Government Leaders from around the world are currently meeting in Copenhagen to face an unprecedented task: to come to a global consensus on nearly every major aspect of coping with climate change, including gender.
It has long been recognised that women are disproportionately affected by climate change and for the first time, gender has become an integrated issue in climate change negotiating documents. Over forty specific gender-sensitive documents were included in the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action’s text and for the first time a Women and Gender Constituency has been established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
We are at a pivotal point in history where gender equality is being championed by many and we cannot let the momentum falter. Gender language introduced into the text early this year must remain on the table to ensure that gender equality is a central consideration when dealing with climate change. From the UNIFEM Australia Newsletter
Just a small correction – their were about 43 references (not documents) to gender/women in the draft text of the Adhoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) after one of the earlier meetings last year. This shrunk considerably at the copenhagen meeting, but given that this document was put to one-side in favour of the controversial copenhagen accord (which does not mention gender) there is great concern about how the LCA will progress in future meetings.
I had the privilege of participating in the Gender and Women’s Constituency and was selected to make a short speech from the floor at the concluding plenary of the Kyoto Protocol on their behalf.
Jo, thanks for this amplification. Very disappointing – but perhaps not surprising, given how the document was drafted – that women were left out of the final accord. Is anything being doing to try to correct that? I would love to hear more about this.
I believe that the meeting this year in Bonn and the one in Mexico will return to negotiations on the AWG-LCA texts that do have gender references. This working group was meant to finish up at Copenhagen but was fortunately extended as it did not produce a result. The other working group on the Kyoto Protocol has only one reference to gender and probably deserves more scrutiny from a gender perspective. It was farcical to sit in the closing plenary and hear the ‘world’ agree that they had nothing to report on their work as they had not agreed on anything.
Despite this i am hopeful that this year will be one of tremendous movement towards the kinds of things we need set in place to avoid the worst of climate change.
I will let you know when i have some more analysis written up of what happened in Copenhagen – so very much did happen in those two weeks. It was like a microcosm of the world. Fascinating and terrifying all at the same time.
Hi Jo, thanks for this information. I think it would be really useful if you could provide a short precis of the gender issues involved in climate change because they are not readily apparent to everyone. Many people would assume that climate change impacts on people regardless of gender. I would be very grateful if you could find the time to post a short explanation. Thanks