Gender, Equitable Representation, Transparency

2 December 2010

Negotiations have started off strong this week on the establishment of a global climate fund and associated governance arrangements.
There are high hopes for text to be agreed here in Cancun, but a fair and equitable fund must have principles of gender equality at its core.
Women are on the front-lines of the climate crisis. When natural disasters strike, they hit poor communities first and worst. Since women make up an estimated 70% of those living below the poverty line, they are most likely to bear the heaviest burdens.
They who regularly do the household work, cultivate the crops, collect the water and gather the fuel, are the most affected by climate change.
But it should also be understood that women are vital to building resilience in poor communities. As Bangladesh noted in Tianjin, smallholder women farmers know more about adaptation than those negotiating their very future.
Decades of donor aid flows and humanitarian programming provide substantial evidence of the need to address gender-differentiated realities and priorities in the management and disbursement of funds. The new global climate fund must learn from this experience. The new fund must be informed by principles of gender equality.
The composition of the fund’s executive board must be gender-balanced, and women should be at the heart of its funding priorities. While including women on the board will not guarantee that the fund responds to the needs of both poor women and men, achieving greater gender parity within the decision-making structure is a first step.
ECO also believes the fund’s governance principles should call on countries to prioritize the most vulnerable populations, including women, in their proposals and to demonstrate a genuinely inclusive and participatory process for planning as well as future implementation and monitoring. These elements are important not only for gender equality but also for overall transparency and accountability to those most vulnerable.
No existing global climate fund has yet ensured equitable gender representation in its governance structures. This trend must be reversed to ensure women benefit from, and are not harmed by, future climate finance. It’s time for negotiators to bring gender to the fund’s agenda.