WUNRN
CLIMATE FUNDING NEEDS GENDER EQUITY
Rousbeh Legatis IPS Interviews LIANE SCHALATEK, Associate
Director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in North America
UNITED
NATIONS, Feb 29, 2012 (IPS) - Gender considerations remain largely disregarded
in existing climate funds, even though women are some of the hardest hit by the
impacts of climate change on livelihoods and agriculture.
The Green Climate Fund (GCF), which would receive a portion of
the 100 billion dollars a year expected from rich nations by 2020, could prove
to be "important way to put equity back into the multilateral response to
climate change", says Liane Schalatek, Associate Director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in North
America.
However, most climate financing - whether channeled through
funds, governmental spending programmes, ministry initiatives or bilateral and
multilateral agencies to reduce emissions and to help societies to deal with
the adverse effects of climate change - lacks gender responsiveness, she
stressed.
Together with the Oversees Development Institute, the
Heinrich Böll Foundation monitors the 25 most important climate funds (Climate
Funds Update), tracking down who pledges what, how much donors have disbursed,
and to where climate financing flows.
A participant in the
fifty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York, held
in New York from Feb. 27 through Mar. 9, Schalatek spoke with IPS U.N.
Correspondent Rousbeh Legatis about taking stock of climate financing through a
gender lens.
Excerpts from the interview follow.
Q: Looking at existing dedicated climate funds, you found gender
considerations to be an "afterthought" instead of systematically
addressed. Could you explain that further?
A: Several of the existing climate funds, for example the
Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) or the Special Climate Change Fund
(SCCF), both dealing with adaptation and administered by the Global Environment
Facility (GEF), have been in existence for more than 10 years.
Others, such as the Climate Investment Funds at the World
Bank or the Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund, have only operated since 2008/2009.
At the time of their operationalisation, the discussion about gender and
climate change was an exotic one that had not yet extended to climate funds and
financing instruments and need to make them more gender-aware and
gender-responsive. This is a fairly new topic in the global climate finance
discourse itself.
However, these funds several years into their operations
with their first projects and programmes implemented have realised that without
gender considerations, their funding is less effective and less equitable.
Their experience confirmed that of development finance, where a focus on gender
equality has proved to be a core contributor to better development outcomes.
Better outcome of climate actions is particularly important
in times of scarce public funding availability. By including some gender
provisions retroactively, for example consultation guidelines that stipulate
the outreach to women as a special stakeholder group or the inclusion of a gender
analysis in project proposals, fund boards and administrators feel that they
have a better chance of benefitting more people in developing countries.
However, putting some provisions retroactively into funding
mechanisms is not the same as designing them in a way that is focusing on
improving gender equality in recipient countries as an important and expected
co-benefit of funding climate actions.
A climate fund designed this way would include gender
equality as one of the goals of its actions; would strive for gender-balance on
its governing bodies; make sure that there is gender-expertise among its staff
to evaluate proposals for their contribution to gender equality; write
operational and funding guidelines that stipulate the inclusion of gender
indicators and gender analysis in any project proposal; and monitor for gender
equality co-benefits as part of a results framework.
So far, no existing climate fund has managed such a
comprehensive integration.
Q: Could you describe the consequences if climate funds are not
gender-responsive?
A: If the financing that climate funds provide for
mitigation and adaption actions is not gender-responsive, projects and
programmes done in the name of climate protection might actually hurt women or
discriminate against women (in violation of women's human rights).
They are also likely to be less effective in reaching
long-lasting results. For example, in Sub-Saharan Africa, women are still the
primary agricultural producers, accounting for up to 80 percent of the
household food production.
As women own little of the land they work on, they are often
kept out of formal consultation processes to determine adaptation needs of
rural communities and are unable to secure credits or other agricultural
extension services.
In times of food insecurity - aggravated by the extreme
weather variability and long-term weather pattern changes brought on by climate
change - women and girls are often likely to receive less food because of
gender-based distribution dynamics within households.
To be effective, adaptation policies and funding for
adaptation projects and programmes in agriculture in Africa need to consider
the gender dynamics of food procurement and distribution both within households
and markets.
For example, they should target rural women in Africa
specifically with capacity-building, consultation outreach, technical
assistance and tailored agricultural extension services. Without a gender-
sensitive lens, climate financing instruments delivering adaptation funding for
Africa can exacerbate the discrimination of women.
Q: You point to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) as particularly promising
to change business as usual in global climate financing. Why?
A: The GCF in its governing documents already has several
references to a gender-sensitive approach integrated, for example, with respect
to gender-balance as a goal on the GCF Board and among the staff of its
secretariat.
Most importantly, it has stipulated in its objectives and
principles that promoting gender responsiveness is to be considered an explicit
"co-benefit" of any funding done by the GCF. Verbally, this is
already more than any other existing climate fund has integrated.
Of course, the challenge is now to make sure that these
words are operationalised into concrete measures or mechanisms, for example in
the form of gender indicators and gender-inclusive stakeholder participation
guidelines. The outlook is not too bad: The level of awareness of governments,
both of contributing and recipient countries, on the relevance of gender
considerations to address climate change, has increased.
It is today far greater than just a few years back when many
of the other funds became first active. International organisations such as
UNDP (U.N. Development Programme), UNEP (U.N. Environment Programme) or
multilateral development banks as implementing agencies of many climate funds
have become better in supporting governments in writing more gender-aware
funding proposals and investment plans.
Lastly, civil society groups, which have played a key role
in the GCF design process in pushing the integration of a gender perspective,
are committed to work with the new GCF Board and Secretariat, but also to
challenge the GCF publicly if necessary, should it fail to turn promises
contained in the governing document into actions.
Of course, the GCF can only be operationalised as a
gender-responsive climate fund if it receives the full political and financial
support of developed countries quickly. Some large funding pledges now would
secure its viability.
It would also send a signal to developing countries that
developed countries are willing to fulfill their part of the Durban package
without quid-pro-quo, but in the spirit of "common but differentiated
responsibilities and respective capabilities".
A gender-responsive, fully funded GCF would thus be one
important way to put equity back into the multilateral response to climate
change.