COP27: WGC Demands for a Gender and Climate Just World

By Lindsay Bidga

As feminists, gender equality and women’s rights advocates from around the world—led by and accountable to the demands of frontlines, Indigenous and grassroots leaders—members of the Women and Gender Constituency have outlined below our key demands for the outcomes of COP27.

As always, we uphold that there can be no climate justice without gender justice and the fulfillment of human rights. Evidence and experience show that women, girls, and gender-expansive people are among those most affected by climate change and environmental crises. And we know that gender-responsive climate action is more effective. Women, girls, and other marginalized communities have unique knowledge and solutions toward adapting to changing environmental conditions and moving toward sustainability.

First and foremost, COP27 is a critical moment for African leadership, and specifically African feminist leadership. As such, the WGC lifts up and heeds the key demands outlined in the recently launched brief by our siblings in the African Feminist Taskforce: Standing in our Power: African Women’s and Girls’ Demands for COP27. As the WGC, we bolster these regional demands and with a global perspective, building on several years of collective advocacy.

>> DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT HERE:
English | Spanish | French | Arabic <<

We call on the following to drive outcomes at COP27:

1) Ensure the full and inclusive participation of women—in all their diversity—across all climate action and advance implementation of the gender action plan (GAP) via its mid-term review.

2) Recognize, redress and compensate for loss and damage—the immediate and unequal climate-related destruction that is occurring beyond any attempts at adaptation—by recognizing historical responsibilities and ecological debt of rich and industrialized countries and centering the most marginalized people and communities.

3) Deliver on climate finance as a matter of climate, social and gender justice. This includes achieving, at minimum, the US$100 billion per year goal; ensuring finance is gender-responsive, and that the proportion of grants-based funding for adaptation is significantly increased; and providing new, additional funds for loss and damage.

4) Dismantle false solutions to climate change—particularly the emphasis on net zero, carbon trading and offsets, and Nature-based Solutions (NbS)—in the climate and biodiversity arenas.

5) Advance a just and equitable energy transition, shifting from a fossil-fuel based economy to a low- carbon and renewable energy system that upholds women’s human rights and advances social and environmental justice.

6) Invest in resilient, gender-transformative, climate justice education.

7) Apply a social-justice framework and a human rights based approach to climate action that includes the full range of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).

8) Fulfill commitments to gender equality and ecosystem integrity via the full implementation and realization of sustainable development and biodiversity goals.

Download the full demands report (EN).