WUNRN
The Full View - Advancing the Goal of Gender Balance in Multilateral and Intergovernmental Processes
http://www.mrfcj.org/pdf/2013-06-13-The-Full-View.pdf - 31 Pages
UN Women & Mary Robinson Foundation Climate Justice
http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/02/u-n-climate-talks-further-link-between-gender-and-climate-change/
CLIMATE UN TALKS ADVANCE LINK BETWEEN
GENDER & CLIMATE CHANGE
Analysis
by Denise M. Fontanilla
GENEVA, Feb 12 2015 (IPS) - A week of climate
negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland Feb. 8-13 are setting the stage for what
promises to be a busy year. In order to reach an agreement in Paris by
December, negotiators will have to climb a mountain of contentious issues which
continue to overshadow the talks.
One
such issue is the relevance of gender in the climate change negotiations.
“Women and girls are differentially impacted by climate change. More
importantly, they are agents, they have been contributing to climate solutions,
especially at the community level." -- Verona Collantes
While
gender mainstreaming has become a standard practice within development circles
and was a critical aspect of the Millennium Development Goals, it still remains
on the fringes of the U.N. climate discussions.
Recent
developments have forced gender back into the spotlight thanks to concise
action this week from the representatives of a number of countries, including
the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Sudan, Mexico, Chile and the EU.
Anniete
Cohn-Lois, head of gender affairs under the Dominican Republic’s vice
presidency, has been one of the most vocal proponents of gender equality in the
negotiations. According to the Germanwatch
Long-Term Climate Risk Index, the Dominican Republic was the eighth most
affected country in terms of the impacts of climate change over the past two
decades.
However,
as Cohn-Lois explained, her passion for Gender rights here in Geneva has been
inspired by a particularly localised experience of marginalised women in
Jimani, on the southern border with Haiti.
“The
area that has been the most affected by climate change is actually the poorest.
Of the people living there, the most heavily impacted by climate change are
women, many of which are actually heads of their families,” she said.
Cohn-Lois
added that many of the women in this area are single mothers, with some taking
care of both elderly relatives and children. These women are some of the most
vulnerable to climate change in the Dominican Republic and face several
challenges, including gaining access to clean water.
“Since
the southern side is such an arid part, access to water is still an issue. They
can only afford to buy water weekly or even biweekly and find a way to [store]
it,” she said.
She
also noted that they have a wind farm in the area which provides electricity to
most of the houses there.
Cohn-Lois
is aware that women face similar challenges all over the world. Through her
diplomatic post, she has markedly advanced the awareness of the importance of
gender equality within the U.N. climate negotiations.
This
week, she has called not only for gender equality in relation to climate
change, but also gender-sensitivity, particularly and the value of
community-based approaches to climate mitigation and adaptation programmes.
However,
as Verona Collantes of UN Women argues, the task is not only to recognise that
women are more affected by climate change, but to ensure they are a large part
of the solution.
“Women
and girls are differentially impacted by climate change. More importantly, they
are agents, they have been contributing to climate solutions especially at the
community level,” the Filipina said.
Climate
change affects the poorest and most vulnerable people the most, and according
to U.N. figures, women comprise 70 percent of the world’s poor.
Collantes
also noted that women, especially indigenous women, make up the majority of
those involved in agriculture and sustainable forest management, which is why
it is critical they be represented in discussions on reducing forest-related
emissions, here at the U.N. climate negotiations.
“When
the man goes to earn a living, it’s the woman who becomes the chief of the
household. It’s tied to the management of natural resources and livelihood,
using fuel to warm their houses or cook their food, and fetching water – all of
those have implications on climate change which, more and more, the parties to
the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] are
increasingly recognizing,” she added.
A history of gender in the climate talks
While
the U.N climate convention itself did not originally have a reference to
gender, it began to be integrated into the talks at the 2001 conference in
Marrakech, Morocco. There, negotiators agreed to improve women’s participation
in all decision-making processes under the talks.
Following
this milestone, the issue became dormant. For the next 12 years, gender was
barely mentioned within the negotiations. Then, at the 2012 conference in Doha,
Qatar, it was finally revived, thanks largely to a new wave of gender-sensitive
negotiators such as Anniete Cohn-Lois.
According
to Collantes, the issue then became dormant for almost 10 years. It was not
until 2010 in Cancun, Mexico that gender equality once again came under
consideration. And it was in Doha that the agreement began to shift from merely
a recognition of gender balance towards ensuring women’s capacities are
enhanced and formally recognised within the U.N. climate negotiations.
In
2013, a further workshop was held on gender, climate change, and the
negotiations in Warsaw, Poland. At that stage, countries and observer
organisations submitted ideas on how to advance the gender balance goal.
Last
December, a two-year work programme to further explore gender issues was
established in Lima, Peru. UN Women is also continuing this work, and currently
preparing for another workshop in June on gender-responsive mitigation,
technology development and transfer.
“We
look at it from the aspect of women’s participation in the development of
technology, women’s access to those technologies. Are they part of the
beneficiaries? Were they even thought of as beneficiaries in the beginning?”
Collantes said.
However,
in Warsaw, the U.N. reported that less than 30 per cent of negotiators
representing their countries were women. Since then, there have been small
representational improvements, but we are still very far from achieving gender
equality within the U.N. representatives, let alone in their decisions.