GenderCC Newsletter

Content

News from GenderCC

NwU

Project JuGend 

Erasmus+

Recommendations for German Feminist Foreign Policy in the Field of Climate Change

GenderCC @UNFCCC

UNFCCC SBI Session in June in Bonn

Who is Who at GenderCC

Our new colleagues

Publications

IPCC report: AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023 and civil society reactions

Gender and Climate Change Discourse in Uganda: Insights from women representatives of CSOs

Joint dialogue on advancing the leadership and highlighting the solutions of women

Feminist Analysis of COP27 Climate Finance Outcomes by UNFCCC

Gender Equality and Climate Change Policy Brief by ESCAP

Report on women, girls and the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment by the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment

Status Report on Disability Inclusion in National Climate Commitments and Policies

The Status of Women in Agrifood Systems Report by FAO

Strengthening Gender Justice in Global Environmental Crises by Birte Rodenberg

Combatting Global Plastic Pollution: Feminist Perspectives for a Gender-Just Approach By Birte Rodenberg

Der lange Weg feministischer Ansätze in die entwicklungspolitischen Institutionen by Birte Rodenberg (only available in German)

Calendar of Events

07 May 2023 Decolonial Memorial Registration deadline for freelance professional artists and artist groups

5 -15 June 2023, Bonn, Germany: The 58th session of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI 58)

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NwU

“Not without Us!” goes into 7^th round

The “Not without Us!” project goes into another round and will start in April 2023. Similar to the past years the project aims to promote the integration of gender justice in international climate politics and within the global climate justice movement. Selected activists and gender experts from environmental groups and women’s organisations, primarily from the Global South, will be supported in their attempts to connect local struggles for climate and gender justice with the UNFCCC process, enabling networking with other actors. The project Not without us! Climate justice and gender justice in international climate politics is supported by Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.

This year the team will participate in the UNFCCC SB58 Sessions in Bonn from the 5^th to the 15^th of June and also attend the COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates form November 30^th to December 12^th 2023.

Project JuGend

Second year of the JuGend project

The “JuGend” project on youth, gender and climate justice is going into its second year. This year’s focus will be on finalising the Gender Impact Assessment (GIA) tailored at the work of youth organisations in the field of climate. The participants of last year’s workshops have given their final feedback now on what they wish the youth GIA should look like. Afterwards the GIA will be published in different forms: online and also in a print version. Additionally, we will have four “Gender and Climate Justice Trainings” to train gender experts and to try out how the youth GIA works. Workshops will be held in German on the following dates:

April 28^th, 2023, 10 – 18h, Berlin, WeiberWirtschaft

June 16^th, 2023, 10 – 18h, Bonn, Gustav-Stresemann-Institute

September 20^th, 2023, evening (tbc), online (Zoom)

September 23^th, 2023, time (tbc), online (Zoom)

Please sign up here if you are interested

Erasmus+

New Educational project within GenderCC

This project under the funding line of Erasmus+ builds up tools, knowledge and methodologies for learners to upskill themselves (in groups, individually or with a teacher) in the relationships between gender inequality and the climate crisis. The knowledge and tools developed will be further disseminated through multiplier events. The project will be reaching out to women* and feminists, CSO-representatives as well as migrant women*, the LGBTQI+ community and to civil society mostly within the EU but also beyond with its online formats. Products will be a briefing paper including 4 thematic factsheets on gender equality and climate justice in seven languages (English, German, Bulgarian, Danish, Spanish, French and Swedish), an online trainers’ hub and an e-learning tool for individual online learning on the topic. The topics for these project results will be: Gender & climate change; mobility/sustainable transport; extractivism and women*’s activism against socioecological exploitation; energy – sustainable production, inclusive access and feminist perspectives on climate policy, as well as - 'LGBTIQ+ and Climate Justice'.

Recommendations for German Feminist Foreign Policy in the Field of Climate Change

Gotelind Alber, co-founder and board member of GenderCC, contributed an article on recommendations for the Germany Feminist Foreign Policy in the Field of Climate Change. Feminist foreign policy is a high claim if feminism means overcoming patriarchy. The extent to which this claim can be fulfilled by state policy is questionable. Politics must therefore constantly question itself in order to at least be aware of the tension between what is necessary and what can be achieved in real political terms. This article focuses on climate policy as a central theme of GenderCC's work.

Read more in English here. Read in German here.

Gender @ UNFCCC

UNFCCC SBI Session in June in Bonn

The 58^th session of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI 58) and and Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) are taking place in Bonn, Germany from June 5^th – 15^th 2023. Through the Not without Us! staff members of GenderCC, Farina Hoffmann and Noro Enkhbaatar, will participate in the second week of the negotiations, as well as various other members of the Not without Us! team. Further information on the agenda of the SBI 58 can be found here.

Activities of the Gender and Climate Change Community

Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) 67th session

The 67th annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW67), the UN’s largest annual gathering on gender equality and women’s empowerment, will took place this year from 6 – 17 March under the theme, “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls”.

Here the advanced unedited version of agreed conclusions. More information here.

UN Water Conference

The first UN Water Conference in a generation, the UN 2023 Water Conference 22-24^th of March 2023 in New York, co-hosted by the Governments of Tajikistan and the Netherlands aimed to mobilize Member States, the UN system and stakeholders alike to take action and bring successful solutions to a global scale. To catalyse action, the Conference sought voluntary commitments and make commitments to accelerate water action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal number 6. The central outcome of the conference was the international Water Action Agenda, to which governments, multilateral institutions, businesses, and non-governmental organisations submitted over 670 commitments to address water security issues. Nearly 164 governments and 75 multilateral organisations have made commitments.

More about the UN Water Conference here and here.

Here an article about how gender-blind policies ignore the disproportionate effects of water crisis. Also an article by WECF and their actions during CSW and the UN Water Conference promoting women’s rights/gender equality and water here.

Women Farmers-led Just Transition Agriculture

The feminist organisation Badabon Sangho from Bangladesh, member of GenderCC, is currently working on just transition on agriculture led by women farmers. Due to the global crisis of the fertilizer supply chain and other inputs like pesticides, overall farmers are struggling with the higher prices of chemical fertilizers. Small scale women farmers are more vulnerable as they don’t have much mobility and updates. Farmers are used to produce crops’ yields by using chemical fertilizers (i.e., urea, zinc, phosphate, potash, gypsum). Different types of fertilizers are using at different stages of land preparation, planting and harvesting. Furthermore, pesticides like nitrogen, phoradon, and basodin were commonly used when the crop was attacked by insects. Groups are mobilized and formed Women Farmers Association, in southwest region in Bangladesh in 2022. Members are directly engaged in agriculture cropping. Groups organised training and coaching on organic agriculture inputs i.e., fertilizer and insect killer production. Interviewing with association members, it is clear that the cost of crops production by using chemicals was much higher. They understood though chemical fertilizer use sometimes increases the crops' yields but it has been destroying the health of humans and soil. New organic cropping methods reduced the dependency on the supply chain and uncertainty of market and prices. By using organic farming methods, the cost is much less and the same land can be cultivated repeatedly. Women are aware that kids and elderly people are used to getting sick while using pesticides, organic methods do not have any risks. Members believe organic crop production is the oldest and sustainable farming method. Badabon Sangho’s group members believe women’s control over the agriculture would be regained. Thus the social ecology and regenerative economy would be promoted. 

More information here.

Publications

IPCC Report (AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023) and civil society reactions

The IPCC finalized the Synthesis Report for the Sixth Assessment Report during the Panel's 58th Session held in Interlaken, Switzerland from 13 - 19 March 2023. It summarizes five years of reports on global temperature rises, fossil fuel emissions and climate impacts. The report finds that, despite progress in policies and legislation around climate mitigation since the previous such report in 2014, it’s “likely that warming will exceed 1.5°C during the 21st century”. This is based on the expected levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere by 2030, based on all countries’ climate targets in their NDCs – announced as of October 2021. Limiting warming to “well below 2°C”, by 2030, as per the Paris Agreement targets, will be hard to achieve, but avoiding 1.5°C is still possible. Climate Action Network International collected various reactions and responses by civil society representatives.

Read the report here.

Here an article by Climate Champions summarizing the report.

Here the link to various civil society reactions.

Gender and Climate Change Discourse in Uganda: Insights from women representatives of CSOs

This research is conducted by Elena Georgiadi in collaboration with GenderCC and explores the Gender and Climate Change discourses through an intersectional and feminist critical lens, as produced by policymakers and women representatives of CSOs in Uganda. The researcher starts from a standpoint which criticizes the “victimization discourse” which generalizes women as a vulnerable group and aims to provide positive alternatives which go beyond that narrative while acknowledging the contextual conditions which shape gendered vulnerability.

The research is devoted to Irene Dankelman.

Read more here.

Report on “Joint dialogue on advancing the leadership and highlighting the solutions of women from local communities and indigenous women in climate policy and action” by UNFCCC

This report outlines the proceedings of, and summarizes the discussions from, a joint dialogue held at the 27^th session of the Conference of the Parties. The dialogue was organized as an activity under the second workplan of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform, for 2022–2024, and under the UNFCCC gender action plan priority area of gender balance, participation and women’s leadership. The action points set out in this report provide the Subsidiary Body for Implementation and Parties with information on practices that can advance the leadership of women from local communities and of indigenous women in the UNFCCC process.

Here a link to the report.

Feminist Analysis of COP27 Climate Finance Outcomes

The Feminist Action Nexus for Economic and Climate Justice and The Women and Gender Constituency were ground following key finance agenda items and advocating for feminist climate finance. Read our summary and analysis of five key areas of negotiations and discussions below, including some of what was on the “Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan”, this year’s COP cover text. This resulted in a blog about five key climate finance issues following the conference.

Read more here. And here.

The Status of Women in Agrifood Systems Report by FAO

The status of women in agrifood systems report uses extensive new data and analyses to provide a comprehensive picture of women’s participation, benefits, and challenges they face working in agrifood systems globally. The report shows how increasing women’s empowerment and gender equality in agrifood systems enhances women’s well-being and the well-being of their households, creating opportunities for economic growth, greater incomes, productivity and resilience. Moving beyond agriculture, The status of women in agrifood systems reflects not only on how gender equality and women’s empowerment are central to the transition towards sustainable and resilient agrifood systems but also on how the transformation of agrifood systems can contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Access the report here.

Strengthening Gender Justice in Global Environmental Crises by Birte Rodenberg

Birte Rodenberg, board member of GenderCC, analyzed how to strengthen gender justice and how to deal with the dramatic consequences of the global environmental and climate crises as international attention is also growing for civil society environmental movements and their louder feminist demands. She explains how the commitment of women's and feminist movements to environmental and climate issues is increasing.

Find the analysis here.

Combatting Global Plastic Pollution: Feminist Perspectives for a Gender-Just Approach by Birte Rodenberg

Plastic pollution is a global problem. Many people, including policy makers, are becoming increasingly aware of the destructive consequences of plastic waste. But what does this have to do with gender inequality? To what extent do plastic hazards affect the sexes and genders differently? And why can the plastic problem worsen existing disadvantages and discrimination?

Read more here.

Der lange Weg feministischer Ansätze in die entwicklungspolitischen Institutionen (only available in German)

Zusammen mit den Leitlinien für eine feministische Außenpolitik hat auch das Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ) seine neue Strategie einer feministischen Entwicklungspolitik vorgestellt. Ein Rückblick auf zentrale Stationen des geschlechterpolitischen Vor- und Zurück in der internationalen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit.

Read more here.

07 May 2023 Decolonial Memorial Registration Deadline for Freelance Professional Artists and Artist Groups

Berlin Global Village has launched the art competition for the “Decolonial Memorial”. This is an open, anonymous and worldwide art contest for the realization of a decolonial memorial sign – an artistic work dealing with decolonization. Artists and artist groups from all over the world can easily register for the contest until May 7^th 2023. The Land of Berlin (SenKultEU) will then provide 750,000 euros for the realization of the artwork. The competition, educational program and public relations work will be financed by the federal government (BKM) with a further 750,000 euros. The project is supported by the Berlin Global Village gGmbH in cooperation with the office for art in public space of the Kulturwerk GmbH of the bbk berlin e.V. and circle of supporters from decolonial civil society.

More information here.