Tue 09 November 2021 View all news

Gender, Science & Innovation Day

The UK government announced a £165m commitment to address the dual challenges of gender inequality and climate change, seeing to empower women to take action.

Women form a large majority of the world's poor, often depending on small-scale farming for their livelihoods.

A series of countries made their own commitments to tackle gender inequalities in the context of climate change including:

  • Bolivia committed to promote the leadership of women and girls, especially indigenous, Afro-Bolivian, community and rural women, through their involvement in sustainable development projects and through other measures.
  • Canada promised to ensure that 80% of its $5.3 billion climate investments over the next five years target gender equality outcomes. 
  • Ecuador said it will strengthen leadership, negotiation, and decision-making capacities within women’s organisations working on climate.
  • Germany announced a new Gender Strategy under its International Climate Initiative (IKI) to promote gender-transformative approaches in international climate and biodiversity cooperation.
  • Nigeria expanded on its Implementation Strategy as part of its National Gender and Climate Action Plan. 
  • Sweden announced new measures to embed gender equality in all climate action.
  • The USA sais it will invest at least $14 million of the Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund toward gender-responsive climate programming; plus more than $20 million towards initiatives to increase women’s economic opportunities in the clean energy sector. The country also plans to strengthen action on gender-based violence and the environment, address barriers to women’s land rights, and support women farmers in East Africa to adapt to climate impacts.

The COP official statement said that these announcements help build momentum internationally to drive implementation of the Gender Action Plan agreed at COP25, ahead of the sixty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66) in March 2022 which will focus on gender equality in the context of climate change, the environment and disaster risk reduction. 

 

Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/B-tW6rt1nlk

 


< Back to news list