Why we need more women at COPs

Two women steered the historic negotiations that led to a funding mechanism under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for Loss and Damage in the recently concluded climate summit.

Chilean Minister for Environment Maisa Rodgers and Germany’s Climate Envoy Jeniffer Morgan faced other negotiators with a bare knuckle as a docket they managed to squeeze into the agenda last minute, tough as it may have seemed, sailed through and became one of the success stories for the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan.

They represent what women can do given a chance to lead negotiations.

However, women who attended the conference feel grossly underrepresented as men, in terms of numbers, continue to dominate such spaces. A group of African feminists working with the Women and Gender Constituency raised 27 demands at the start of the summit narrowing down to five key issues.

The issues include just and equitable energy transition and technology, climate finance, women's and youth leadership in climate processes and the intersection between climate, social, and economic justice.

Also read: Anything missing at COP27? Women's voices

In a reaction message during the closing plenary on behalf of the Women and Gender Constituency, Carmen Capriles, a Bolivian international expert on environmental policies, sustainable development and climate change, showed a tinge of dismay and appreciation for the Loss and Damage Funding, on the same breath.

Leadership and tenacity

“We celebrate the leadership and tenacity of developing countries, grassroots movements and civil society pushing forward our collective demand for a fund on loss and damage. This must deliver resources to communities whose lives and livelihoods are being devastated at increasing rates due to climate-induced loss and damage. This is just the beginning,” she said.

“But parties, we refuse to be complacent in an outcome that treats the symptoms but not the cause. Failure to take urgent action to mitigate this crisis, to keep 1.5C warming goal alive, to refuse the call to phase out all fossil fuels, to allow carbon offsetting and loopholes drive us deeper down the path of false solutions – we are plugging holes in a dam that’s structurally fractured and ready to break.”

Boldly and in a subtle way, she termed the COP "lost and damaged" for treating women's issues as sideshows.

“Parties negotiated for hours, not on what is urgently needed to progress on gender-responsive climate action that meets the needs of women and girls in all their diversity including centring the leadership of indigenous women, but on the weakest of texts that at best, in relation to finance, reiterate mandates already existing under this process and at worst, in relation to understanding the ways in which climate change exacerbates inequalities. This represents a rollback on normative language under the UN on gender equality and human rights,” she added.

Anne Songole, a climate change expert working with Femnet Kenya who was also part of the caucus that pushed for the 27 demands at COP27 told the Nation that there was little progress on the climate finance language aligned to women’s issues.

“The Loss and Damage Finance facility discussions have been picked up, gender has appeared in the Green Climate Fund draft decision. I struggle when I think about the issue of participation and want to see how it will be entrenched in the Loss and Damage discussions and institutions. It has, however, been recommended in discussions on the new collective quantified goal,” she said.

While everyone living in a country vulnerable to the impacts of climate change is affected, studies show that women and children are devastated the most.

An article written by a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Balgis Osman-Elasha, and published by the United Nations shows how climate change disproportionately hurts women.

Also read: Gender at the centre of most Cop27 adaptation plans

“Women's vulnerability to climate change stems from a number of factors -- social, economic and cultural. Seventy per cent of the 1.3 billion people living in conditions of poverty are women. In urban areas, 40 per cent of the poorest households are headed by women. Women predominate in the world's food production (50-80 per cent), but they own less than 10 per cent of the land,” she explains.

Against this backdrop, injustices continue to dominate for women who attempt to elbow their way to be heard. Most countries have yet to implement the Gender Action Plan that was adopted in 2017 during the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP23) in Bonn, Germany. 

“Women injustice, which is a key factor needing addressing at COP27 because climate change is crippling the most vulnerable communities and countries that contribute the least to the problem, was not adequately tackled, including in the Gender Action Plan," said Dr Janet Salisbury, the founder of Women’s Climate Congress, in a statement.

“Without action to rapidly reduce carbon emissions, all the rest of the negotiations – however laudable – will be for naught as we will suffer the irreversible and catastrophic impacts of heating above 1.5℃," she said.

Dr Salisbury said COP27 has shown once again that its male-dominated leadership is stuck in economic paradigms that cannot address the climate emergency, which is "an existential threat to all life on Earth".

Gender balance

She said women’s diversity, voices and attitudes are vital to shifting key issues from short-term market-driven criteria to long-term human and planetary wellbeing. “Gender balanced and inclusive governance is crucial at all levels of decision-making for a climate-secure future," she said.

"We need quotas and shared and equal counsel (including co-chairs) in all national and international forums for developing action on climate change. COP28 is an absolute deadline for this.”

Elise Buckle, the co-founder of SHE Changes Climate, also reiterated the need to have a female COP president next year in Dubai, saying that had COP27 had more women, a better outcome would have been reached.

“Women need to be in decision-making positions, not just on the podium to look nice. We can only address the planetary emergency, the triple crisis for climate, people and nature, if we work together as One team for One planet, with women and men co-leading a systemic transformation of society for a sustainable future. Our children are looking up,” she said.