GenderCC Newsletter

The proposed project will connect and train actors across Europe who are working on the topic of intersectional feminism and climate change with WLINTA* actors of the LGBTIQ+ community, with an interest in the intersection of those same topics.

GenderCC’s European members as well as members of ILGA Europe which is the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (and other LGBTIQ+ networks and organizations) will be addressed. The idea is to build a movement of activists within Europe, of people who are WLINTA* and support the idea of gender- and LGBTIQ+-just climate change policies.

The main goal is to establish the topic of gendered climate change policies within the queer community in Europe and to be able to give evidence of how WLINTA* are specifically affected by climate change impacts as well as climate change adaptation and mitigation policies, also in the political global north. At the same time, a specific LGBTIQ+ perspective and knowledge base concerning climate policies is going to be developed within the project. 

WLINTA* are affected differently than cis-male people by climate change and by climate change policies. While there is a – however small it might be - data base about the situation of cis-women in regards to those topics, there is hardly any evidence or data on the situation of LGBTIQ+ people. Yet, there are some indications that LGBTIQ+ people might contribute less to greenhouse gas emissions, and might be affected more severely by climate change impacts. In any case, plausibility considerations suggest that certain climate actions are critical for and can have adverse effects on LGBTIQ* people, such as low-carbon urban and transport planning.

GenderCC has started a new project under the title ‘JuGend’, combining the German words for ‘Youth’ and ‘Gender’. The project has started on April 1^st and is funded by the Federal Environmental Agency (Umweltbundesamt). The target group are youth organisations and movements that are involved in environmental and climate protection throughout Germany. They are to be sensitised and informed about the topics of gender and diversity as well as the connections between gender (dimensions) and environmental and climate issues. They are given practical tools on how to integrate these aspects into their climate and environmental policy plans, projects and programmes. By gender justice we mean the participation of different genders (in the sense of a non-binary category), as well as design options and the orientation of climate policy measures that do not further increase the disadvantage of people of certain genders but ideally reduce it. Diversity will play a role in the project with regard to the aspects of 'social origin' and 'racism'. Organisations and movements such as BUNDjugend, NAJU and FFF have already been approached and have shown great interest. The project duration ist 1 year and 9 months.

This project was a pioneer action: it was the very first project working towards gender-responsive urban climate policy in collaboration with women’s organisations. 

After six years of intense work, the project, funded by Germany’s International Climate Initiative, has been concluded with an international online conference and a parallel event at CSW66. It was carried out in partnership with four women’s organisations, the All India Women’s Conference (India), Aksi! (Indonesia), Equidad de Género (Mexico) and GenderCC Southern Africa (South Africa), and focused on the integration of gender into urban climate policy. GenderCC developed a gender analysis approach called ‘Gender Assessment and Monitoring of Mitigation and Adaptation’ (GAMMA) together with the partners who applied this approach in 14 pilot cities in the four countries. Based on the assessment, they developed policy recommendations for their cities, as well as gender responsive pilot projects, reached out to the public and carried out numerous training sessions for stakeholders such as city officials and local communities. Moreover, the approach was adapted in order to be applied at national and provincial levels and tested in the four countries.

The experience gained in the project demonstrated that working towards low-carbon and resilient cities does not only go very well together with working towards gender equality, but, moreover, it shows that the deep transformation we need requires the full integration of gender justice. At the end of the project, we are able to come up with a number of recommendations on what is needed at urban and national levels to work towards this transformation.

Among the achievements is now a well-tested method and procedure in place, enhanced by the rich experience of the partners, to address climate and gender justice at urban levels that works for other levels as well. The approach can be applied by women’s and other civil society organisations, as well as city officials and urban policy-makers who can use GAMMA for a self-assessment. The approaches developed and experiences obtained during the project are summarised in a booklet, and an E-Learning course at GenderCC’s Global Learning Platform offers basic knowledge on urban climate policy and gender.

We would be delighted if more civil society groups and cities would take up our approach, and make use of the GAMMA booklet and the E-learning course. We see a crucial role of civil society to raise awareness, provide capacity building, push for climate and gender justice, and monitor urban climate change policies. In the future, we would like to roll out this programme to other partners, countries, and cities.

We would like to thank our passionate and competent partners for the great and inspiring collaboration, and the German Government and the IKI programme for making this activity possible and providing continuous support. Find the project website here. 

My home city, New Delhi, is one of the largest cities in the world with a rapidly growing population. It is already facing the negative impacts of air and water pollution, water shortage and recent increase in extreme weather events. The impacts of environmental degradation and climate change in New Delhi affect marginalized populations differently, especially women in the city. With a decline in their labour force participation, income and consumption (PLFS 2017-18), New Delhi’s women from poorer households already face many precarities. Climate change will only exacerbate these vulnerabilities, so there is a growing need to address women’s role in decision making when it comes to climate policies, and gender considerations in mitigation and adaptation measures.

From March 2022 to February 2023, hosted by Gender CC and funded by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, I will be conducting a research project comparing and analysing the climate protection policies of New Delhi and Berlin in terms of their distributive effects on women and their consideration of women’s living conditions and vulnerabilities. The goal of this study is to tease out the gender aspects of climate change and climate protection policies and measures in the two cities. Gender CC’s work in advocating for gender justice in climate policies and their previous engagements with organizations around the world, including New Delhi, will allow me to build on this work and put forward recommendations for New Delhi’s climate protection policies. A comparative study will allow me to bring forth learnings from the climate protection frameworks, attitudes and policy mechanisms of Berlin that New Delhi can adopt and make our own. the outcome of this project is to reach out to policymakers and general public in New Delhi to bring gender justice to the fore of climate change discussions in the city.
 

GenderCC has produced a brief video that explains the connection between Gender- and Climate justice. It has been supported by our Germany-wide project ‘Education and awareness raising events to promote a global gender just climate policy’, funded by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The video can be watched here. 

The Women and Gender Constituency (WGC) is actively preparing for COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. During the end of March a process was coordinated among all interested to hand in a submission on the Gender Action Plan (GAP). GenderCC contributed to the submission and highlighted the importance of Gender Impact Assessments to be included in the GAP. The WGC is currently establishing an African Feminist Task force for COP27, open to all African WGC members who are interested to join, to bring strong African feminist perspectives to the COP at the end of the year. For the WGC Facilitative Committee, the WGC held its elections of 6-8 WGC members and 2 people outside WGC members. After the elections are closed, the new Facilitative Committee of the WGC will be announced.

Elena Georgiadi is currently studying towards her Master’s degree in Environmental Studies in the Radboud University, the Netherlands. Previously, she studied Social & Cultural Anthropology in Greece and China. Her academic and political interests include: climate justice, queer feminism, intersectionality, social movements & community development, migration and LGBT+/Queer studies. In her free time, she is interested in reading, volunteering and she also engages with climate activism. 

Shirin Choudhary is an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation International Climate Protection Fellow hosted by GenderCC. They are from New Delhi, India and have previously worked as a Researcher at Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi and as an Analyst at Sattva Consulting. They have worked on gender, sexuality, labour and sexual harassment at the workplace. Their project at GenderCC is a comparative study between the climate policies of New Delhi and Berlin to understand their inclusion of and impacts on gender and women in both cities. In their free time they are interested in literature, writing and video games!

This policy brief funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers provides the findings of a study on how climate policies impact gender and vice versa in a Nordic context (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). The findings of the project were collected through an extensive literature review, a survey with relevant Nordic governmental agencies and six focus groups interviews with policy makers, associations for women rights and representatives from four different sectors (the mobility, energy, construction, and agricultural sector). The study was conducted by Nina Lander Svendsen, Katrine Weber, Gabriela Factor, Laura Winther Engelsbak and Rikke Fischer-Bogason.

Read more here.

This policy paper published by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH presents a brief overview including its key findings on how Parties to the UNFCCC included gender-sensitive aspects into the climate change adaptation content within their national contributions (NDCs). The author of the study is Tanja Duprez.

You can find the policy paper here.

This paper on solar geoengineering and malaria in developing countries relates to the debate on geoengineering and its effect on health and women.

Read the full article here.

Farina Hoffmann, a staff member of GenderCC, will participate in the second week of the negotiations, along with three other members of the Not without Us! team GenderCC. More.