Recap: Demands for a Gender-responsive Just Transition at COP28
Climate change and mitigation must always be viewed through a gender lens, because impacts of climate change always disproportionately affect women and girls. Whether speaking of peace and security, education and training, food insecurity or gender-based violence, women always find themselves in the centre of trauma. This year, gender equality and equity became the focal point of many discussions, as women took centre stage to have their voices heard in numerous key areas affected by climate change, demanding their rightful place in a just transition.
MENA Regional Liaison Officer Shirine Jurdi, who was recently featured in an episode of 100 Sisters on Security speaking on Peace and Security in Lebanon, joined the MENA Feminist Taskforce within the Women & Gender Constituency in presenting their demands at COP28. The group has outlined six priority areas for climate action in the region, encompassing 28 specific demands.
The six priority areas include:
Inclusive Climate Engagement and Ambition: Meaningful inclusion and engagement of women, youth, and marginalized communities in national and UNFCCC negotiation, decision-making, and policy processes.
Climate Finance: Just, rights-based, gender-responsive, flexible, affordable, and localized climate finance.
Conflict-Affected Countries, Militarization, and Peacebuilding: Conflict-sensitive and gender-transformative approach to climate action.
Climate Adaptation, Resilience, and Disaster Risk Reduction and Preparedness (DRRP): Strong investment in and prioritization of gender-transformative and localized approaches to climate adaptation, resilience, and DRRP.
Climate Education, Capacity-Strengthening, and Knowledge Transfer: Investment in accessible, high quality education systems that are gender-transformative and integrate climate change and environment.
Green Economy, Just Energy Transition, and Fossil Fuels Phase-Out: Just, equitable, and inclusive transition to renewable energy with commitment to fossil fuel phase-out and investment in the development of a circular, green economy based on socio-economic rights and justice.
As a pre-cursor to Gender Day, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNFCCC hosted a workshop for Gender Responsive Just Transition. There is a grave risk that not all groups will gain equally or equitably from the transition to a Green economy and that some may be negatively impacted, and inequalities could be reinforced rather than reduced. Women in the labour market already face persistent gaps in employment, social protection, pay, working conditions, decision-making spaces and the challenge of unpaid cross-generational care work. There is also an intersectionality where young women are particularly penalized as their participation in the labor market still lags behind pre-COVID levels, raising concerns about intergenerational gender inequality. According to this panel, it will likely take another generation and a half to realize gender equity objectives; the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2022 estimates that it will take 130 years to close the gender gap. Gender empowerment needs to be a priority in all organizations; this is not just about a female movement, it is not just about setting up women's networks, it means a firm conviction that bringing women to the top of managerial positions can have a positive impact.
UN Women launched their report called Feminist Climate Justice: A Framework for Action, detailing four key dimensions of action.
Recognition: of women’s rights, knowledge and labour in global food systems
Redistribution: of resources for resilient food systems and feminist climate justice
Representation: Making women’s voices count in decision-making on food and climate change
Reparation: Which is about recognizing that the Global North bears the largest share of responsibility for historical emissions and calls on them to make amends for the harm done
The hope and aim is that the voices of women and girls will be heard to make decisions around tackling and mitigating the climate crisis and environmental degradation at all levels. It is essential to prioritize gender equality in just transitions, or the inequality for women will only be further entrenched. It is absolutely essential that, when considering new green jobs and new green sectors, women are truly at the forefront.
Women's issues are inextricably tied to every issue of consequence, and none more so than the climate crisis. A panel moderated by Hillary Clinton focused on encouraging STEM education for girls, technical training and education for women, gender-responsive just transition, gender equality and equity. Secretary Clinton is currently a controversial figure due to a stance she took opposing ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict, but her involvement does not negate the important discussions that occurred in this panel. We are falling short on SDG5 and collective action is needed. Strong emphasis was placed on the need for women in more leadership roles, where their voices can be heard. Areas in much need of investment include circularity, smart agriculture, closing the digital gap, jobs, and sending more women from developing countries to COP.
In the same session, Secretary Clinton took part in the second panel as a speaker rather than a moderator on women and food security in the climate crisis. 60% of agriculture is performed by women in less developed countries. When speaking of sustainable regenerative agriculture, it is always the women who are eager to learn and make the changes, because they are the ones who do the work and know what is needed. We do not really know what a future led by women looks like yet, but solutions led by women in the front lines can create whole new food systems around climate resilience.
Extreme heat is becoming one of the biggest challenges to everyone, but particularly to women, and even moreso to women in the Global South, who work in positions outside in the informal economy. They are in fields, factories, markets, and they are doing work that becomes absolutely impossible if temperatures reach 40-50°C. By far, the biggest killer in deaths that are related to climate is extreme heat.
According to Secretary Clinton, scalability is the key, and we cannot get to scalability without smart investments and cooperation. Help is needed to revitalize soil, fight erosion and create better conditions to continue to grow food. For example, clean cook stoves represent part of the solution to climate issues, health issues, environmental issues and economic issues, but remain inaccessible to many. The solutions exist, but they need to be distributed and modeled to scale.
Spotlight Initiative hosted a conversation on the linkages between climate change and gender-based violence. Climate change is an amplifier. When there is food scarcity, many families arrange child marriages for their daughters. When there is a drought, it is women and girls who are sent to fetch water, leaving them vulnerable to gender-based violence. It is fourteen times more deadly for women and children whenever there is a climate disaster. Climate justice and gender justice are indivisible; we cannot achieve climate justice without achieving gender equality and equity.
Women who are displaced due to climate change, particularly rural and Indigenous women, are more vulnerable to trafficking and gender-based violence. Women who are displaced are also exposed to significant mental health pressures. Displacement, food insecurity, economic stress and poverty heighten due to climate change and leave women and girls much more vulnerable. Often, climate crises lead to conflict. Gender-based violence is very much present during conflict, and post-conflict, women and girls are the most vulnerable, where they do not have access to services, institutions, and governments are not paying attention to women's needs.
Moreover, women and girls do not necessarily report violence. Survivors already face tremendous difficulties in reporting crimes, and this is even more true in climate-induced and disaster risk settings. Women who are displaced have less access to justice systems.
Women environmental human rights defenders also face unique vulnerabilities to violence. They play a critical role as activists but they are sometimes the most at risk. In Mexico and Central America, there were almost 1700 acts of violence against women environmental human rights defenders in just three years.
We are now halfway through the SDGs, so the focus has become more specific, particularly on crimes against the environment and biodiversity, such as how pollution can affect resources, fisheries, livelihood, etc. This requires more women in the criminal justice system, more women police officers, more women prosecutors, more women that women feel safe to approach, because they bring to the forefront the concerns of women and the challenges that women are facing. "We know that over 48,000 women of all female homicides are committed by family members, so the assumption that home is a safe place is not there anymore."
Governments must also integrate measures to prevent violence against women within their climate change policy. Under the UNFCCC, only six countries have given attention to gender-based violence in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs). More countries need to capture gender-based violence in their climate change policies.
