Kaylene Alvarez, WOCAN Board Member and Nisha Onta attended the South-South exchange on, “Integrating gender equality and social inclusion in climate budgeting and planning processes & innovative climate finance in the Asia-Pacific Region”, which was held from 6-7 September in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The workshop was hosted by the Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection of The Republic of Indonesia and the Ministry of Finance of Indonesia and convened under the auspices of the Gender and Social Inclusion (GSI) Expert Reference Group of the Climate Finance Network (CFN), co-chaired by UN WOMEN and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The CFN builds on UNDP’s Strengthening the Governance of Climate Change Finance (GCCF) programme, which worked to mainstream climate considerations into national budgets, with the support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the British Department for International Development (DFID) since 2012. The goal of the CFN is that Governments in Asia and the Pacific mobilize and manage increased climate finance to combat climate change effectively while promoting gender equality, human rights, and poverty reduction leading to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
Kaylene was the keynote speaker for the innovative finance for climate and gender session where she provided a broad overview of various types of financial intermediaries and differences between financial products and instruments. Then she presented various innovations in finance for climate and gender such as impact investing, blended finance, pay for performance, bonds, first loss guarantees and impact linked carry. Kaylene also explained the reasons for the public and private sectors for not investing in gender and climate and ended the session by discussing the role of the public sector to be a catalytic entity to increase private sector investment in gender and climate.
Nisha presented the W+ Standard as an innovative measurement tool for women’s empowerment in any climate projects. She presented the Nepal pilot project which shows the proof of concept where applying the W+ Standard incentivizes the project developer to implement activities that benefit women, and it also has incentives for the women involved in the projects.
The meeting brought together over 60 participants from 12 countries (Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, Fiji, Tonga, Cambodia, Maldives, Philippines, Sri Lanka) and an additional 80 online participants.
The Workshop also disseminated findings in a joint UNDP report published last year which found that many women beneficiaries faced greater difficulties in accessing finance in the context of climate actions compared to their male counterparts.
Titled, “Integrating gender equality and social inclusion in climate budgeting and planning processes & innovative climate finance in the Asia-Pacific Region’’,
It was an engaging two-day workshop that showcased country level experience in integrating gender into climate projects, and gave an opportunity to discuss the TOR and workplan of the Gender and Social Inclusion (GSI) reference group of the CFN.
Objectives and expected outcomes
The objective of the workshop was to contribute to peer-to-peer learning for all relevant stakeholders in the discussions related to how to advance innovative and gender-responsive climate change financing processes and interventions and chart a way forward for better collaboration and greater effectiveness to enhance impacts. This workshop, presented as a multi-stakeholder and participatory learning event aimed to provide an opportunity to share experiences and ideas and gain knowledge and evidence across this complex topic, relevant to specific contexts and levels (national and subnational), and allowing to scale up and improve the effectiveness and tangible impact of efforts over time.
The workshop aimed to:
• Present country experiences to highlight entry points for better prioritization of climate finance budgeting that have traceable social inclusion, gender equality and poverty reduction co-benefits, including integrating various tools in budgetary systems and processes
• Explore the role of innovative financial mechanisms in unlocking gender-responsive and socially inclusive climate change (CC) finance
• Identify solutions for coordination and policy alignment across central, thematic and sub-national levels of government, integrated into sectoral and local systems and actions and capacity challenges, adequate M&E frameworks
• Discuss the role of CSOs, oversight institutions and Parliamentary Committees have potential to promote traceability and accountability over inclusive and gender-responsive CC finance
• Critically discuss the role of the GSI Reference Group and reinvigorate its network
