Gender activities leading up to COP17 in Durban

SB34 Meeting, June 2011 in Bonn

Submission on the Green Climate Fund
During the first days of the conference, GenderCC, in cooperation with the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation, WECF, WEDO and others, made a submission to the Transitional Committee on how to include gender considerations in the Committee’s work to design the Green Climate Fund.

Side Event: "Financing gender sensitive adaptation in developing countries: problems and prospects"
Speakers at this side event hosted by GenderCC were Sharmind Neelormi from Bangladesh, GenderCC’s Focal Point for Asia, Dr. Uddin Ahmed from the Center for Global Change (CGC) in Bangladesh, and Rachel Burger from Practical Action, UK.

Side Event: "Women and Climate Finance: Past Experiences Inspiring Future Funds" hosted by WEDO

Gotelind Alber, Focal Point of the Women and Gender Constituency gave a presentation at an SBI in-session workshop to further develop ways to enhance the engagement of observer organizations. She proposed, among others, to establish a Gender Advisory Group to respond to the need for more gender expertise in the process.
The presentation is available for download .

Interventions
Various interventions were held by members of the Women and Gender Constituency - during the LCA opening session and during the SBI and SBSTA closing sessions.
In the SBI intervention Rachel Harris from WEDO addressed the need for integrating gender into national communications of developing countries.
In her SBSTA intervention, Ulrike Röhr from LIFE e.V. called for a paradigm shift in REDD, in putting forest people in the centre of efforts rather than counting tons of carbon. Read the intervention .
Further events included a workshop on gender and mitigation organised by the German Development Agency GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit).
After an overview of the practical experiences in the field of gender and mitigation, a keynote statement was given by Ulrike Röhr, representing GenderCC, addressing the challenges, ideas and opportunities of mainstreaming gender into mitigation processes.


AWG-KP16/AWG-LCA14, April 2011 in Bangkok

Interventions on behalf of the Women and Gender Constituency
Sharmind Neelormi (GenderCC) was supposed to address adaptation in her intervention in the opening AWG-LCA plenary. Unfortunately, the plenary didn't take place until the very last evening of the talks and civil society was not allowed to submit interventions anymore.
Nina Somera (GenderCC) was able to hold the first intervention on behalf of the Women and Gender Constituency at the AWG-KP plenary. She demanded improvement in the consideration of gender within the AWG KP process through the establishment of an advanced differentiated database to demonstrate empirically the differences between men and women regarding climate change. In addition, she sees the need to train policymakers properly on the links between gender, vulnerability and solutions for climate change such as decentralized energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions. Finally, parties need to assure that women represent 50% in all assessment committees and boards of funding mechanisms.

Press release: Women are more vulnerable but neglected in climate talks
Women leaders from various social movements and civil society organizations from across the world sounded a warning at the direction of the United Nations climate negotiations in Durban. In a press conference chaired by the Thai Working Group on Climate Justice, Wardarina from the Jubilee South-Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development, Anne Maina of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance and Meena Raman from Friends of the Earth International said women are more harshly affected by the climate crisis.
Read the press release by GenderCC


Submission to the UNFCCC AWG-LCA: Views on New Market-based Mechanism

In February 2011, Focus on the Global South made a submission on new market-based mechanisms (Decision -/CP.16, paragraphs 80 – 82) on behalf of a number of other organisations, among them GenderCC.
In the submission, the organizations take a critical view at the performance of the market-based mechanisms established under the UNFCCC so far and present their concerns with sectoral approaches, as they appear to be gaining interest among parties.
The conclusion of the organizations is that the precautionary principle and experience from the CDM together suggest that any baseline-and-credit based market mechanisms must be rejected unless – which is highly improbable – credible efforts are made to resolve the problems outlined in the submission. The foremost mitigation objective of any future climate regime must be the support of the decarbonisation of developed countries’ economies and support for low-carbon development of developing countries. Any mechanisms under such a regime, including any market-based mechanisms, must be thoroughly scrutinised to assess whether they support rather than weaken or neutralise these main mitigation objectives.