WOCAN supported UNDP to design and facilitate the first day of the Regional Dialogue on Climate Resilient Growth and Development which focused on Gender Equality and Climate Change Finance on 20 February in Bangkok. Representatives from ten Asia Pacific governments, parliaments, CSOs and international institutions participated in the dialogue to reflect and share knowledge and learnings on climate change finance and gender-inclusion as part of the Regional Dialogue on Climate Resilient Growth and Development organized by UNDP’s Governance of Climate Change Finance Programme (GCCF) in partnership with Action on Climate Today (ACT) with the support of Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and Department for International Development.
The objectives of the first day were to:
- Bring all participants onto the same page with respect to understanding the importance of linking gender and climate change financing;
- Share experiences on gender-related approaches from participating jurisdictions – what is being done to promote gender-equitable climate change financing, and what are the challenges and opportunities for ensuring broadly inclusive and participatory stakeholder processes for climate change governance of climate change (including at the grass-roots level (women, men, boys and girls);
- Explore tools and mechanisms that have been put in place to monitor, measure and evaluate the impact of climate change-related financing mechanisms and investments on the lives of women, men girls and boys and marginalized groups, and how the mechanisms and investments are responding to differentiated needs, including strategic gender-related needs;
- Develop strategies on the way forward for ensuring gender-responsive climate change financing.
Session G4: Impact, effectiveness and accountability of climate change
Nisha Onta, Regional Coordinator for WOCAN, facilitated this session and the participants were- Wajeeh Uz Zaman, MPA/Chairman Standing Committee on Environment, KP Assembly
- Afia Salam, Journalist on Climate Change, Pakistan
- Raji Dhital, Programme Development Officer on Gender, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction, UN Women
This session explored the impact and effectiveness of climate finance, and different mechanisms of accountability. Wajeeh Uz Zaman discussed the participation of women in climate finance processes and importance of traceability and accountability. Afia discussed the role of media as an accountability watchdog for climate finance and she also mentioned various challenges in the region. Raji shared her insights on the accountability measures in various climate funds and she also shared new initiative where women and women’s group to be engaged in the accountability mechanisms at sub-national and national levels.
Session G5: Accessing International Finance through a Gender Equality and Climate Change Focus
Jeannette was one of the panelists in this session along with Muthukumara S. Mani, Lead Economist, South Asia Region, World Bank. Jeannette presented the W+ Standard as a mechanism to incentivize carbon project developers to design women’s empowerment projects and shared the example of the Nepal pilot project. Muthukumara S. Mani discussed World Bank’s gender policy and highlighted that they are aiming to make 50% of programs to be gender and climate change inclusive by 2020.