By Paula Daeppen (AWC Zürich)
The Beijing Platform for Action recognized the essential role of women in the development of sustainable and ecologically sound consumption and production patterns and in approaches to natural resource management, but in 1995, the urgent awareness of the devastating effects of climate change were not as evident as they are today. Today women are among the most affected by climate change, with environmental degradation having a definite gendered impact on poverty, hunger, health and migration. Despite this, climate change and the environment did not play a large role at the UNECE Beijing+25 Regional Review. It was however a cross-cutting theme in many of the discussions, often in relation to displaced communities and disaster relief management.
Only a few countries, such as Finland and Sweden within the EU, have mainstreamed gender into environmental protection and climate change policies. Some countries mentioned efforts to increase women's participation and leadership in related private-sector enterprises, including the clean energy and technology sectors. Women’s participation in these fields remains limited, in part due to women's low representation in STEM. In most countries in the region, women are poorly represented among public and private sector decision makers on environmental and climate change policies.
In the two-day meeting, less than 90 minutes was dedicated to discussion on “Acting for Climate” with a session on “Empowering Women to Build Climate Resilience.” There was a brief mention of consumer choices and meat consumption as they impact the environment. Disaster reduction plans were noted as being available on paper, but not necessarily implemented. The importance of green economy technology was discussed and the fact that progress on 15 of the 17 SDGs are related to such an economy. It was also noted that women in rural areas suffer most from climate change and this contributes to their poor nutrition and health.
The most impactful speaker on climate and gender was the Jeanette Gurung, founder of the organization Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN). She started by stating that only 16 countries of the 46 participating submitted a report on climate. According to Ms. Gurung, women do 66% of the world’s work, but earn only 10% of the world’s income and yet they reinvest 90% of their income into family and community. She stressed the need to mainstream gender into climate-related policy and plans, and the need to create a platform for scaling up and accelerating investment in women through the use of a results-based financing framework. Currently only 0.2% of philanthropic funding focuses on women and the environment. We need to address the challenge of getting climate funding to environmental projects by and for women. She does not like to see women as victims in the environment debate, as this cuts them out of opportunities and ignores their important contributions. Climate organizations generally do not consider gender in training and technical assistance. She would like to see funding linked to the performance and results that women bring to the problem. This will require collection, analysis and dissemination of gender statistics that is currently missing.