{"id":201,"date":"2015-12-08T16:17:32","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T16:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop21\/?p=201"},"modified":"2022-03-09T21:39:20","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T21:39:20","slug":"gender-day-at-cop21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/2015\/12\/08\/gender-day-at-cop21\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender Day at COP21"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today was Gender Day at COP21, and given the importance of the day, we attended a fascinating panel on the issue of gender and climate change \u2013 <i>Experiences from grassroots: Why we need Gender Responsive Climate Finance <\/i>\u2013 in the Netherlands\u2019 government pavilion. \u00a0This panel demonstrated the importance of side events that bring together both officials (be they from governments or multilateral institutions) and non-governmental organizations and grassroots movement leaders. \u00a0In this case, the panel included a dialogue between the NGO representatives from the Central American Women\u2019s Fund, the Global Greengrants Fund, The Samdhana Institute, and AKSI! Indonesia, and a Board member from the <a href=\"http:\/\/unfccc.int\/cooperation_and_support\/financial_mechanism\/green_climate_fund\/items\/5869.php\">Green Climate Fund<\/a>, to which hopes are pinned for climate adaptation and green economy funds in the poor countries.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This was such a rich panel that it is difficult to do it justice in a blog post. \u00a0While the discussion presented hopeful prospects for the future of climate finance, some of the panelists and members of the audience were clearly discouraged by the immense amount of work left to do in this area.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>On the upside, the Green Climate Fund (GCF), as the Board member stressed, is the first multilateral financing institution to incorporate gender into its mission and policies from the start. \u00a0As GCF documentation indicates: \u00a0\u201c<i>The Fund will strive to maximize the impact of its funding for adaptation and mitigation, and seek a balance between the two, while promoting environmental, social, economic and development co-benefits and taking a gender sensitive approach.\u201d<\/i> \u00a0The potential for the GCF to support all sorts of organizations working to improve the lives of women across the world is huge.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>However, the GCF\u2019s funding mechanism offers some challenges to non-governmental organizations. \u00a0To simplify a complex process, institutions must be accredited to receive funds from the GCF. \u00a0Non-accredited institutions can apply for funds, but need to work with accredited institutions. \u00a0Things get more complicated, however, because the GCF works through Nationally Designated Authorities (NDAs), which it calls the \u201cinterface\u201d between the country and the Fund. \u00a0The NDAs are meant to align the distributed resources of the GCF with national objectives and priorities. \u00a0Even more, applications of accreditation to the GCF need to have evidence of nomination from the NDA for the country in which the project is to take place. \u00a0And, projects submitted for funding to the GCF need a \u201cletter of no objection\u201d from the country\u2019s NDA for the country in which the project is to take place. \u00a0But, NDAs are political institutions that don\u2019t necessarily have the same priorities around gender as the GCF. \u00a0These difficulties can easily pose an unwelcome barrier between the GCF\u2019s funds and their ultimate intended recipients, vulnerable communities that need help.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, the GCF process poses significant capacity challenges for small grassroots organizations. \u00a0Panelists from these groups cited the large amount of time and resources needed to prepare documentation for and file applications, which must be completely in English, a significant barrier in many developing countries. These \u2018costs to entry\u2019 make the fund less friendly to small scale grassroots projects, which often are led by women. They suggested additional advising and support from the GCF could support small-scale projects.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The GCF appears dedicated to integrating gender as an integral dimension of its operations, but as always, the devil will be in the implementation.<\/p>\n<p>-Anita Desai, Stephen O&#8217;Hanlon, Ayse Kaya<\/p>\n<p><em>Follow us throughout the week on Twitter (@SwarthmoreCOP21) and Snapchat (SwarthmoreCOP21) to get real-time updates.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today was Gender Day at COP21, and given the importance of the day, we attended a fascinating panel on the issue of gender and climate change \u2013 Experiences from grassroots: Why we need Gender Responsive Climate Finance \u2013 in the Netherlands\u2019 government pavilion. \u00a0This panel demonstrated the importance of side events that bring together both &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/2015\/12\/08\/gender-day-at-cop21\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Gender Day at COP21<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}