GenderCC Newsletter

Our current project Gender Into Urban Climate Change Initiative (GUCCI) has now been running for one year! Our partners from Aksi!/Solidaritas Perempuan (Indonesia), GenderCC Southern Africa (South Africa) and All India Women's Conference (AIWC) have produced first results and have successfully expanded their contacts to the pilot cities' administrations. Based on the newly developed GAMMA methodology (Gender Assessment and Monitoring of Mitigation and Adaptation) all partners conducted interviews with various stakeholders working on climate and gender related issues in the respective cities. Based on the interviews and a gender screening of the cities' climate policies an assessment report will be published this year which will shed light on the most urgent fields for action. Our partner organisations are also busy reaching out to local NGOs and grassroots women in order to work with them on enhancing their capacities for taking action in local decision-making. In the past months two important meetings were held. In January the final national inception workshop hosted by AIWC kicked-off their activities under the GUCCI project in India and introduced the project to local stakeholders. In April the second international meeting took place for which all members of the project team met in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The meeting aimed at sharing experiences made when conducting the interviews with local stakeholders and reaching out to the cities' administrations. It became apparent that even though many cities already developed climate action programmes and strategies, the implementation is largely lacking behind. Gender has so far not systematically been taken into account in any of the pilot cities' climate policies, although some of them have gender equality departments. After the interviews, most pilot cities' administrations expressed their interest towards integrating gender in their climate-related activities and were interested in receiving recommendations. The meeting further helped to jointly develop ideas for local projects and campaigns that can be used as showcases of gender just-climate action in the cities. The international meetings play a crucial role in the project as they offer space for peer-review of the partners' national work, for mutual exchange and transnational learning experiences. After two international meetings the mutual trust between all partners could be greatly enhanced. The meeting ended with a visit together with YAKKUM Emergency Unit to the mountainous region of central Java to learn about community-based water management and aquaculture activities organised by women’s groups. The trip was a great experience for exchanging gender-just solutions between rural and urban areas. A toolkit for using the GAMMA methodology will be available at the end of this year. If you have questions or would like to get to know more about gender-just urban climate policies, do not hesitate to get in touch with our International Secretariat. Learn more about our past activities and keep up-to-date with the GUCCI project here.