Lobby & Advocacy
Participation in the UNFCCC Process
While we engage in advocacy and lobbying within the UNFCCC process, we are keeping in mind that this framework mirrors the world’s power structure. It favours the interests of the wealthiest and more powerful industrialized countries although they are the ones who contribute most to global warming, while those who suffer most from climate change lead mostly low-carbon life-styles but are represented with the smallest delegations. Nonetheless are some of our activities based on the assumption that the UNFCCC framework can produce a fair deal that can guide the world towards real mitigation and provide for adaptation to climate change.
We assume that some (individuals within) governments, IGOs and observers are willing to learn and change; and we hope that there may be space for gender-just policies in the existing framework. We hope that educating policy makers, e.g. by providing alternative responses to the challenge of climate change, will enhance decisions, and that making women's voices heard in the process creates pressure for change. We hope that rules and structures of the UNFCCC climate regime can cater to women's interests and that there is willingness and capacity to develop a gender-just climate regime.
Faced with the exclusion of women and gender expertise in the UNFCCC process it makes sense to demand being heard within this process. Requesting constituency status was a logical consequence of our struggle to ensure that women’s voices are present in the process; GenderCC has initiated that process in early 2009. In November 2009 the UNFCCC secretariat provisionally recognized women and gender NGOs as an official constituency in their own right.
When the UNFCCC was agreed upon, gender had not been addressed. Even when the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 established gender as a basic requirement in international policy formulation, the Kyoto Protocol paid no attention to gender considerations. The Women's Caucus in Barcelona 2009 demanded:
“The full integration of gender perspectives is essential to effective action on all aspects of climate change, including adaptation, mitigation, technology sharing, financing, and capacity building. The advancement of women, their leadership and meaningful participation, and their engagement as equal stakeholders in all climate related processes and implementation must be guaranteed.”
Advocacy on national and local level
To involve women and gender experts, to provide and use gender-mainstreaming tools are important steps towards meeting women's demands and needs. National and local levels are very important to GenderCC as a whole; it’s here that gender differentiations really become apparent.
Therefore, GenderCC’s regional Focal Points and members are involved in influencing policy making worldwide. Moreover, they work with women and women’s groups in order to raise awareness on climate change, build capacity, and enhance women’s participation in local and national policy making processes.
Since January 2010 GenderCC South Africa is implementing a pilot project on ‘Gender and Climate Change: Raising Awareness, Building Capacity, and Influencing Policy’ in South Africa.
