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GenderCC Newsletter

December 2022

Dear readers,

This newsletter is the last one for the year 2022 and it focuses on project updates, new publications and lastly, outcomes of the recent COP27 which took place from 6-20 November 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, highlighting important topics related to COP27 where GenderCC was represented with a delegation of fifteen people per week. Moreover; we report on two of our projects which included workshops with fruitful discussions, exchange of ideas and interesting suggestions for future collaborations. In addition, a selection of recent publications is listed in relation to gender and climate change.

As for our members, we would like to remind you of the Annual General Meeting that will be held online on the 15th of December.

We hope you enjoy this issue and we shall meet again next year! 

Kind regards,

the GenderCC Secretariat team

 

 

We hope you enjoy this issue! 

Kind regards,

the GenderCC Secretariat team

Content

GenderCC @UNFCCC

Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

GenderCC and Side Events

Negotations

Gender Action Plan

News from GenderCC

LGBTIQ+ project

Project JuGend 

Gender and climate policy in Berlin and New Delhi - an ongoing study - Shirin Choudhary

Who is Who at GenderCC

Our new intern

Publications

The results of Women 7 (W7) Germany

Global Gender Gap Report 2022

Climate Change is a threat multiplier for women and girls: UN expert

Women’s Participations in the UNFCCC: 2022 Report by WEDO

Transformative pathways: climate and gender-just alternatives to intersecting crises by WECF

Just Transition: An Essential Pathway to Achieving Gender Equality and Social Justice by ILO

Just Transition Policy Brief: Gender Equality, labour, and a just transition for all by ILO

Calendar of Events

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Gender @ UNFCCC

Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

This year’s climate COP27 (short for 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention of Climate Change) took place in Sharm-El-Sheikh from November 06th to 20th and was framed as an African COP. One of its rather few successes entailed the adoption of a Loss & Damage Finance Facility, after decades of advocacy by civil society and countries from the Global South to financially support Global South countries struck hardest by climate change, such as natural disasters. Yet, parties missed the chance to address the closely linked and needed phase out of fossil fuels once more!

Most of the negotiated items were dominated by discussion on formalities, leaving little room for substantial content related discussions and observer engagement. Specifically negotiations on gender as part of the Gender Action Plan (GAP) degraded gender justice within the UNFCCC as a mere side show and an empty shell. The conference was overshadowed by the constant surveillance of the autocratic Egyptian regime, putting human rights activists, environmental defenders, LGBTIQ* advocates and especially Egyptian activists at special risk. The unambitious outcomes of COP27 reflect these harmful circumstances.

GenderCC and Side Events

GenderCC was represented at COP27 with a delegation of fifteen people per week during COP27, encompassing staff members of the International Secretariat, GenderCC members and partners from our broader network. As we have done in the past years, GenderCC was actively involved within the Women and Gender Constituency and followed the daily caucus meetings.

During the first week of COP27, GenderCC co-organised a well-attended Side Event at the Blue Zone at the EUROCLIMA+ Pavilion on “¡No sin nosotras - not without us!” together with WECF. With a focus on Abya Yala (Indigenous chosen name for South America) the event touched on how just transition needs to be rooted in gender justice. The second Side Event at the Blue Zone took place on Saturday, Nov. 12th with the title “Putting people and real solutions at the heart of climate action” stating that climate action is transformative if grounded in human rights and locally led. The event was organized with IBON International Foundation Inc., Community Economics and Development Consultants Society (CECOEDECON), Environnement et Developpement du Tiers-Monde (ENDA-TM), and LIFE e.V.

Negotiations

This year’s negotiations on Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE), covering capacity building and education, were among the most progressive and produced an Action Plan, featuring explicit mentioning of human rights, entailing specific requirements for dis_abled, gender, children and youth and indigenous Peoples. These successes can be traced back to active engagement by civil society, which was lacking for most other negotiated items. In the outcomes of Article 6, on market and non-market mechanisms, a dangerous proposal on carbon removal by the Supervisory Body could be averted, which would have opened doors to human rights violations and geoengineering projects. After much pressure from civil society, parties send the proposal back to the Supervisory Body for rework, yet failed to add guiding demands for the new removals proposal and to anchor human rights and labour rights.

Gender Action Plan

The negotiations on the Gender Action Plan (GAP), once celebrated as a first big step to gender and climate justice in Madrid 2019, left anyone looking for ambition empty handed. Instead of using the chance to evaluate how finance can be gender-responsive at this year’s midterm GAP review and supporting countries in setting up a national gender action plan, the evaluation has downgraded the GAP to a mere lip service. Many parties were eager to renegotiate gender just language already agreed on at past COPs and delayed conversations about substantial aspects of the evaluation. In a final attempt to have an outcome on gender, the COP27 presidency increased pressure in the final days for parties to agree on a text, which was not substantially discussed and mostly happened behind closed door for observers. Feminist organizations had pushed for countries to take the discussions forward to the SB Sessions in Bonn in 2023 and work on a more ambitious text, to avoid a watered down text on gender. On behalf of these organizations the Women and Gender Constituency, grouping of feminist, women and gender organizations, activists and researchers, has voiced its strong disappointment with the outcome and the lack of observer engagement.

In and outside of negotiations civil society made a strong point in showing that the way to achieving climate justice is solidarity, particularly in the face of the ever increasing fossil fuel lobbyists at COPs every year. Throughout actions and marches, support for the silenced and missing voices at COP27, specifically with prisoners such as Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, were at the centre. Repressions on Egyptian activists, such as Sanaa and Mona Seif, sparked before the COP and are expected to rise again thereafter. Therefore, it is the obligation of civil society organizations returning home to keep up the pressure to release political prisoners in Egypt and all over the world. Looking at the United Arab Emirates as the upcoming host country of COP28, we expect a very well organized COP but fear that civil society demands for justice, human rights and gender justice will yet again be pushed to the side lines.

News from GenderCC

LGBTIQ+ project

The project is funded by the ‘Urgent Action Fund’ and aimed at training actors across Europe especially WLINTA* actors of the LGBTIQ+ community with an interest in the intersection of queerfeminism and climate justice.

We published a briefing paper on the GenderCC website and held three trainings throughout the year: one training in Ljubljana (Slovenia) in cooperation with the organisation ‘Ljubljana Pride’, one in Berlin in cooperation with ‘LesLeFam’ (Lesbians, Life, Family) and one in Rotterdam with ‘Queer Rotterdam’.

The main goal was 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 worldwide. At the same time, a specific LGBTIQ+ perspective and knowldge base concerning climate policies has been developed within the project. 

 

Project JuGend

Ju*gend Project: Workshop series for the development of an intersectional tool for climate actions

On September 9 and October 14, GenderCC met with representatives of different youth environmental organizations to develop and test a method for climate action within the project "Ju*gend - Youth, Gender & Climate Justice". In the first workshop in September, we first tried to collectively develop how a tool should look like, which checks climate measures and policies for intersectionality. At the same time, we discussed that the intersectional check should be shaped for the work of youth environmental associations and activist groups, who could use it to check their demands, campaigns, but also organizational structures for intersectionality. An important part of the discussions at the workshop was also about the question of the format. Do we need an online format or a poster? How are young people encouraged to use the method? These and many other questions were discussed at the workshop in Berlin in September.

In October, we worked with the participants to test the ideas and suggestions for the intersectional check for their applicability. For this purpose, all participants brought examples from their practical work and looked at how the check might still needed to be adjusted. Many questions and discussions arose in small groups. The question of what the check can do and what it might not be able to do was addressed multiple times. At the end of the workshop, next steps were discussed in terms of future cooperation and forming a network on the topic of intersectionality and climate justice.

Gender and climate policy in Berlin and New Delhi – an ongoing study – Shirin Choudhary

In March of this year, I came to Berlin as an Alexander von Humboldt International Climate Protection Fellow, hosted by GenderCC-Women for Climate Justice. In this one year Fellowship, I have set out to research climate protection and adaptation policies in the cities of Berlin and New Delhi, and analyse them through a gender lens. Nine months into this study, I am incredibly humbled by the breadth and depth of work being done in this important field, yet the little attention that is paid to gender in the international and national climate discourse. I have interviewed activists and experts in this field in both cities, and have found that considerations of gender in climate policies have advanced since the past couple of decades, but much work is still to be done. While the gender-differentiated vulnerabilities of women due to climate change and climate-induced weather events is recognised, there are still gaps in policy to explicitly address these vulnerabilities. As my project progresses further, I am excited to explore and learn more about the ways in which not just women but all people marginalized on the basis of gender can be empowered, represented and achieve the rights and entitlements in the changing climate of these two cities.

Who is Who at GenderCC

Our new intern

Tau Samper is currently a master student of Biosphere Reserves Management at the University for Sustainable Development of Eberswalde, Germany. Before, Tau studied molecular ecology at the university of Göttingen also in Germany. Tau grew up in Chile and has also lived in Ecuador, Brasil and Argentina, countries where he studied botany and ethnobotany as an autodidact and supported by indigenous and farmers communities who aim for self-determination and decolonization; in this context he also encountered himself with his transgender identity. Tau´s research interests reside on conservation and restoration of biodiversity to safeguard ecosystems´ resilience, the convergencies of ecological and social systems, queer ecology, eco-transfeminism, and on climate and environmental policy making.

 

Publications

The results of Women 7 (W7) Germany

During the German presidency of G7, the international network of civil society organisations ‘Women 7’ was active advocating for gender equality within the G7 negotiations and formulate powerful demands to G7 leaders. Ulrike Röhr from GenderCC was part of the advisory team in the working group climate justice.

Find the implementation plan here and the results of the evaluation meeting are to be found here

 

Global Gender Gap Report 2022

According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2022 published by World Economic Forum, gender parity is not recovering. In fact, It seems that it will take another 132 years to close the global gender gap. 

You can find the full report here.

Climate change is a threat multiplier for women and girls: UN expert

In this report, the nexus between the climate crisis, environmental degradation and related displacement, and violence against women and girls is explored.

Read more here. You can find the report here

Women's Participation in the UNFCCC: 2022 Report by WEDO

In this report, key takeaways and new measures are shared regarding the topic. You can access the report here.

If are interested, you can also find more information in UNFCCC document: read more here

 

Transformative pathways: climate and gender-just alternatives to intersecting crises by WECF

This publication analyses the 2030 Agenda and Paris Agreement and the purpose is to "contribute to a systemic transformation by collecting evidence that demonstrates that another world is possible". 

Read more here.

Just Transition: An Essential Pathway to Achieving Gender Equality and Social Justice by ILO

This paper focuses on Just Transition and it is published by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). You can read more here

 

Just Transition Policy Brief: Gender equality, labour and a just transition for all by ILO

This policy brief by ILO focuses on Gender equality, labour and just transition and includes key messages, recommendations and conclusions. 

Read more here

Calendar of Events

5-15 June 2023, Bonn, Germany: Bonn Climate Change Conference