On March 22, WOCAN organized the virtual CSW66 side event which showcased opportunities to support women’s groups and women-led enterprises managing climate projects by catalyzing new funding and carbon markets. There were 143 individuals who registered for this session, showing a growing interest in the nexus of carbon finance, markets and gender equality.
The session was facilitated by Jeannette and the speakers were:
- Hannah Simmons, Founder & CEO, ERA (Ecosystem Regeneration Associates), Brazil
- Rachel Vestagaaard, Founder & CEO, Empower Co., USA
- Katie Turner, Consultant, Ecosystem Development, Gender/Climate Nexus, Impact Investing
Jeannette started the side event on a positive note by reflecting on the recent COP, where both public and private bodies were using the terms gender, climate and finance together, which WOCAN and other advocates have been pushing for many years. This is definitely a positive step forward but much more needs to be done, there is still lack of sufficient data on how much climate finance is spent on gender related activities and how much of that fund actually trickle down to women’s organizations.
But Jeannette believes climate finance and markets could enable women entrepreneurs and women’s groups to benefit from climate mitigation and adaptation projects, while de-risking activities for environmental project developers and impact investors. Jeannette shared the experiences with the W+ Standard to measure gender outcomes in climate mitigation projects in Africa and Asia that bring additional grant funding for adaptation activities to women’s groups.
Hannah then showcased her work in Brazil where her company ERA (Ecosystem Regeneration Associates) provides landowner payments for ecosystem services by maintaining the carbon on their lands and converting it to agricultural land. She showcased the initiative to develop learning hubs at school and support five women land owners to establish agroforestry systems on their lands. Her goal is to establish three more learning hubs, finance 50 women to establish agroforestry systems and apply the W+ Standard using three domains: Knowledge & Education, Income & Assets and Leadership to generate 15,000 W+ Credits. Hannah also invited all the attendees to become carbon project developers and explore innovative mechanisms to benefit local communities and women grassroots leaders.
Rachel shared that she has just launched her new brokerage Empower CO. which is the world’s first transparent and robust voluntary market for W+ Units. Empower Co. will sell W+ units from projects that give 50% of the proceeds from the sale of the units to women in the project. Rachel expressed the high demand and market opportunity for W+ units is because of SDG commitments by 80% of the Fortune500 companies, that can purchase W+ units to fulfill their SDG5 commitments.
Katie shared her research findings on Strengthening Ecosystems for Women Climate Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa which was a call for four actions: capacity building, mentoring/networking, financial models and partner engagement. She showcased the Women Entrepreneurs Transformation program of the Ghana Climate Innovation Center, that trains women on emotional intelligence, , inner leadership and public speaking, self-care, work life balance and mindset and perceptions. Katie also showcased the partnership among the Kenya Climate Innovation Centre, Kenya Bankers Association and Financial Sector Deepening which aims to build capacity of lenders on the specific needs of climate businesses so that FI can offer climate finance to businesses. She also highlighted the mentorship and networking initiative of the Private Financing Advisory Network (PFAN).
The panelists discussed various barriers to entry for women in the carbon project space and offered solutions such as pre-purchase of carbon credits. Katie emphasized the “need for translators” between the carbon and the gender silos, to improve the scale of interventions and accelerate the growth in this sector. Hannah shared her hope for the future that each of the SDGs will have a verified measurement like the W+ Standard for SDG 5. Jeannette emphasized the need to discuss RISK for investments by not addressing gender; finance and carbon developers are more interested in risk rather than other arguments for gender equality.