Notes of WARM Meeting

Jan. 21, 2009

Chemonics
This first WARM meeting of 2009 was a special event, well attended by participants of three different Washington D.C.-based Women's Environment networks: WARM, WCEE (Women's Council on Energy and the Environment) and WAN (Women's Aquatic Network), for a Dialogue on Raising the Profile of Gender in the Global Environmental Debate. The current global debate on climate change presents a perfect intersection for the sectors, i.e., agriculture and resource management, energy and marine and coastal issues to be represented. Hence this meeting was a perfect way to bring together women's voices from these sectors.

The meeting began with introductions by Jeannette Gurung, Director of WOCAN, of the two speakers, Dr. Monique Barbut, CEO of the Global Environment Facility, and Dr. Amy Fraenkel, Director of UNEP's Regional Office for North America.

WAN, WCEE and WARM were then introduced. Introduced by Monika Thiele, WAN was created 25 years ago, and now has about 400 members of the National Oceanic Administration (NOA), NGOs, and members of academe. Maureen Lorenzetti introduced WCEE as an organization created over 30 years ago, with over 550 women and men members. Jeannette introduced WARM and described how it was created and what the WARM meetings seek to do.

Amy Frankel then spoke on UNEP's work on gender and how climate change affects men and women differently. Despite the fact that women are greatly affected by climate change, women don't currently have equal representation at the UNFCCC Conference of Parties meetings. UNEP ‘s Gender Program attends to internal staffing and has developed a gender strategy and program of work that is followed in all of its offices. One of its objectives is to link anecdotal information to gender disaggregated data on environmental use. They are looking for gaps; the first Gender Forum will be held at the Governing Council meeting in February 2009 in Nairobi. UNEP is a partner with the UNDP, IUCN and WEDO in the Global Gender and Climate Change Alliance.

Monique Barbut described how she was disturbed at gender coming together with climate change, as well as all other sectors. She feels it is more important to deal with the role of women in food security, forest management, etc. - more specific sectors rather than broad topics such as climate change.

GEF is the biggest funder on environmental issues; all are linked to productive landscapes. In big projects, the largest problems are at the grassroots, where most initiators and implementers are women, but they encounter problems created by men in managing small grants (less than USD $30,000).

Monique stated that GEF didn't target gender issues in projects until last year; Yoko Wantanabe is doing a study of all projects, few of which have a specific strategy for gender, showing there was no clear direction from us or our implementing partners. In the 5th replenishment, she said they were pushing gender. Why? Because in Bangladesh they saw adaptations to climate change meant expansion of women's jobs into areas where they were not seen before, ie. fishing. Adaptation can be very important opportunity for women - they have seen this in the poorest countries.

GEF has a policy for Indigenous Peoples, and gender is included in there. Projects are obligated to have stakeholder consultations, but this needs to be systematized. 40% of past projects had gender mainstreaming done on a free basis. What GEF now wants to do is as follows:
- A series of activities to mainstream gender
- Articulate a vision and Plan of Action for the replenishment
- Look for specific dimensions where gender is important so can integrate by June 2010 into GEF itself
- Pay increased attention to socio-economic aspects of projects, see if gender is important driver or not to achieve environmental impacts
Gender is becoming a sector of men, especially in climate change, unlike in the 1990s, when women led the gender equality movement. Monique believes that we need to get our own institutions right first.

Discussion:
A very lively discussion ensued, that could have gone on much longer than our time allowed.
Points were made about the following:
- Gender mainstreaming is difficult work, requires efforts that go beyond normal job requirements, what are the challenges that GEF faces under your leadership?
- Disagreeing with Monique's opinion that gender within climate change doesn't make sense; if you look at the need for awareness and policy advocacy, there is a great need to talk of gender and climate change
- IFAD had good results for gender in their recent Replenishment discussions, several members made commitments, forcing senior managers to take gender seriously, but it takes continual efforts. We will focus on indicators, we can share these with GEF. Some bilateral push this, others will do catch up
- Indicators are crucial, ICRW is looking to promote with the US Govt. Implementation is lacking, after gender analysis is done, what is needed?

Monique:
- Would be good for our evaluation team to meet with IFAD to share
- Gender analysis is done by outsiders, so isn't taken seriously, and is the end of the gender work in projects; when evaluation comes in, is either good or bad, as there are no indicators for gender used. Even champions of gender have not done this, no bilateral agency will spend this kind of money. Maybe GEF will be the first, our mission is to be a pioneer, we don't need a return on our investment (unlike IFAD). For GEF 5 Replenishment, we will put gender indicators for every project in place by June 2010.
- Everyone wants to do gender and climate change, every civil society group says it is their group that is most affected, all are looking for funds.
- Major environmental challenge is not climate change, but is biodiversity, which we cannot bring back.

Amy:
- I differ on issue of just looking at gender within sectors. We need to move quickly, think strategically of where to put funds for gender and climate change; there is a great need for data on where the funding is going.
- There are opportunities here for women; the example of Wangari Mathai launching reforestation projects with women in Kenya

Discussion:
- To what degree is rights approach permeating higher levels of resource groups? In Rights and Resources, we catalyse others, indigenous peoples and women's movement are permeating our work. It is the system of rights that matters, not the skills.
- WOCAN's experience in gender mainstreaming in agriculture and natural resource management shows that gender mainstreaming is NOT about using a tool kit, is not a technical transfer of knowledge. Champions are needed.
- If the donors are so interested in gender and climate change, where are the resources? We have not seen this yet. Where is women's representation in the decision making processes of the World Bank, for example, in the design of climate change funds?
- In the debate on climate change, we are happy to point out how micro-finance helps women, but then we ignore them

Monique:
- We have good pilots but we are without indicators and a system that can enforce them
- Only in the UN CBD (Convention on Biodiversity) is there Access and Benefit Sharing, that is the only place where we can really do something, not only in the UNFCCC (Convention on Climate Change)

Amy:
- We need new models for women's investing and green economy involvement
Discussion:
-how do you build up from small projects, how do women's projects upscale?
- what are your recommendations for younger women to learn how to thrive within our organizations?
- we lost a stitch in gender and development, women being pushed now into poverty. There is so much research, I don't see the need for more. Is there a gap between development and environment?

Monique:
- Need a govt. that commits to this, only country that has done this well is Bhutan, that has the right indicators (for Gross National Happiness)
- If the world of finance had been driven by women, we would be in a very different place now; women are pragmatic, but need to assert their identity more.

Discussion:
- In the energy sector in this country, there is an absence of women's voices, unlike Senegal. I want to include women's voices in my work as an engineer.

Monique:
- Your important point is that you are an engineer; when you talk as a woman, you are dead professionally

Jeannette:
This is an important topic to discuss at another time, perhaps again with the three networks.
Thanks so very much to Monique and Amy for sharing their thoughts and stimulating this rich discussion this evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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