During the closing session of COP30, the representative of the Holy See – the governing body of the Vatican – was booed. That reaction was triggered by his statement requesting that any mentions of gender should be “understood as grounded on the biological sexual identity that is male and female”.

The comments followed a heated debate that had threatened to derail talks on the new Gender Action Plan (GAP) in Belém, stirring concerns that growing political pressure in the wider world to roll back advances on gender issues had seeped into the UN climate process.

Gender was a hotter-than-usual topic at this COP. Negotiators were tasked with agreeing a new GAP – a document to guide how gender features in climate decisions and action over the next 10 years, including balanced participation in climate talks, ensuring that climate projects consider different gender needs in their implementation, and collecting data that is broken down by gender.

Part of a broader work programme on gender, which was renewed during COP29, work on the GAP started at June’s mid-year talks in Bonn. That produced a text containing 99 brackets, denoting issues to be resolved. As disagreement among parties multiplied in Brazil, the last draft made public during COP30 had 496 brackets, making it a small miracle that a final version of the GAP was approved at the summit.

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The most controversial issue was the definition of gender, which the Holy See, Argentina, Paraguay and Iran wanted to refer to as “biological sex”, reflecting their concerns about trans and non-binary people. One draft version of the text included a footnote added by each of those countries marking their objections. None of them made it into the final decision.

While Russia did not submit its own footnote, Climate Home News understands that it pushed hard to replace the term “gender” with “women and girls” and “men and boys”. During its intervention at the closing plenary, Russia’s delegate said his government works to strengthen the institution of marriage, which it understands as “a relationship between a man and a woman”.

Another thorny issue was “sexual and reproductive health”, a term that did not appear in the final text. The Holy See was among those that fought hard to exclude it. Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro, the head of delegation, said in an interview with Vatican News that tackling this topic was “a diversion from the real issue under discussion”, adding that “the inclusion in the text of sexual and reproductive rights, which include abortion”, is something the city-state could not “in any way accept.”

“Cruel” intrusion into climate debate

Partway through COP30, as the rows over gender surfaced, women’s rights organisations denounced the situation at a press conference.

“We’ve always had fights on the Gender Action Plan… but this is different. This is trying to actually push women back by having this binary definition,” said Mary Robinson, former Irish president who is now a member of the Elders. “It’s so cruel. I mean, it’s actually unbelievable that this would enter into our space.”

Bridget Burns, executive director of the Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO), said it felt like a coordinated backlash – and it wasn’t limited to the gender negotiations.

Argentina and Paraguay also raised objections to definitions of gender in the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) negotiations. But they didn’t get what they wanted there either.

“The outcomes we got in the JTWP decision are the most ambitious from a rights and inclusion perspective ever,” said Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition with Climate Action Network International, noting that the protestations by specific countries on gender would only be added to the UN climate summit’s report. “They didn’t get what they wanted, which was a footnote in each decision.”

Had that happened, it would have posed “a very serious threat to the process”, said Rosemberg. Burns said allowing definitions on what words mean for individual parties to creep into the formal decision texts could have set “a bad precedent”.

Claudia Rubio Giraldo, associate for policy and programmes at WEDO, said that such resistance to human rights language shows how important advocacy is – and advocacy groups should be ready to act when negotiation rooms that were previously “progressive points of discussion” become “battlegrounds” on human rights in climate action.

Nonetheless, noted Burns, this was the first time sexual and reproductive rights had entered a gender draft, albeit in brackets.

And she pointed to a deliverable in the final GAP document that asks governments to submit the findings of national assessments, including on “health, violence against women and girls, and care work in the context of gender and climate change”.

“We’re hopeful that [this] gives us the opportunity for countries who are making progress on this to actually share their solutions,” Burns added.

A GAP without money

On finance, however, campaigners were disappointed with the outcome. They had pushed for women to be given direct access to funding – and for gender to be addressed as part of the climate finance negotiations. Yet, even at a COP where one of the main wins was a tripling of finance for adaptation by 2035, there was little progress on funding for “gender-responsive” work.

Burns described the talks as “a massive failure” on that front. But she pointed to the COP29 decision to renew the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender, which says that the Green Climate Fund, the biggest UN climate fund, should “strengthen the gender-responsiveness of climate finance”, and facilitate access to climate finance for grassroots women’s organisations.

In 2022, they received just 4% of government aid spent on adaptation. On mitigation efforts to reduce emissions, that number dropped to 2%.

Burns said advocacy groups will also push for finance across broader areas like tax, trade and debt to intersect with gender needs and unlock more funds for climate programmes targeted at women.

For now, she said, it is important to ensure COP30’s progress is protected and that the agreement on the GAP in Belém in allows for “focusing on solutions and ways in which we can both enhance climate action and gender equality without having to renegotiate our rights every single year”.

The post “Coordinated backlash”: Activists say COP30 gender spat reflects wider threat appeared first on Climate Home News.

“Coordinated backlash”: Activists say COP30 gender spat reflects wider threat