A focus on equality and gender has to be an integral part of green investments and policy actions, not an addition or afterthought. EBRD write about their work to integrate gender across a range of programmes over the last year, providing financing, policy dialogue and technical assistance.

EIB’s Moa Westman outlines four key gender-responsive climate actions, which can strengthen climate and environmental outcomes and, often, are also a business and market opportunity. They help expand the customer base, enhance customer satisfaction, improve financial and business performance, and attract more investments from impact investors.

Governments and the international development community now have a once in a generation opportunity to prioritize clean energy investments in recovery plans and stimulus packages, writes Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All (SEforAll) and Co-Chair of UN-Energy.

The modernisation of agribusiness value chains must take a gender-progressive approach, which requires a shift in the investment landscape to better integrate gender, from capitalising women-led companies to ensuring women farmers are empowered across the value chain.

Just as the crises of a lack of access to clean water and sanitation and of gender inequality compound each other, the solutions are symbiotic. Women are the key to solving the water crisis, and the co-authors of this article have come together as three voices from the philanthropic and impact investing communities to advocate for increased investment in, and representation of, women.

In July and August 2020, WOCAN 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, summarised here.

This article is part of a series from contributors to GenderSmart’s Gender and Climate Investment Working Group. For most, Gender and Climate Investing is a new field, but there is already a lot of great work underway. 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.

Increasingly, we see how racial injustice intersects with gender and class injustice to create communities of people who are members of multiple disadvantaged communities. Any programme that targets injustice in one community – women, for example – is significantly more effective if it takes an intersectional approach. What implications does this have for gender and climate impact investment?

If we don’t start taking an integrated approach to gender and climate investment, this moment in history won’t just be remembered for COVID-19: it might be remembered as the year we lost our planet.