Diana Kibuuka
Uganda’s United Nations Gender Negotiator from the Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development and also Gender Coordinator of the Least Developed Countries, Winifred Masiko says counties need financial support, if they are to effectively implement activities of the Climate Change Gender Action Plans – (ccGAPs)
Speaking during the ongoing COP28in Dubai – UAE at a Gender and Climate change side event, that aimed at getting reports from different countries and making plans for the next Climate Change
Gender Action Plan five years, Masiko said much as some objectives have been achieved in the last Five year, on top of drawing closer the deadline to have the 2024 work plan in place before June, financial support is very crucial to run the Climate Change Gender Action plans.
“In the last Fiver we had five priority areas, gender responsive actions, three was adherence monitoring and reporting component there was the gender balance in the delegations most of the activities were done, we have really increased advocacy around gender and climate change, ……
and even when you look at the side events that gender has come up strongly. The only challenge we had was that we didn’t get any specific funding to implement the Gender Action Plan, so many especially poor countries have not been able to do their activities that are stipulated, that’s why we think the new Gender Action plan should come up with a financial component showing us how we are going to finance those activities so that they can cascade down to the grass
root” Explains Masiko.
The Climate Change Gender Action Plans (ccGAPs) are built on a country’s National Development and Climate Change Policy and thy are meant to identify gender-specific issues in each priority sector.
A climate change Gender Action Plan was adopted during the COP23 in November 2017 and was hailed as a welcome step to support the formal and holistic implementation of gender-related decisions and mandates from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, including main streaming gender across the Paris Agreement.
Gender-responsive climate finance is more effective – UNDP
According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Gender equality is a fundamental human right – it is also ‘smart economics’. An increasing body of evidence shows that gender equality and women’s empowerment would yield greater returns to economic growth and, more broadly, to sustainable development.
Therefore, incorporating gender awareness and gender criteria into climate financing mechanisms and strategies would likewise constitute smart climate finance. Nevertheless, women do not have easy or adequate access to funds to cover weather-related losses or to avail themselves of adaptation technologies.
The reasons for this range from cultural and social barriers in education, political participation and decision-making processes to legal restrictions on access to capital, markets and land ownership.6 To illustrate, 9 in 10 countries in the world currently have at least one law impeding women’s economic opportunities,7 including access to credit, and only in two countries in the world does the share of women in parliament match their share in the population. Link: https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/publication /UNDP%20Gender%20and%20Climate%20Finance%20Policy%20Brief%205-WEB.pdf