WOCAN participated in numerous events, alongside thousands of NGOs, activists, government agencies, young people, investors, companies, scientists, and other leaders of advocacy and change organizations for gender justice like WOCAN.
Here I would like to report on the key insights I shared and gathered from others, and the actions that we, as WOCAN, will take going forward.
I spoke in three panels and numerous meetings. My points on panels of the African Development Bank, UN Global Compact and WOCAN’s own event can be heard here:
- Measuring and Monetizing Women’s Empowerment within Climate Investments
- Advancing Gender-Responsive Climate Finance in Africa
COP 28 had a larger focus on gender and climate finance than any COP to date, with presence of representatives from financial institutions pledging they will now devote more resources to the nexus. This was a far cry from earlier COPs, where WOCAN joined a small group of organizations, including IUCN, WEDO, and WECF, advocating for gender within the negotiations.
Most of the strategies discussed however, employ the same old model, to provide loans to women-owned companies/SMEs, limiting their support to women entrepreneurs. While a welcome change, this clearly leaves out a large swath of women, who are NOT entrepreneurs, including women farmers, who are at the very frontline of climate changes and thus key to solutions.
WOCAN’s call is for institutions funding climate finance to recognize and reward the contributions that women’s local organizations are on the front line. That can and do play in accelerating climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. More effort must be made to assure benefits reach disadvantaged women farmers and natural resource managers, thus mitigating losses of incomes, hunger and lives.
Women-led local organisations play critical roles in increasing women’s leadership, agency, voice and economic and political empowerment to improve climate outcomes, yet they cannot access sufficient resources, including funds, technologies, or technical assistance to enable them to address needs for climate adaptive responses.
WOCAN itself is developing a financial facility to do just this, using the W+ Standard as a results-based payment mechanism that can be used with carbon finance mechanisms. Stay tuned to learn more.
A second call is for agriculture and environment-related organizations (implementing Nature Based Solutions) to address existing gender blindness and bias within their institutions. Such gender bias results in the exclusion of women’s contributions and perspectives in activities that are likely to have the largest impact on reducing GHG emissions – improving agriculture/agroforestry and protecting and restoring ecosystems.
Climate finance must incentivize these organizations to change their behavior by supporting solutions that build on women’s existing roles while providing them with resources for their self-determined adaptation activities.
In sum, as this COP closes with calls for higher levels of funding and action for climate adaptation and equity, we are still missing opportunities for including a large, and essential, group of climate actors – women farmers and resource managers – who are key to restoring biodiversity, mitigating GHG emissions and advancing adaptation and resilience.