Special Edition: Female participation in the UNFCCC

By Renata Koch Alvarenga, Director of EmpoderaClima

With COP25  just around the corner, discussing female participation in international forums such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is crucial, as women have a critical role in advancing climate policy and action. This is true not only at the political level, but also at the local level, considering their knowledge and leadership in sustainable development for their communities.

The international community, for the most part, has recognized that women bring diverse solutions to multiple global challenges, including climate change, due to their unique position and expertise. Specifically, the UNFCCC has made efforts over the years to mainstream gender in its process - gender mainstreaming being considered as "making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres,'' according to a 2016 technical paper by the UN Climate Change Secretariat.

In terms of actual participation of females in country delegations at the annual COPs, the progress has been slow. From 2008 to 2016, the participation percentage has ranged from 30% to 36%, and at COP21 in Paris, where the Paris Agreement was signed, this number decreased to 29%. However, female participation at the UN Climate Change Conferences has been rising in more recent years. At COP24, women represented around 40% of the overall national delegations. 

The Women's Earth and Development Organization (WEDO) has been the main actor tracking this type of data in the global climate negotiations, which culminated in the initiative Gender Climate Tracker. They go as far as mapping the regions that showcase more female participation: women from Eastern and Western Europe, for example, attest to over 45% of overall female participation at the global climate negotiations, while females from Africa and the Asia-Pacific account for approximately 35%. 

There's also an issue with the efforts by countries. Although 64 - of 190 - of the intended Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by countries made some reference to gender, only 15 acknowledge women as vital decision-makers in climate change policy making, as this EmpoderaClima article about gender-just climate policy and the NDCs explains. 

Furthermore, all 64 countries that mention gender and/or women in their Plans are non-Annex I Parties, that is, the developing world, which ends up associating gender only to vulnerability and adaptation, not to leadership and mitigation measures. Consequently, women have also been the minority at regional negotiation blocks of the UNFCCC and national delegations, especially in developing countries and regions (such as the Least Developed Countries group - LDCs).

The initiatives by the UNFCCC and its Parties on gender all lead to a few important achievements by the climate negotiations: the Lima Work Programme on Gender (2014), the Gender Action Plan (2017), which will be introduced below. However, there have been other important advances over the years, such as the Paris Agreement, which includes language on gender equality and female empowerment in its preamble. A thorough history of gender advances in the UNFCCC can be found in the Pocket Guide to Gender Equality under the UNFCCC.

Lima Work Programme on Gender

The Lima Work Programme on Gender was adopted at COP20, in an effort to foster gender balance in the UNFCCC, and to provide capacity building on gender-responsive climate policy at the global level. It was initially adopted for a two-year period, and further extended for three more years at COP22 in Marrakech. 

The Programme called for, among other things, training for women delegates at UNFCCC processes, a technical study by the Secretariat on implementing gender consideration in all climate-related activities, and a new senior gender focal point in the Climate Change Secretariat. 

Gender Action Plan

The Gender Action Plan (GAP) of the UNFCCC focuses on advancing the participation of women at the national and international level of the climate negotiations. It also looks to mainstream gender into climate action in various areas, highlighting the importance of gender equality for effective climate policy and action.  

The GAP was adopted in 2017 at COP23 in Bonn, when the discussion on gender and climate finally evolved to the creation of an action plan to assist in the implementation of decisions related to gender under the Climate Change Convention. 

COP25

COP25 begins very soon, and the gender discussions are a big priority for this COP, presided by Chile and hosted by Spain. Both the Lima Work Programme on Gender and the Gender Action Plan are up for review at COP25, as their extension periods are set to expire in 2019. This calls for expectations that the negotiations in Spain will lead to a new work programme and a new action plan, with a renewal period of up to 5 years. 

The Women and Gender Constituency (WGC) is one of the nine constituencies of the UNFCCC, along with others such as the youth civil society group, YOUNGO. For COP25, the WGC has established its key demands for the 2019 negotiations, which includes delivering on a 5-year Lima Work Programme on Gender with a robust Action Plan - comprehensive, targeted, and resourced, looking to have a renewed programme that has a long-term target. 

These are some of the ambitions advocated by women's groups at the UNFCCC this year, and being articulated by the WGC at COP25. Although female participation has been improving, the gender gap, in all areas of climate policy, is still not closed. 

EmpoderaClima is in Madrid for COP25, and you can follow our Daily Recaps to stay updated on everything about youth, climate, and gender in the climate negotiations, available here.