Calls to Action for a Feminist Climate-Resilient Recovery: Highlights from WOCAN’s Podcast Series 2020
This article forms part of a series from contributors to GenderSmart’s Gender and Climate Investment Working Group. For many, Gender and Climate Investing is a new field, but there is already a lot of great work and experience to share. By showcasing powerful examples from across the investment ecosystem, Working Group contributors are using their voices in the lead up to February’s GenderSmart Investing Summit and beyond to highlight the important role a combined gender and climate lens can play in delivering a just, green economy transition. Through this series, we hope to inspire the adoption of this approach across the financial system.
The current global crisis presents a unique opportunity to put climate resilience at the centre of the conversation around what is important, and how to build a better future for all. The solutions to build resilience to crises are linked to the preservation of our earth’s resources, and the stewardship of these.
Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN) is a women-led international not-for-profit network of over 1350 women and men in 113 countries. These professionals are united behind the mission of advancing women’s empowerment and collective action; enabling women-led organisations at all levels to engage in and benefit from climate change, poverty and food insecurity initiatives within enabling environments.
“Climate Change is a man-made problem in search of a feminist solution”
We advocate for viewing women not as vulnerable victims, but as agents of change who bring solutions to these global challenges. Over two decades, we have become convinced that women’s groups have an immense potential to bring about these changes when given the opportunity to overcome the resource, capacity and time limitations that they often face.
Climate and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) related financing can catalyse and enable women’s empowerment, as well as support activities that strengthen their status and positions in households and communities to improve the effectiveness of climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives.
WOCAN provides training on Gender-integrated Planning, and Reframing Leadership for Gender Equality. It also manages its W+™ Standard, to measure women’s empowerment at the community and project level. In July and August 2020, we produced a podcast series – "10 Solutions for a Feminist Climate- resilient Recovery – featuring ten international thought-leaders who shared their views on how to reimagine and reshape our future from a feminist approach. These ten podcasts present concrete and bold solutions and call for urgent actions.
Highlighted Solutions
1. Apply climate and gender lenses simultaneously to programmes and investments that affect women
The FairClimateFund demonstrates how to develop climate projects using an integrated approach through the provision of not only cookstoves, but also training for women on climate resilience and biodiversity through their Climate Academy and access to micro-credit (Podcast#6)
The Food Council of Lima, Peru, links food systems and gender equality by providing a platform for actors within the food system – a majority of whom are women – to develop a new vision around food that connects nutrition, healthy environments, agro-ecological products and women’s empowerment (Podcast #9).
The Costa Rican government is using incentives to promote nature-based solutions and gender equality at the household level. As part of their gender and REDD strategy, they are developing a gender equality certification for those households that promote gender equality (Podcast #7).
There are also opportunities to foster women’s empowerment and climate action by taking a cross-sectoral approach. This combines multiple measures such as social protection and economic stimulus packages with positive discrimination in favour of women to support local production, and sustainable and inclusive food systems. (Podcast #9).
2. Compensate women’s social and environmental contributions
WOCAN’s W+ Standard provides a way to enable women to be compensated financially for their contributions to climate adaptation and mitigation. The W+ Standard’s benefit sharing mechanism directs money to women at the local level to be used as they see best fit; similarly, the FairClimateFund enables households to benefit from the sale of carbon credits (Podcast #1-#6).
Other mechanisms are needed to make the carbon market more gender-responsive and to create investment vehicles that enable money from large climate funds to reach women’s organisations at the local level. Women must be provided a seat at the table and have decision-making authority during the preparation of national budgets for climate initiatives to ensure that specific funds are allocated to them. (Podcasts #6 and #10)
3. Transparency in impact measurement
Climate projects should use standards that support transparency in evaluating claims of women’s empowerment, such as the W+ Standard and other certification systems (Podcast #2).
Impact investors must be more transparent about their social and environmental impacts and how they are measured, and take a longer investment horizon, favouring impact over short-term returns (Podcast#6).
4. Promote feminist leadership
Feminist leadership amongst both female and male leaders is modelled on processes of consultation, communication and cooperation, mixed with traits of compassion. The promotion of this type of feminist leadership, coupled with increased numbers of women in leadership positions, assures higher levels of women’s meaningful participation in positions where they can influence change. An inspiring example is the Hawaii Feminist Recovery Plan for COVID 19 created by the State Council for Women. Other approaches can include applying quotas where needed and supporting mentoring and exposure to role models to bring more women and more diverse voices to the table, including those of youth and ethnic minority groups. These help craft a sustainable and inclusive future (Podcast #8).
5. Support women’s organisations to build social, economic and climate resilience
Directing more resources to women’s organisations at local, national and global levels is critical to enhance their capacities, to preserve the environment, and tackle climate change while improving the well-being of families and communities. This includes support for strengthening their organisational capacity and leadership at the local level to build self-reliance and resilience, as well as support for regional and global women’s organisations to act as intermediaries (Podcast #4).
6. Invest more in building ‘soft skills’ and social connections
Investing more in education and capacity development, and in the ‘soft skills’ (e.g. abilities to communicate effectively, to manage change, and self-awareness), will lead to more effective outcomes. Two approaches that have proven successful are WOCAN’s use of participatory approaches that connect women across different levels and sectors (Women’s Leadership Circles), and the practice of including men in leadership training and consultation. These have resulted in new relationships that change mindsets and create alliances (Podcast #5).
7. Promote inclusion for institutional transformation and culture change
Organisations engaging in climate resilience must be inclusive of the groups that are affected by their programmes, as clients and beneficiaries to ensure their interests are addressed and to increase effectiveness and reduce risks. These may be categorised by gender, ethnicity, sectors or other identities. Teams may need to build their capacities to remove silos, transcend traditional borders of different disciplines and work in an integrated and connected way. Diversity policies and incorporation of these into monitoring and evaluation systems related to climate projects will be needed to ensure policies are translated into concrete actions and progress is measured (Podcast #3).
GenderSmart is committed to highlighting great work that is underway to address the climate emergency with a climate and gender lens. If you haven't already, please let us know what you are up to, and we'll be sure to amplify it. Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels