On behalf of the constituency and our feminist network, we have written to the Presidency of COP30 to bring forward clear, urgent, and feminist expectations at this decisive moment for global climate action. The letter was signed by 197 feminist organisations, activists and allies.
Gender justice must be placed at the heart of the COP30 negotiations. Importantly, we call on the Presidency’s leadership, as mandated, to lead an inclusive and transparent process towards the development and adoption of a transformative and ambitious Gender Action Plan (GAP) following the adoption of the 10-year Enhanced Lima Work Programme on gender at COP29. Now is the time to move beyond rhetoric and deliver real structural change and implement climate actions that center the human rights, agency, and leadership of women and girls in all their diversity.
The climate crisis is fueled by entrenched systems of exploitation, extraction, and inequality that concentrate power and resources in the hands of a privileged few. Women, girls, and gender-diverse people, particularly those facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination in frontline communities, bear the disproportionate brunt of its impacts. Yet, they are systematically pushed to the margins of power, with the least access to and control over resource, decision-making spaces, and planning and implementation capacity, further deepening their vulnerability.
The new Gender Action Plan (GAP) must confront gendered power relations at all levels and dismantle the structural barriers that have excluded, marginalized and discriminated against women in all diversity, particularly those from the Global South. This demands bold leadership, concrete commitments, the allocation of and direct access to dedicated resources, robust accountability and monitoring mechanisms, and the full, equal, and meaningful participation of women and gender-diverse people at all levels. It also requires the integration of gender-responsive approaches across all climate workstreams to ensure systemic, transformative change. The COP30 Gender Action Plan must be intersectional, inclusive, measurable, human-rights based, responding to communities’ needs and cohesive across all areas of climate action, and adequately funded.
The COP30 Presidency, carry both the power and the responsibility to ensure that gender just climate action is not simply acknowledged, but actively prioritized, resourced, and operationalized at every step. We, the undersigned organizations, stand ready to engage fully and constructively in this process, but we do not come as supplicants. We come as rights-holders, demanding that our aspirations, needs, voices, and leadership be centered and respected in the fight for climate justice.
Read the full letter here.
Read our resommendations and checklist for a gender responsive COP space here.