February 2011

Dear reader,

Welcome to the first GenderCC-Newsletter of 2011!
In this issue, we are focusing on the latest UNFCCC Conference that took place in Cancún, Mexico, in December 2010 (COP 16). We will discuss several topics in more depth, such as financing and REDD, and summarize the Cancún proceedings from a women and gender perspective.
GenderCC held its Annual General Meeting on the margins of the UNFCCC conference; we provide a summary report. Other news from GenderCC include our new projects and a member portrait of Nina Somera.
For more and current information, visit www.gendercc.net. We encourage you to contribute to the newsletter, please send articles, references, links or other information on gender and climate related issues and events to newsletter[at]gendercc.net

Best regards,

Marion and Uta

for the GenderCC Team in Berlin

Content

News from GenderCC

• GenderCC Website and Toolkit Multilingual

• GenderCC General Meeting

• GenderCC Starts New Initiatives in Bangladesh and the Pacific Region

Gender and the UNFCCC

• Women and Gender in the COP 16 Documents

• Gender in Cancún: About Ixchel and other Women Shaping COP 16 

• Women and Gender Organisations Take a Stance on REDD

• Gender and the Climate Pot 

• Women and Gender Constituency Report

Activities of the Gender and Climate Change Community

• Bangladesh: Climate Tribunal - from a Gender Perspective

• Germany: Gender and Climate Change in Development Cooperation

• BRIDGE/IDS: Community of Practice on Gender and Climate Change

• giz: Survey on Gender and Climate Change in Morocco

News on Gender and Climate Change

Who is Who at GenderCC - Nina Somera

Publications

Calendar of Events

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News from GenderCC

GENDERCC WEBSITE AND TOOLKIT MULTILINGUAL

GenderCC has started to provide information on its website also in Spanish and in German. 

Step by step, the website will be translated; and we add French sections in the future. You can identify those parts which are already translated by navigating to the respective language pages via the top right flag bar. In addition, there are specific pages in some languages where, for example, information relevant only for Germany is provided in German only.

If you would like to support our work by translating parts of the website - in particular in Spanish or French - we would be very happy indeed! Please contact Marion.

Also, GenderCC's popular publication 'gender into climate policy - toolkit for climate experts and decision-makers' is now available in Spanish, French and German and can be downloaded here.

GENDERCC GENERAL MEETING

GenderCC’s Annual General Meeting 2010 was held on the margins of COP16 in Cancún. Thus, members who participated in the UNFCCC - conference had the opportunity to attend the meeting and discuss current developments and plans for the future.
 
GenderCC’s Focal Points highlighted their achievements of 2009/ 2010, e.g. successful initiatives to introduce gender in national and regional discussions, and outreach and networking via conferences organised in several countries. One milestone for us was the “World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth“ (4/2010, Bolivia), which enabled in-depth exchange with local women’s organizations and strengthened our Latin American network. GenderCC Southern Africa was founded and registered as an independent organization, sharing GenderCC’s principles.
 
Members also elected our new Board of Directors. From the old Board, Ulrike Röhr (Germany) was not standing for elections anymore, aiming to focus on other activities and to lighten her workload in general. Members expressed their heartfelt thanks to Ulrike Röhr who was warmly acknowledged as the main driving force behind founding GenderCC, getting the organisation and network off the ground.
The new Board, taking over this month, consists of Dorah Lebelo (Chair, South Africa), Minu Hemmati (Vice Chair, Germany), Gotelind Alber (Treasurer, Germany) and Ana Filippini (Uruguay).

Find out more about GenderCC’s governance here.

In 2011, GenderCC will again strive to develop and advocate women's and gender positions to ensure gender justice in national and international climate policy. We will emphasise documenting and analysing case studies especially in 'blind spot' areas like mitigation/ low carbon development and financial flows. Finally, we will see a number of interesting and far-reaching activities and initiatives in the context of the projects in Bangladesh, the Pacific and South Africa. In addition to activities on the local and national level (see below), we will foster global exchange and learning within the 'Gender and Climate Change' community through an online Global Learning Platform.

GENDERCC STARTS NEW INITIATIVES IN BANGLADESH AND THE PACIFIC REGION

Women and communities have their own perspectives and knowledge on how to build and strengthen their resilience to climate change. These perspectives are tied to the broader realities of power relations that are informed by class, age, gender, ethnicity and citizenship.

 
In a joint project with its partners, the Center for Global Change in Bangladesh (CGC), and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) on Fiji Islands, GenderCC is aiming to support articulating women’s and communities’ views and realizing changes and developments desired by them.
 
The initiative "Gender equality in adaptation and low carbon development" will further harness the capacities of communities, primarily women, on adaptation and low carbon development in Bangladesh and parts of the Pacific Region (Kiribati, Nauru, Republic of Marshall Islands). This, in turn, provides opportunities for women to engage in local and national climate change policies. In this context, the project partners will develop training material, as well as indicators and methods for selecting and monitoring of ‘gender sensitive adaptations measures’, and policy proposals. Global exchange on materials and methods used, and lessons learned in the project will be supported by a Global Learning Platform  
 
Read more about the project in Bangladesh and the Pacific. 

  
The project is part of the International Climate Initiative. The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety supports this initiative on the basis of a decision adopted by the German Bundestag.

WOMEN AND GENDER IN THE COP 16 DOCUMENTS

In many respects, women and gender organizations and activists could be happy about the outcome of COP 16. Not only that the total number of references in the final text of the Ad Hoc Working Group on long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) increased, there are also qualitative differences compared to previous draft texts.

For example, one can find references to the importance of gender equality and women's participation in the Preamble, the Shared Vision and in the chapter on adaptation. As in previous drafts, gender was recognized as an aspect of increased vulnerability caused by the impacts of climate change. Moreover, the text points out that adaptation and capacity-building as well as national mitigation strategies should employ a gender-sensitive approach. All measures should take into account the effects on vulnerable groups in particular, i.e. women and children. The Technology Executive Committee was encouraged to consider a gender balance. Greater participation of women and other relevant groups in terms of decision making at the national level was also designated as an explicit objective in the context of the New Delhi Work Programme on Article 6 of the Convention.
 
However, these gains will have to be defended, and expanded, in the future as they tend to disappear during negotiations. Often, all that remains is references to women as one of the  ‘vulnerable groups’. In addition, women and gender are sorely missing in key topics: Gender-balance is not even considered in the board of the Green Climate Fund, nor in the allocation and spending of the fund; and there is still a long way to go before gender is integrated in mitigation.
 
Finally, as we already put it after COP15, even if the gender language has become stronger, it is no occasion to celebrate, since the overall outcomes of the meeting are rather disappointing.

For more information please have a look at the women and gender references in the COP 16 outcomes.

GENDER IN CANCÚN: ABOUT IXCHEL AND OTHER WOMEN SHAPING COP 16

“Women Can, Men Can't?” we asked in our final press statement on December 11, 2010, highlighting the guidance provided by the two leading women in the process, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christina Figueres and COP 16 President Patricia Espinosa. The headline also honoured the efforts undertaken by women and women’s groups, activists and gender advocates from civil society at Cancun.

Organisations like GenderCC, LIFE e.V, WECF, WEDO and others partcipated actively, providing information on gender and climate policy, engaging in discussions with delegates and advocating women’s perspectives and positions. There were more side and parallel events than ever before discussing major topics and concerns linked to women rights and gender justice like health, REDD, financing, research, or successful approaches in enhancing women's participation and integrating gender into climate policies. Also, the Mexican government presented a declaration on gender and climate change in a side event. 

The daily Women’s Caucus meeting, attended by 25 to 40 women and men representing grassroots movements, as well as networks, NGOs and UN-organisations, was a forum for sharing and discussing current developments and positions.

Resulting from these discussions, the Women & Gender Constituency submitted a number of joint interventions. Ana Agostino (ICAE) held the final one in the High Level Segment: “By not agreeing on a fair, ambitious and binding agreement you withhold women and men, boys and girls a safe and healthy climate and you jeopardize our daily lives.” On behalf of the Constituency, she called for a transformation of current development paradigms that are driven by markets and profits and for agreeing collectively on a comprehensive approach to combat climate change and saving ecosystem integrity and humanity’s future.

To get more information on women’s and gender related activities in Cancún, please visit our website.

WOMEN AND GENDER ORGANISATIONS TAKE A STANCE ON REDD

Following intense debates within the Women's Caucus at COP16 (December 2010, Cancún/ Mexico), a number of women, gender and other organizations agreed on a joint stand on REDD (“Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation”).
 
REDD is a controversial concept in the international negotiations on climate change that will have negative impacts on communities that depend on forests as a source of livelihood, and especially on women:
“As women from diverse parts of the world, living in diverse conditions and circumstances, we affirm that it is of utmost importance to safeguard the rights of women, including those enshrined in the UN Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). We fully acknowledge the rights of indigenous peoples as referred to in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIPs). “ 

In solidarity with affected communities and peoples, some of the women and gender organizations at COP 16 stated:

• REDD+ as currently designed will contribute to a global land grab from communities and Indigenous Peoples, which will particularly affect women.
• REDD+ initiatives, as they are currently designed, create perverse incentives and inequities.
• REDD+ as an offset mechanism will not address climate change as it takes away the responsibility for mitigation from the North and shifts it to the South.
• The commercialization of life and carbon markets are incompatible with traditional and indigenous cosmologies and a violation of the sacred.”

Read the full document here 

The document highlights the main concerns that several women’s groups have articulated. The Women’s Caucus agreed that the position will not be disseminated as a Women's Caucus’ position paper, but was opened for signatures. Up to now, more than 30 organizations added their name to the paper’s signatories. On March 8, International Women’s Day, an open invitation to sign this document will be launched.
  
If you wish to sign the document as an individual or as an organization/ network, please send a message to our Latin American Focal Point Ana Filippini.

GENDER AND THE CLIMATE POT

Financing and especially the new climate fund were at the centre of the last UNFCCC-conference. In fact, the adoption of the Green Climate Fund could be listed as one of the successes of Cancún.

GenderCC has directed delegates’ attention to the remaining gender gaps, and put forward concrete requirements for the funds to enhance women’s rights and gender justice. Particularly, the funding criteria must ensure gender-sensitive spending and a direct access modality for organised women’s groups and communities should be installed. Also, all governing bodies like the fund’s Board need to be based on gender balance. In the operations of the fund and its projects, gender budgeting must be applied.

For more information about financing please visit our website or read our financing position paper.

Nina Somera, GenderCC – Steering Group, who was part of GenderCC’s delegation in Cancún shared some broader observations and comments on the topic:
The last few days of COP 16 saw the articulation of women and gender among a few delegates, particularly those who spent a few more hours in the Civil Society Forum. Some delegates were open to the idea of having women on the Board of the new Green Climate Fund. There seemed to be consensus that projects must benefit women. However, this development is rather invisible in the final documents.
 
Meanwhile, in a dialogue with CSOs, Global Environment Facility CEO Monique Barbut likewise shared good news. GEF is now becoming more open in facilitating a direct access modality for entities which can spend the money best. Ms Barbut also said that while it is ideal to have gender impacts as part of any project proposal, the criteria must neither be “too simplistic nor one that will take a one-year study.”  While this is laudable, the trouble is, there is a dearth in statistics on gender differences especially in developing countries. In addition, it takes a great deal of resources and creativity to ensure women’s meaningful participation in any process that is supposed to flesh out their needs.

Then at an Oxfam side event, British Ambassador to Mexico Judith McGregor broke what she considered good news. Great Britain had just committed US$4.7 billion to the controversial fast-start financing. Clearly, the UK remained committed in sticking to the Copenhagen Accord, which effectively cast a dark cloud over the massive hype and reasonable expectations last year.
 
And so while it is strategic for women and gender to be seriously considered in the negotiations, there certainly is a need to keep an eye at the broader picture: Where will the money come from? Who will manage it? How is it going to be spent? Ultimately, will it work for women?

WOMEN AND GENDER CONSTITUENCY REPORT

Since November 2009, civil society organisations working on women and gender issues have been granted constituency status by the UNFCCC Secretariat on a 2-year provisional basis. The constituency currently comprises of eight observer NGOs to the UNFCCC, and represents several hundred grassroots groups, national and international organisations and networks.

Drawing upon global commitments to gender equality and women’s rights and the Millennium Development Goals, the members of the Women and Gender Constituency work to ensure human rights and the gender dimension are incorporated into UNFCCC negotiations, agreements, plans and actions.

However, even if the gender dimension is recognised, gender equality and gender justice are often still seen as an “add-on” and tend to be lost during bustling negotiations or in the process of translating general principles into action. Therefore, it is essential to advocate for the full consideration of the gender dimension at all stages of the process, and in all issues under negotiation.

Gotelind Alber of GenderCC, acting as the Focal Point designated by the constituency members, has compiled a report, providing an overview of all interventions and submissions of its members of the past year. For more information about the Women & Gender Constituency please read the report or visit our website.

BANGLADESH: CLIMATE TRIBUNAL - FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

Historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases have originated in developed countries, but impacts of climate change have disproportionately hit the least developed countries, like Bangladesh. Hence, from a climate justice point of view, the burden of financing mitigation and adaptation measures ought to shift to industrialised countries.

Existing scientific evidence supports that increasing sea surface temperature are a result of global warming, creating frequent formation of low depression induced by rough sea events and causing harm to life and livelihood of fisher folks of coastal region in Bangladesh. As such, this vulnerable community of Bangladesh put forward its claim for protection of fundamental right to life and livelihood on behalf of their generation and of generations yet to be born. 
 

In November 2010, the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (CSRL) organized a Climate Tribunal in order to explore the legal avenues for litigation to protect climate affected people in Bangladesh. The aim of the tribunal was to highlight the suffering of the affected people and to point to the need of local and global policy interventions.

This tribunal has found based on the scientific evidences and legal submissions that, more than one fundamental human rights of the victims have been violated, including right to life and livelihoods as recognized in different international and domestic legal instruments including Bangladesh’s constitution.

As women are particularly more vulnerable to climate change than men, the tribunal recommended the Government to take particular adaptive measures with due consideration on women’s vulnerability and also suggested special financial allocation in this regard. The tribunal noticed with grievances that the international initiatives towards reducing vulnerability of women were far less than adequate. Hence, a recommendation to the Government of Bangladesh was to propose immediate steps to address the issue of gender sensitive vulnerability.

Taking into account the gross violations of fundamental human rights resulting from climate change and its effects, the tribunal strongly suggested  to the government of Bangladesh to consider a human rights approach to all spheres of multilateral negotiations and decisions. Moreover, the establishment of an Independent Permanent International Tribunal on Climate Change was recommended.

Text written by Sharmind Neelormi, GenderCC Focal Point Asia

Watch a short film about the Climate Tribunal on youtube.

GERMANY: GENDER AND CLIMATE CHANGE IN DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION

On 16 November 2010, a symposium on gender and climate change in development cooperation was held at the Gustav Stresemann Institute in Bonn, Germany. LIFE/genanet and WOMNET, in cooperation with GenderCC, invited representatives of German federal development agencies, development and women’s organisations to participate.
 
Presentations and contributions revealed that women’s rights and gender mainstreaming have already been anchored for some time in development cooperation in the countries of the Global South, and within development institutions. At the same time, a more detailed analysis shows that the focus often ends up on being on ‘women and development', while men’s role, gender roles in general and underlying structures and inequalities frequently remain ignored. Another important aspect of the discussion focused on the importance of fostering low carbon development in countries of the Global South and ensuring gender equality within relevant programs.
 
Finally, participants pointed out that gender justice necessitates resources as well as the participation of well-trained men and women. Gender justice, some said, cannot be achieved ”as a side effect”, but needs to be put into the centre of development cooperation.
 
To find out more about the meetings’ conclusions, please have a look here.
Presentations, a summary and the results of the symposium are available here (in German only).

COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE ON GENDER AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Part of the BRIDGE Cutting Edge Programme on Gender and Climate Change (for more information see the May 2010 issue) is a community of practice, which successfully run a first e-discussion in November 2010 with a group of invited participants.

BRIDGE now decided to schedule another discussion from 7th - 18th March 2011. This e-discussion will be more focused on specific areas related to gender and climate change mitigation, including REDD and low carbon development.

It will be moderated by Janet Macharia, Senior Gender Adviser with the United Nations Environment Programme, in the first week and Carl Jackson, an independent consultant with Westhill Knowledge Group who supports learning around climate change policy and practice and research, in the second week.

BRIDGE would like to open up the Community of Practice to allow others to join the group and contribute. We hope that this will further increase the diversity and opportunity for discussions. If you are interested in contributing to the e-discussion, please send an email to Georgina Aboud.

SURVEY ON GENDER AND CLIMATE CHANGE IN MOROCCO

giz (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) is looking for a French speaking consultant in the field of gender and climate change. The consultant should conduct a survey on the impacts of climate change on women who use natural resources in a National Park in Morocco.

The survey should also serve to develop a methodology to comprise, assess and absorb unwished effects of climate change.

The national, regional or international expert should have experiences in the field of usage of natural resources or in the field of rural communities, and with the North Africa region. The timeframe for the survey is March – May 2011, altogether 30 days.  

Please contact Schirin Salem to get more information and the Terms of References in French. 

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