE-Publication-ENG-Interactive.pdfhttps://unfccc.int/files/bodies/election_and_membership/application/pdf/cop18_gender_balance.pdfhttps://unfccc.int/files/meetings/lima_dec_2014/decisions/application/pdf/auv_cop20_gender.pdfhttps://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/pages_17-20_from_10a02.pdfhttps://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/decision_3_cp23.pdfhttps://unfccc.int/resource/cop25/cop25_auv_13gender.pdf

also stressed the importance of following “a country-driven, gender-responsive, participatory and fully transparent approach” for adaptation action.

55

Human rights mechanisms:

Human rights mechanisms such as the special procedures of the Human Rights Council, the human rights treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review are increasingly addressing the human rights impacts of climate change; some examples

56 include:

Human Rights Council resolution 38/457 requested the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to conduct an analytical study58 on the integration of a gender-responsive approach into climate action for the full and effective enjoyment of the rights of women.

Joint statement by five treaty bodies, including the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, on human rights and climate change in relation to the United Nations Climate Action Summit (2019)59

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women60 in its General Recommendation No. 37 from 2018 explored the gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction in the context of climate change61

In a 2019 report on climate change submitted in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 37/862, the Special Rapporteur on the issue of human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment illustrates the devastating effects of the current global climate, and the crucial role for human rights in catalyzing action to address climate change.63

FEMINIST AND WOMEN’S MOVEMENT ACTION PLAN Why do you think this Plan is important for accountability and moving forward with your agenda in Beijing + 25? Some 25 years ago, the BPA while acknowledging the importance of environmental protection and women’s leadership role in it, did not yet foresee the magnitude of the existential challenge to the survival of humanity that the global climate crisis has become. The Feminist and Women’s Movement Action Plan can help remedy this

55

UNFCCC, Adoption of the Paris Agreement; http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09.pdf 56

For a comprehensive listing and relevant links, see: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/HRAndClimateChange/Pages/HumanRightsMechanisms.aspx. 57

https://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/RES/38/4. 58

https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/ClimateChange/GenderResponsive/A_HRC_41_26.pdf 59

https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24998&LangID=E 60

https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/cedaw/pages/cedawindex.aspx. 61

https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CEDAW/Shared%20Documents/1_Global/CEDAW_C_GC_37_8642_E.pdf. 62

https://www.right-docs.org/doc/a-hrc-res-37-8/. 63

https://undocs.org/en/A/74/161.

http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09.pdfhttps://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/HRAndClimateChange/Pages/HumanRightsMechanisms.aspxhttps://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/RES/38/4https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/ClimateChange/GenderResponsive/A_HRC_41_26.pdfhttps://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24998&LangID=Ehttps://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/cedaw/pages/cedawindex.aspxhttps://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CEDAW/Shared%20Documents/1_Global/CEDAW_C_GC_37_8642_E.pdfhttps://www.right-docs.org/doc/a-hrc-res-37-8/https://undocs.org/en/A/74/161

initial shortcoming by centering its common framework around the need to mainstream climate considerations (“climate mainstreaming”) into its efforts and recommendations through highlighting intersectionalities and interlinkages, breaking and overcoming existing “thought silos” and creating an encompassing shared vision in which women’s unalienable human rights, and the protection and enjoyment of human rights more broadly are inseparable from the protection of and the rights of nature and planetary survival.