WUNRN
New from Isis International
Direct Link: Gender and Climate Change Toolkit
GENDER & CLIMATE CHANGE: TOOLKIT FOR WOMEN
This toolkit on Gender and Climate Change is part of an important endeavour by Isis International to explore innovative and strategic ways to communicate gender justice and climate justice issues, especially from Southern feminist perspectives.
Climate
change impacts people and countries in many different ways, yet the impacts of
climate change are not gender neutral because of existing gender inequalities.
Climate change is the living reality of women, with two facets -- on the one
hand, women are indeed the most affected because of long-standing issues of
gender; on the other hand, they are also active agents in addressing immediate
and strategic solutions to climate justice. However, this consciousness has not
yet permeated the current discussions and negotiations nor the production of
knowledge on climate justice.
To date,
gender issues have hardly figured in the international policy discourse on
climate change and have been often overlooked in discussions about strategies
to reduce the source of greenhouse gases because of the “technical” or
“scientific” nature of the strategies.
This toolkit
aims to deepen our analysis from a broader and human-centered perspective on
this imperative global issue of climate change and the mounting resistance to
the corporate-driven false solutions that only deteriorate the catastrophe. In
plain language, it provides community-based or grassroots organisations basic
information on climate change and how to communicate climate justice with their
constituencies and target groups.
The first
part of this toolkit answers the questions: What is climate change and what are
the effects of climate change? What is climate justice and what does climate
justice have to do with gender? It shows how international bodies concerned
with climate change do not take women’s needs or gender issues sufficiently into
account. It looks at the potential solutions proposed by international bodies
and at what needs to be done to make these solutions more inclusive of women
and women’s needs.
The second
part of this toolkit looks at how groups and organisations can use communication
and advocacy to work towards climate justice and gender justice. A
Communication Agenda can be developed to map out the steps for using
information and communication in strategic ways to work towards climate
justice. This includes: surfacing women’s experiences of climate change; how to
analyse the data; and applying a feminist development communication framework
to empower women and advocate for women’s human rights and gender justice.
The toolkit
presents communication tools and strategies and both traditional and new
information technologies (ICTs) with a special look at the usefulness of
community radio. It looks at what elements make communications empowering.
Advocacy is a
powerful means to amplify women’s voices and promote climate and gender
justice. The toolkit looks at how to use different forms of advocacy including:
lobbying, information and communication campaigns, community organising, new
ICTs and social media tools. It shows how to build an advocacy plan.
All this is
accompanied by real-life stories and experiences of women around the world with
photographs and colourful illustrations.
We thank the
many people who contributed to this Toolkit and especially the activists from