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GENDER - ENVIRONMENT - SUSTAINABILITY

GENANET

Environment and sustainability policy is not gender neutral. While this may seem obvious, one will find a fundamental lack of understanding in policymaking and society with regards to this statement. Initiative, commitment, research and networking are needed to overcome the resistences.

gendercc – Women for Climate Justice: Women’s Milestones for the Bali Roadmap

For the first time in UNFCCC history, a world wide coalition of women has drafted position papers with the women’s and gender perspective on the most pressing issues negotiated at COP13/CMP3. gendercc, a global alliance of women for climate justice, presented their positions to the conference and press today, 7 December 2007.

Women are the most affected by climate change, but they are also key catalysts for positive change. Their knowledge and experience is fundamental for a successful mitigation of climate change, as well as for climate change adaptation.

The women meeting in Bali with gendercc demand that a future climate regime be designed in a framework of gender equality and sustainability guidelines, instead of being driven by dominant economic factors. To mitigate climate change, the root causes must be addressed more fundamentally.

Ulrike Roehr, acting coordinator of the gendercc network stated, “We need to question the dominant perspective focusing mainly on technologies and markets, and put caring and justice in the centre of the measures and mechanisms.” Roehr continued, “The lack of gender perspectives in the current climate process not only violates women’s human rights - fundamental principles agreed on by the UN community – but it also leads to shortcomings in the efficiency and effectiveness of climate related measures and instruments.”

This message is supported by Rachmat Witoelar, President of COP13, who gave his commitment to address gender justice in the Bali Outcome in a meeting with the Indonesian Civil Society Forum yesterday.

The women’s milestones for the Bali roadmap calls for governments to:

• Recognize the vital urgency of gender equality in the growing climate crisis and demonstrate leadership through top-level support for considering gender concerns in all UNFCCC and related processes (also known as “gender mainstreaming.”) and including the installation of a ‘gender watch system’ within UNFCCC.
• Integrate gender aspects into adaptation plans and tools, focusing on specific adaptation needs, and ensuring women’s participation in developing the plans; 
• Commit to sustainable and equitable financing schemes and ensure gender equity in all phases and aspects of funding. 
• Allocate 20% of all donor funds to be earmarked for activities and projects addressing women and designed and implemented by women and gender experts. 
• Go beyond the narrow focus on solutions devoted to market based mechanisms 
• Make full use of the knowledge and capacity of women 
• Adopt a global non-market-driven effort to preserve tropical forests, based on addressing direct and underlying causes of deforestation in each region and country.

One of our key positions is expressed by Anna Pinto from India who said, “Don’t rely on the carbon market! Women have not benefited from it.” Ana Filippini, of the World Rainforest Movement in Uruguay, added “Women have been severely impacted by monoculture tree plantations under those mechanisms.”

Women are also concerned about the proposal to make nuclear energy eligible for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). “Trying to combat climate change with one of the most hazardous technologies will neither save the planet nor us,” stated Svitlana Slesarenok from Black Sea Women’s Club in the Ukraine. Slesarenok continued, “The lessons from the Chernobyl nuclear accident still haven’t been learned by the promoters of so-called “peaceful” nuclear energy.”.

gendercc is the global alliance of women and gender scholars and activists from Asia, Africa, America, The Pacific, and Europe working for gender and climate justice.

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