Declaration on Climate Change and Gender Equality
Women’s
Environment and Development Organization (WEDO)
Council
of Women World Leaders (CWWL)
Heinrich
Böll Foundation
The following recommendations in the area of climate change and gender
equality were developed on the occasion of the UN Secretary General’s
High-Level Climate Change Event and the CWWL-WEDO-hbf High-Level Roundtable
“How a Changing Climate Impacts Women”
September 2007
- The
UN Secretary General and governments should send a message to this year’s
UNFCCC COP-13 in Bali that gender equality and women’s participation is a
priority issue.
- Since
climate change disproportionately affects poor women, governments should
analyze and identify gender-specific impacts and protection measures
related to floods, droughts, and other disasters; the global community
should prioritize reducing the high levels of female mortality rates
resulting from climate-induced disasters.
- Women
should enjoy equal participation in decision-making related to climate
change adaptation and mitigation strategies.
- Given
that women’s knowledge and participation in disaster situations has been
critical to the survival of entire communities, governments should take
advantage of women’s particular skills in various aspects of their
household livelihood and natural resource management strategies that lend
themselves to mitigation and adaptation.
- Governments
should work to enhance women’s access to and control over natural
resources, in order to reduce poverty, protect environmental resources,
and ensure that women and poor communities can better cope with climate
change.
- Governments
and institutions should enhance opportunities for women’s participation, education, and training; capacity
building and technology transfer measures should draw on priorities put
forward by women and poor communities.
- Practical tools should be developed that allow governments and
institutions to incorporate gender equality and women’s participation in
climate change initiatives.
- Governments should draw on the innumerable global
agreements that relate directly or indirectly to gender equality and
climate change,
as well as gender expertise within the UN system and at the national
level.
- The
UNFCCC
should develop gender-sensitive indicators
and criteria for
governments to use in national reports to the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol,
and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
- Market-based approaches to curbing climate
change, such as the CDM, should
reflect the needs of all potential market actors, particularly women,
indigenous peoples, and landless farmers who do not have equal access to
natural resources such as water and energy, land titles, credit, or
information.
- The Clean Development Mechanism should be made
accessible to both women and men and ensure equitable benefits,
considering that women and men have different access to the necessary land
and technology; in particular, the CDM should fund projects that
make renewable energy technologies more available to women.
- Since the UNFCCC emerged from UNCED, which
outlines nine major groups that are essential to sustainable development,
women and all major groups should be included as official focal points in
the UNFCCC.