‘Feminist climate justice’ calls for equal representation at COP 28

During the first week of the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 28, concerns were raised about the lack of gender diversity in the negotiations. The same concerns were also raised following COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2022. And about COP 26 in Glasgow. In fact, in the last 10 years, women’s representation in the COP negotiations has increased only marginally, from 30% to 35%, according to Jemimah Njuki, chief of economic empowerment at UN Women. “Women must be represented. Climate solutions are not going to be effective if they do not include the voices of those that are most affected,” Njuki told the audience at the Devex Climate + event in Dubai. She called for gender-equal outcomes for women and girls, as part of what she dubbed “feminist climate justice.” Representation is just one of the “Four Rs” of feminist climate justice — the other three are recognition, redistribution, and reparation, she said. “We have to recognize the labor, the rights, and the knowledge that women bring, and women in all their diversity — Indigenous women, because we know they are all at the forefront of fighting climate change.” One of the ways in which climate change disproportionately affects women and girls is as a threat multiplier, amplifying many existing gender inequalities. Njuki shared the example of increasingly frequent droughts, meaning that women and girls have to provide for their families — in terms of fetching water or getting fuel. A rise in unpaid care and domestic work by women threatens their livelihoods and their ability to participate in economic activities, she said, adding that gender-based violence is also rising as a result of climate change. “Just in the Horn of Africa ... the last couple of droughts that we have seen have seen a 20% increase in some countries of child marriage,” she said. “Families get pushed to desperation,” meaning that “young girls — some as young as 13 years old — are actually paying the price for climate change.” The feminist climate justice framework also calls for a redistribution of resources. Just 2.4% of climate development assistance targeted gender equality as the “principal” objective in 2018-2019, according to data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. But while there’s a lot of discussion about the redistribution of resources between the global north and the global south, there is not much about the amount going to women — to “Indigenous women's movements that are restoring degraded lands, that are defending their territories, that are restoring ecosystems,” Njuki said. Highlighting the pledges made to the loss and damage fund on the first day of COP 28, she said “We must ask … how much of that is going to women?”