I have tried to follow discussions about gender balance at COP.\u00a0 I wondered whether attention to this issue was merely symbolic politics, but I discovered that there are some interesting considerations here.\u00a0 My former student was a negotiator for the State Department the first year there there were sessions on gender balance at COP (Warsaw, COP19); the goals on Gender balance and women’s participation were adopted in Doha in COP18 (2012) and is sometimes referred to as the “Doha Miracle,” called this because Christiana Figueres used her position to help get the issue un-tabled and passed at the COP (once a measure has been tabled, it is extremely rare for it to be un-tabled at the same COP, but apparently Figueres told the measure’s supporters that if she saw enough support on the floor, she could help.\u00a0 So the Doha measure committed the parties to action on gender balance in climate policy.\u00a0 At COP 21 (Paris), only 31% of the delegates were women, though more are here at COP 22.\u00a0 Since women are overrepresented among the world’s poor, this was termed immoral by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland (1990-1997), former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), and Chair of the Board of the Mary Robinson Foundation.\u00a0 Ms. Robinson spoke at the panel launching The Full View, 2nd edition.<\/p>\n
The women and gender constituency at COP issued a series of demands<\/a> in Marrakesh to promote human rights, justice, and a sustainable future for all.\u00a0 This includes a demand for governmental commitment to extending and enhancing activities under the Lima Work Programme on Gender<\/a> (COP-20).<\/p>\n After Mary Robinson spoke, there was an interesting panel on “Improving Women’s Participation in the UNFCCC Process,” Participants emphasized the importance of gender-responsive climate policy in addition to gender balance (which SBI has apparently passed, meaning it will become part of the COP22 agreement).\u00a0 There is now a Women Delegates’ Fund, which has helped women come to the conference–some nations have no funds for external travel.\u00a0 So this fund can increase the voices of women.\u00a0 But how do women assure that their presence is effective?\u00a0 When they sit on various COP boards (CDM, where they constitute only 10%, CTCN 6%, Finance 35%, or Joint Implementation and Compliance 35% for some examples), are women getting the training in technical capacity and\/or leadership skills so that they can be effective?\u00a0 When women come to COP, networking among women is also essential to effective participation and leadership.<\/p>\n How, too, do we get women’s voices, especially from the grassroots, e.g., from civil society organizations, heard, and these same people involved.\u00a0 What ARE\u00a0 gender responsive climates and actions?\u00a0 Agnes Leina, Founder and Executive Director of an indigenous community group of pastoralists in northern Kenya, talked about how important it was to get grassroots women to DESIGN the table and then participate at the table.\u00a0 Indigenous knowledge should not be ignored.\u00a0 She pointed to Article 11 of the Paris Agreement which speaks about capacity building, and said:\u00a0 “I live to build capacity.”\u00a0 She wanted to build the capacity of the people to come to COP to talk for themselves.\u00a0 They need to do this because, for example the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) includes taking land for conservation (possibly for wind turbines)–but the rights of people who live there matter and they must be consulted.\u00a0 Will the villages nearby get any of the electricity so generated?\u00a0 The UNFCCC makes recommendations but they don’t consult the people on the ground.<\/p>\n Only 1\/3 of current nationally-determined contributions mention gender, and then only in a passive fashion.\u00a0 The panelists indicated that they were still sort of just counting women when handing out adaptation money–not changing practices.\u00a0 Quotas were seen as helpful:\u00a0 it needs to become completely normal to work with quotas, creating full participation from the start.\u00a0 Panelists pointed out the strong gender damage environmental policies have.<\/p>\n The theme that consultation is not nearly wide enough was a common one at COP.\u00a0 Women were demanding more serious incorporation and consultation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have tried to follow discussions about gender balance at COP.\u00a0 I wondered whether attention to this issue was merely symbolic politics, but I discovered that there are some interesting considerations here.\u00a0 My former student was a negotiator for the State Department the first year there there were sessions on gender balance at COP (Warsaw, … Continue reading Gender balance at COP – more than just bean counting<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345"}],"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\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":347,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}