GenderCC Newsletter

July 2021

Dear readers,

Our second newsletter of the year features updates from GenderCC projects and publications, updates from its members and much more.

GenderCC has been especially active with its projects such as GUCCI, Not Without Us! and Education And Awareness Raising Events To Promote A Global Gender Just Climate Policy. It has also published various exciting papers related to gender and climate justice. Furthermore, it took part in the UNFCCC SB Sessions as an observer. Despite that many important issues were discussed in the SB Sessions, considerable work remains to reach agreement on the key issues under consideration at COP 26.

The edition will also feature updates from the GenderCC members, among activities in Bangladesh and Scotland. UN House Scotland has released the first episode of its podcast series, “Connecting Women's Voices on Climate Justice: Perspectives from Scotland and Around the World”. The full version of the newsletter issed in our website is available here.

We hope you enjoy this issue!

Kind regards,

the GenderCC Secretariat team

Content

News from GenderCC

• Not without us! Climate justice and gender justice in international climate politics
• Gender Into Urban Climate Change Initiative (GUCCI)
• DIALOGUES - Inclusive DIALOGUES towards an operational concept of energy citizenship to support the Energy Union
• Publication of Briefing paper on ’Shifting the narratives: climate justice and gender justice’

Gender @ UNFCCC

Activities of the Gender and Climate Change Community

• Training on 'Strengthening the capacity of youth women to adapt to climate change in Uvira city' in the DRC

• Badabon Sangho addresses the climate change challenges of women fisher-folk communitities

• Podcast series on gender and climate justice from UN House Scotland

News on Gender and Climate Change

• Women of the Arctic´s Chapter on ‘Gender and Environment in the Arctic’ in the Pan-Arctic Report: Gender Equality in the Arctic
• Publication of a Chapter on  ‘How to make Germany’s climate policy gender-responsive’ by Gotelind Alber, Diana Hummel, Ulrike Röhr, Immanuel Stieß

Publications

• Women’s Major Group 2021 High Level Political Forum Position Paper
• The land rights, climate justice and gender equality conundrum : Human rights strategies and practice
• Gender And Climate Change In The Context Of Covid-19

Calendar of events

• Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) Glasgow (https://ukcop26.org/)-- 31 October – 12 November 2021

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News from GenderCC

Not without us! Climate justice and gender justice in international climate politics

This year, our Not without us! project will continue in collaboration with LIFE e.V., funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. The project activities commenced with attendance at the Subsidiary Body (SB) sessions in June, active participation in the Women and Gender Constituency (WGC) and several interventions delivered at the sessions. Check out the WGC press release demanding increased action and commitments ahead of COP26.

Gender Into Urban Climate Change Initiative

Aksi!, the partner organisations of the project in Indonesia crafted a briefing paper on the nexus of the Covid-19 pandemic and climate crisis in May 2021. The paper describes the general situation of women during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the situation of marginalized women in various sectors, among others women migrant workers, urban farmers, informal workers. It concludes that a pandemic that occurs during climate disasters and climate crises exacerbates the climate impacts on women, particularly the poor women and those living in disaster-prone areas. Government measures to handle the pandemic are mostly gender-blind. Hence, recommendations that consider the nexus between climate and health crisis such as: (1) any climate policy has to consider the pandemic in climate disasters prone areas; (2) climate gender indicators have to include the vulnerability of women in the context of a pandemic; (3) measures to the handling of pandemics must not harm the efforts to address the impacts of climate change and action to women; (4) budget allocations for pandemic handling must not interfere with gender budgeting allocations and other measures for climate resilience, especially for women and children. Learn more here

DIALOGUES - Inclusive DIALOGUES towards an operational concept of energy citizenship to support the Energy Union

This new research project under the EU Horizon 2020 programme revolves around energy citizenship that enables citizens to take a central role in the energy transition. The project will operationalise, contextualize, measure, and support the framework environments, policies and institutions that allow deep, inclusive energy citizenship to emerge. The key focus of DIALOGUES is on co-creating energy citizenship innovations that include the perspectives of groups currently on the margins of the energy transition such as, women, low-income households, energy poor, and ethnic minorities. 

In this project, GenderCC is one of 13 partners from the EU, as well as from Turkey, Norway and Canada, and will be in charge of developing gender approaches and ensuring that gender issues are fully integrated throughout the project. 

Education and Awareness Raising Events To Promote A Global Gender Just Climate Policy

GenderCC has started an educational project within Germany in April 2021. The project called 'Education and awareness raising events to promote a global gender just climate policy' is a nine-month long project of development education and awareness raising. The project aims to sensitize the target groups 'youth/young adults', 'political decision-makers' as well as 'NGOs, activists and one world actors' for the topic of global climate justice and gender-responsive climate protection and adaptation measures in open information events. Some of those events will be held in- person, most of them are currently happening online. Materials such as a briefing paper and an explanatory video on gender and climate will be produced to support these measures.

Publication of Briefing paper on ’Shifting the narratives: climate justice and gender justice’

GenderCC has just published a briefing paper entitled ‘Shifting the narratives: climate justice and gender justice’ a helpful set of principles and practices for writing and talking about gender and climate change. The briefing includes an introduction to gender and climate change issues, an overview of existing narratives, and a set of recommendations for how to effectively cover these topics, including a number of case studies. The briefing is useful for journalists and media outlets looking to expand their coverage of gender and climate change, and climate change activists and organizations who do not typically work on gender issues. You can access and download the paper here

Gender @ UNFCCC

This year the UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies (SB) Sessions took place between 31.05-17.06.2021. Due to COVID-19 the Sessions took place in a virtual format. About 5800 delegates participated in the meeting according to the Secretariat´s counts. Various issues were on the SBSTA and SBI agendas such as matters related to the Adaptation Fund and several issues related to the Paris Agreement, such as common time frames for Nationally Determined Contributions, sources of input for the Global Stocktake, and matters relating to Article 6 (operationalize the market and non-market mechanisms established by the Paris Agreement).  Among the participants, the Women and Gender Constituency actively called for urgency of ensuring that all climate actions meet the promise of Paris by fulfilling human rights, gender equality and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Plenaries and mandated and Presidency-led events, such on the Paris Agreement’s Article 9.5 (ex ante biennial finance communications by developed countries) and on the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage, were livestreamed and recordings remain available online. There were about 80 informal sessions that took place between 31 May and 17 June. They were however open for registered participants only. One thing countries agree on is that considerable work remains to reach agreement on the key issues under consideration at COP 26. Learn more

Badabon Sangho addresses the climate change challenges of women fisher-folk communitities

Badabon Sangho is GenderCC member from Bangladesh. It is a women-led feminist organization  with a  group-based structure. Group members are from fisher-folk, lower caste, widowed, separated, divorced women, religious and indigenous minorities, migrant workers, crab farmers and girls. Members living under the poverty line face hate speech, stigma and climate changes but also depend on natural resources and lands for their livelihoods. Since inception, Badabon Sangho focusses on addressing climate change challenges (i.e. salinity and frequent cyclones) of the women fisher-folk communities at the belt of the Bay of Bengal, Mongla in Bangladesh.

Necessarily, the lives and livelihoods of these women depend on fishing in small canals flowing between the Pashur River and the Sundarbans and selling those fish to Dadan traders at fixed prices. However, whether women will be considered as fisherfolk is a matter of debate from a patriarchal point of view: Will they get fisherwomen cards? Will they be able to form a women fisher-folk association? Some of the questions have been answered in policy, however, not in practice. Women fisher-folk group prioritized three demands: a) access to saline-free water, b) allocation of fisherwomen card and c) allocation of homestead land tenure.

Women of the Arctic´s Chapter on ‘Gender and Environment in the Arctic’ in the Pan-Arctic Report: Gender Equality in the Arctic

In 2020-21, Women of the Arctic, with support from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, led the research behind and writing of the chapter on Gender and Environment in the Arctic in the Pan-Arctic Report: Gender Equality in the Arctic. The chapter provides an overview of the gendered dimensions of issues broadly connected to the Arctic environment, including the climate, oceans, land, biodiversity, natural resources, waste, and pollution. Among other things, this chapter pays attention to variations in how different genders relate to their environment, how they experience changes in that environment, and the gendered impacts of development and environmental change in the Arctic region. Ultimately, the chapter concludes that gender equality is integral for effective, efficient, and equitable environmental protection. Yet all regions of the Arctic exhibit only sporadic engagement with gender and gender analysis, and there is a clear dearth of sex- and gender-disaggregated data across the Circumpolar North. There is also a lack of systematic engagement with gender-based analysis and gendered perspectives within the Arctic Council and across its Working Groups. Check the full report here

Publication of a Chapter on ‘How to make Germany’s climate policy gender-responsive’ by Gotelind Alber, Diana Hummel, Ulrike Röhr, Immanuel Stieß

“This chapter deals with how gender has been taken into consideration in German climate policy, and how we envision the work towards a gender-responsive climate policy. After providing a historical summary of gender considerations in German climate policy, we elaborate on two potential options for integrating gender into climate policy: participatory processes to design climate action programmes, and gender analysis carried out by the institutions in charge of climate policy. For this, and for our analysis and outlook, we rely on our experience of working with the German Government, in particular in advocacy and participatory processes, our long-standing experience in the international climate change process (UNFCCC), and on a recent study on gender and climate change we have been undertaking”. The chapter is part of the book ‘Gender, Intersectionality and Climate Institutions in Industrialised States’ edited by Gunnhildur Lily Magnusdottir and Annica Kronsell. The entire book is openly accessible here

Publications

Women’s Major Group 2021 High Level Political Forum Position Paper

“Sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that promotes the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development: building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda in the context of the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development”. Read more

Gender And Climate Change In The Context Of Covid-19

“2020 was intended to be a pivotal year for the global gender equality agenda and global climate change ambition. It was supposed to be a year to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action and to celebrate the start of the Paris Agreement. Yet, the unexpected and rapid spread of the highly infectious novel coronavirus has set in our paths a mammoth challenge. The ensuing economic slowdown and the postponement of the UN Climate Conference to 2021 threaten to stall the world’s commitments to climate action. However, this is also an opportunity to better understand the links between pandemics such as COVID-19 and climate change and ensure that we rebuild from this crisis inclusively, equitably and sustainably”.  Read more

•    Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) Glasgow - 31 October – 12 November 2021.