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Subject: [WUNRN] Country Climate Commitments Must Include
Gender Equality & Human Rights
WUNRN
UNFCCC – United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
http://www.trust.org/item/20150608210640-sjvlb/?source=spotlight
Country Climate
Commitments Must Include Human Rights & Gender Equality
Women laborers carry bricks at a factory on the outskirts of
Agartala, capital of
India’s northeastern state of Tripura, January 7, 2015 –
Photo: Reuters, Jayanta Dey
Author Amy Lee writes for the Women's Environment and
Development Organization (WEDO), in partnership with the UNFCCC Women
and Gender Constituency.
9 June 2015 - Three years on from the U.N.
climate change conference in Doha, where governments specifically committed to
promoting gender balance and improving women’s participation in climate change
negotiations, women are still fighting for just consideration in dialogue and
policy.
Post-Doha, a regular spot on the agenda of the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been
reserved for “gender and climate change”. Yet despite the agreement of
countries to the Convention that gender equality and human rights are necessary
factors in effective climate change action, international action remains
nebulous.
In Lima, the Women and Gender Constituency
called for gender equality to be a guiding principle in the new global climate
agreement. As we lead up to the Paris conference at the end of this year
(COP21), the urgency of this call for the conscientious inclusion of gender
equality and human rights to an ambitious new climate agenda only increases.
The UNFCCC has invited countries to submit
their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) prior to COP21’s
negotiation of a new climate agreement. INDCs will be a country’s primary means
of communicating their planned post-2020 national climate actions.
They are significant as, unlike at the
international level, climate action at national and sub-national levels is
progressing at much swifter pace, with many groups considering it in their
interest to better prepare for climate change impacts. With the majority of
INDCs still to come, support for inclusiveness and fair consideration by
countries still in the process of preparing INDCs is critical.
The Fourth Assessment Report (2007) of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) notes that climate change
impacts will differ according to gender because of the different capacities,
opportunities, and vulnerabilities of men and women.
Women, who make up 70 percent of the world’s
poor, face greater challenges and are more vulnerable to climate variability as
gender often restricts their rights, mobility, access to resources, political
voice and decision-making abilities.
With family and community responsibilities,
local knowledge and expertise, women also hold incredible potential as
resources for mitigation and adaptation. Actions taken to build effective
responses to climate change require an understanding of how gender affects all
of these dynamics, and should ensure equal participation in climate action and
decision-making.
Currently, most INDCs, such as those submitted
by the USA, EU, and Russia, make no mention of gender or human rights. While
the targets set in them are an important national standard for countries, they
are not enough to secure meaningful impact, safeguard rights or guarantee just
and sustainable investment.
Mexico, as the first developing country to
submit an INDC, serves as a strong example of inclusiveness, making overt in
its commitments the intent to implement a gender perspective and a human rights
approach, as well as inclusive consultations.
Amid the technicalities of metrics and
hydrofluorocarbons, Mexico maintains the importance of implementing measures
that take into account women as vital collaborators and decision-makers, and
ensuring that interventions do not exacerbate or have disproportionately
adverse effects.
Morocco has since followed Mexico to become the
second country to include gender and human rights considerations in its INDC.
LACK OF EFFECTIVE ACTION
Now is a pivotal time to act on climate change.
The dismal pace of international negotiations, paralysis of dialogue, and
failure to reach consensus on emission targets has effectively bottlenecked
broad-scale climate action.
With both post-Millennium Development Goals and
a new climate agreement to be negotiated this year, it is imperative to push
governments to commit to their legal obligations on climate change, and ensure
that actions planned or taken respect rights, are appropriate, socially and
economically sustainable and do no harm.
Experience, particularly with the lack of
effective action on gender and human rights policies in climate negotiation and
financing despite high-level international conventions, demonstrates the need
to make these commitments intentionality explicit.
Building on the momentum of Mexico and
Morocco’s INDCs, climate dialogue, policy and action need to involve all vested
interests, not simply those with the most power and influence. Failure to do so
equates to disastrous implications for the future, particularly in the global
south.
With so much at stake, countries currently
completing their INDC submissions are strongly urged to consider the importance
of a gender perspective and account for women in climate dialogue and action.
They are also urged to ensure the collaboration
of civil society, and design mechanisms and policies with a human rights
approach. These measures ensure ownership of the process by communities, civil
society, and marginalised groups, increasing active participation and the
potential of success for policies and interventions.
Without such measures, governments risk the
estrangement and indifference of large groups within society who have no stake
in climate work, and no incentive to successfully engage toward national
targets which have potentially been set to their detriment.
Climate change is a difficult enough issue for
the world to tackle without the alienation of more than half of the global
population. The inclusion and consideration of women, human rights and civil
society contributions can only help the process, not hinder it.
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