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http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/12/pushing-for-gender-equity-at-cop20/
WOMEN & CLIMATE CHANGE – CHALLENGES AT NEGOTIATIONS TO PUSH FOR GENDER EQUITY AT COP20
A group of
activists tracking the inclusion of gender in the U.N. climate negotiations at
Lima’s COP20, during a Dec. 9 panel. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS
LIMA, Dec 10 2014 (IPS) - Despite international
acknowledgement that women are disproportionately affected by climate change,
the Lima climate negotiations have been slow to deliver progress on recognising
their importance, while threats of pushback loom on the horizon.
“There
are references to gender in those documents, but the language is overall weak.
This is why we are pushing for gender equality, instead of gender balance,”
Mrinalini Rai, a Nepali gender and indigenous peoples adviser for the Global Forest
Coalition, told IPS.
Rai
complained that some governments, led by Saudi Arabia, are trying to eradicate
the concept of gender equality – promoted by nations like Mexico – from the
negotiating texts discussed at the 20th Conference
of the Parties (COP20) to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC), running Dec. 1-12.
“We feel marginalised and what I’ve seen is that women really suffer
because of climate change. It’s affecting us, our farmland and our harvests.
You can’t tell anymore when each season is going to be; that’s one of the
reasons we decided to come to Lima.” -- Bertha Guarachi
Tuesday
Dec. 8 was devoted to “Gender Day” at COP20, held in Lima this year, to reflect
on the role women should have in the climate talks, amidst a growing trend of
conservative positions on the question.
Rai
underscored that “the ways women adapt to and mitigate climate change differ
from those of men, and that’s why when we refer to gender equality our
intention is to have women’s rights guaranteed in every negotiation and every
document of the UNFCCC.”
The
big thing, in the view of activists like Rai, is not the documents themselves,
but what they could provide for women working in the field, far from Lima’s
negotiating rooms. For her, it is not only about “acknowledging the
differences” but about the language being “a means for pushing policies to
actually land on those who need them.”
The
Nepali activist works with indigenous communities in Thailand, where she has
had firsthand experience with the disproportionate effects women suffer at the
frontline of climate change, while they have less skills training and legal
support than their male counterparts.
In
the Bolivian community of Cebollullo, nested in the mountainous department or
province of La Paz, local women also feel the impact climate change has on
their daily routines.
“We
feel marginalised and what I’ve seen is that women really suffer because of
climate change. It’s affecting us, our farmland and our harvests,” Bertha
Guarachi, a Cebollullo community leader, told IPS. “You can’t tell anymore when
each season is going to be; that’s one of the reasons we decided to come to
Lima.”
Bertha
Guarachi, a leader of a small rural settlement in the Cebollullo valley in
Bolivia, came to COP20 to learn how to manage climate change adaptation in her
community. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS
At
a global level, a study by the German Development Institute concluded that women produce
between 60 and 80 percent of all food in the developing world.
However,
the same study, published in 2009, determined that only 10 per cent of them
were landowners, and barely 2 per cent had proper paperwork for their land.
This
means that in the event of finance by donors or international relief agencies
tackling climate vulnerability reach those agricole regions, it’s more likely
for men to receive it, since they are the official landowners, thus deepening
the gender inequality gap and the worldwide warming challenge.
“Climate
change is not only a scientific issue, but it also related to how it affects
human being in a wider context, and in this case, particularly to women,” Elena
Villanueva, from the Rural Development Program at the Flora Tristan Center,
which focuses on gender and climate change, told IPS.
Of
the three U.N. Conventions created in the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro –
the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention to Combat
Desertification and the UNFCCC – only the latter hasn’t included gender as a
core issue in its principles, according to the Global Gender and Climate
Alliance (GGCA).
However,
during the Tuesday high-level meeting “Men and women taking action on gender
equality and climate change: how far have we reached?”, the progress made in
the past 20 years on women-related topics within the UNFCCC was acknowledged.
“As
a young UNDP [U.N. Development Programme] officer, I was in Beijing for the
1995 Conference [the Fourth World Conference on Women] and back then it was
revolutionary to say gender should be a topic within human rights,” Susan
McDade, deputy director for UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Latin America and the
Caribbean, said at the conference.
“Now
no one would challenge that, which makes me optimistic. I was also in Rio and
there is clear progress. When I look into climate talks, the only way for them
to move is towards equality,” said McDade.
This
perception collides with pressure from Saudi Arabia and other governments to
eliminate more progressive gender language from the negotiations in Lima. This
was more visible in a debate on future initiatives to open up scientific and
political discussions on gender around the world.
“In
this particular resolution there was a push to eliminate the term gender
equality and replace it with gender balance, which is not the same,” said
Roberto Dondisch, general director for global affairs at Mexico’s foreign
ministry.
“For
us, gender equality is important, and it’s not something new at all. It was
established at the Cancun COP [in 2010], so it’s something we can’t accept
backtracking on,” the official told IPS.
According
to the Global Gender and Climate Alliance, which tracks the gender
negotiations, the term gender equality was maintained thanks to Mexico’s
efforts, but with some drawbacks.
Ana
Rojas, a representative for the Alliance at COP20, told IPS the text lost its
initial ambition because “it wasn’t real equality.”
“The
final text shows something beyond balance, and it has a mention on equality,
but it’s tailored to each country’s cultural context,” which would allow each
nation to interpret it the way it wanted, Rojas explained. That view is shared
by other stakeholders following the negotiations.
This
lack of content can also be felt in the smaller representation of women in
decision-making spaces within the Convention.
An
analysis published in early December by the Peruvian National Organisation of
Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Women highlighted the gender disparity in
high-level bodies of the UNFCCC.
The
report concluded that three-fourths of the 126 members of six governing bodies,
including the Adaptation Committee and the Finance Committee, were men.
In
fact, despite the disproportionate impact of climate change on women and their
positive influence as change-makers, the concept of gender was not formally
included in the UNFCCC negotiations until 2007.
Until
then there was no mention of gender in the negotiating texts, according to
gender activists.