- Formal negotiations
- Finance
- Global review
- Global report
- Digital sequence information
- Harmful subsidies
- Marine biodiversity
- Planning, monitoring, reporting and review
- Article 8(j) implementation
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- Links with other bodies
- Around the COP
- Armenian presidency
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- Carbon and biodiversity markets
Nicoline de Haan is director of the CGIAR GENDER Impact Platform.
The centrality of gender to climate action has been recognised by the Azerbaijan presidency of COP29, which assigned November 21, the second-from-last day of the UN climate negotiations, as Gender Day.
However, gender equality should really feature as an urgent and cross-cutting issue from day one because climate change is widening existing gender gaps and severely impacting women’s livelihoods and well-being. Women can be powerful agents of climate action if included in decision-making processes and given access to the right resources.
COP29 Bulletin Day 6: Climate march tamed and gender talks gridlocked
From smallholder farmers to wage labourers, small and medium enterprise owners and even farmer producer organisations, women’s reliance on agriculture and natural resources to make a living renders them more vulnerable to climate shocks and stressors than men within agriculture.
Recent evidence shows that for every 1°C increase in long-term average temperatures, women farmers are losing 24% more of their income than men. Furthermore, climate extremes such as floods and heatwaves are costing women-headed households $53 billion more per year than male-headed households.
Gender equality is especially key to COP29 negotiations given the special focus on climate finance, an area in which women are frequently disadvantaged. Climate finance is disproportionately harder for women to access, more so in low- and middle-income countries, where women urgently need gender-responsive climate adaptation support. So, when it comes to climate negotiations, we must include women from the beginning.
Half of the agrifood workforce
To fulfil the COP29 presidency’s bold vision to turn ambition into action, climate action initiatives need to take into account the needs and contributions of all of the global population.
Across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, women comprise at least 50% of the total workforce in agrifood systems. Yet, within these roles, women face a multitude of issues that hinder their productivity and capabilities for climate adaptation.
These issues include limited access to resources such as land, lack of access to climate information, exclusion from decision-making processes, restricted access to extension services and even uneven labour demands.
Evidence also shows that existing climate-smart agriculture solutions fail to account for these hurdles women face in agrifood systems.
Adaptation Fund head laments “puzzling” lack of pledges at COP29
For example, mobility restrictions on women due to religious and cultural norms in Kyengeza, Uganda, mean that men are twice as likely as women to travel to purchase improved seeds or visit markets, both of which are crucial factors to agricultural productivity and climate adaptation.
Incorporating gender-responsive and collaborative approaches to developing and implementing climate-smart agriculture solutions can ensure that solutions are accessible to and benefit both women and men equitably.
Secondly, more climate finance and private investments should be channelled towards gender-responsive climate adaptation.
Women in agrifood systems often find it hard to access credit and financial services that shield them from climate change and its impacts on livelihoods. As a result, women find themselves exposed and vulnerable to disasters that they could have prepared for if more finance and resources were available to them.
More finance for women
Blended finance approaches that derisk and encourage the channelling of private capital towards climate finance initiatives can offer pathways to ensuring more finance reaches women. As a result, this will help women to build resilience against climate uncertainties and extremes.
For example, the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program’s Business Investment Financing Track (BIFT) is an innovative blended finance innovation that aims to unlock private and climate financing to empower rural communities while advancing climate resilience for those whose livelihoods depend on agriculture and food systems.
The private sector can also promote and support extension services that are easily accessible for women in agrifood systems to enable better adoption of climate-smart agriculture.
Lastly, more targeted investments that respond to women’s needs, strengths and realities should be deployed globally. This can be done by tracking climate-agriculture-gender inequality hotspots to help women build climate resilience.
Hotspots of inequality
Identifying climate-agriculture-gender inequality hotspots – areas where climate threats converge with high numbers of women participating in food systems and significant structural gender inequalities exist – enables investors to allocate limited resources where they are needed most.
For example, in the Sahel region, women pastoralists face high climate risk. Women contribute significantly to livestock-keeping but are less likely to control livestock. In Tombouctou, restrictive norms and gender roles hinder women’s mobility and their access to resources, services and even diversified livelihoods.
Women also face heavy domestic and care workloads, leaving them to deal with the impacts of climate shocks without adequate support.
UN action on gender and climate faces uphill climb as warming hurts women
Increasing gender-targeted climate finance in regions such as these can help advance the development of gender-responsive climate solutions and scale adoption rates for women who are most-at-risk to vulnerabilities resulting from climate shocks.
Climate action initiatives cannot achieve their potential without considerations for gender equality.
With positive indicators towards the inclusion of gender in national climate plans, COP29 presents an opportunity for world leaders to elevate gender responsiveness to a global stage in order to fuel ambition with action.
The post Gender equality cannot be last on the agenda at COP29 climate talks appeared first on Climate Home News.
Gender equality cannot be last on the agenda at COP29 climate talks
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Prepared by a coalition of nine Western Australian union, industry, conservation, and community organisations—including UnionsWA, the Conservation Council WA, and the Smart Energy Council—the WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan provides a practical roadmap to transform Western Australia into a clean energy powerhouse while creating thousands of secure local jobs.
Western Australia stands at a pivotal crossroads: lead the global clean energy economy or watch investment, future industries, and secure jobs go elsewhere. The WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan outlines a transformative blueprint to harness the state’s world-class solar and wind resources. Discover how legislated renewable targets, green iron manufacturing, and a dedicated regional training strategy can generate tens of thousands of local jobs, lower household bills, and build a resilient, net-zero future for all Western Australians.
WA needs a clear and forward-thinking plan if it is going to become a competitive renewable energy powerhouse and maintain its economic strength through the energy transition.
“Western Australians know a faster renewable energy transition will lower their household expenses and prevent harmful climate pollution. But the community also needs clear direction to ensure this transition will create jobs, lower costs and not cause undue environmental harm.
“Here, sectors representing a broad range of interests have laid the groundwork for those outcomes, clearly outlining what is needed to create a future for WA that is good for the environment, for the climate, for workers and for the economy.
Summary
The WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan sets out a strategic roadmap to position Western Australia as a global clean energy superpower while creating thousands of secure local jobs.
The report establishes three overarching goals:
- Creating local employment.
- Maintaining industrial competitiveness.
- Lowering household energy costs
To realize this vision, the framework details actionable measures to follow on from the recent WA Government announcement of a 75% Renewable Energy Target by 2031 for the South West Interconnected System. This includes developing a statewide Renewable Energy Target, coordinating statewide workforce and training pipelines, strategically planning regional infrastructure to safeguard high-value biodiversity and cultural heritage, and ensuring equitable benefit-sharing through household electrification incentives and First Nations equity partnerships. Ultimately, the plan highlights that establishing clear policy and regulatory certainty will unlock lower energy bills, boost power reliability, and secure the state’s global competitiveness in emerging green commodity export markets.
Key Findings
- Statewide Renewable Energy Target and Emissions Reduction Targets: The report calls for a statewide RET and 1.5°C aligned emission reduction targets to remove policy risk, lower capital costs, and attract clean energy investment.
- Transformative Job Creation: Accelerating the transition offers massive employment prospects, including up to 8,800 solar and battery jobs by 2050, as well as 24,000 ongoing and 11,000 construction jobs in a commercial green iron industry.
- Industrial Electrification & Competitiveness: Requiring large gas users to adopt binding electrification timetables and providing concessional financing will protect existing energy-intensive manufacturers from rising energy costs and impending domestic gas shortfalls.
- Green Commodity Export Leadership: Western Australia can build new export markets in green iron, green ammonia, and offshore oil/gas decommissioning by constructing shared common-user infrastructure and setting dedicated Green Commodity Export Targets.
- Coordinated Workforce & Training Pipeline: To address critical skill shortages the plan recommends establishing a WA Clean Energy Jobs Plan 2050, three regional training hubs, and dedicated pathways for female and under-represented apprentices.
- Environmental Safeguards & Community Benefits: Fast-tracked development must be paired with State Planning Policies that avoid high-biodiversity and cultural heritage lands, mandate new data centres to run on additional renewable power, and deliver household electrification rebates and First Nations equity partnerships.
What you can do
WA has an opportunity to lead on sustainable, clean energy and associated industries. You can help by:
- Sending an email to Environment Minister Murray Watt and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, calling on them to reject Browse.
- Sharing this story to help more Australians understand what’s at stake.
- Encouraging your friends and family to take action.
Countries have completed the first “global review” of their progress towards reversing nature loss by 2030 at the COP17 biodiversity talks in Yerevan, Armenia.
The review “notes with deep concern” that, unless action is “rapidly accelerated”, the goal to reverse nature loss and meet a set of 23 targets by 2030 “will not be achieved”.
It “urges” countries to accelerate action, including by “increased ambition in addressing the gaps”.
Much of the discussions in Yerevan focused on how to raise the necessary funds to help developing countries protect nature.
Some major economies pushed to expand the range of nations that are expected to provide finance, with countries agreeing at the end of the two weeks of talks that non-donors that want to contribute can “signal interest” before COP18.
This came after developed countries failed to meet a target to significantly ramp up nature finance over the last few years.
It also came as a landmark fund agreed at COP16 in Colombia to pay communities for the genetic resources derived from nature stands nearly empty two years on.
The Yerevan talks marked the halfway point of the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), the “Paris Agreement for nature” first made in 2022 and due to be achieved by 2030.
During the nearly 12-hour-long final plenary, countries voted for Quito, Ecuador, to host the COP18 nature talks, which will be held in 2028.
Countries managed to sign off on all the major negotiation texts, marking a stark contrast to COP16, which ran so far over time that the Colombian presidency lost “quorum”, forcing talks to resume in Rome months later.
Below, Carbon Brief has detailed analysis of all of the key outcomes from COP17.
Formal negotiations
Finance
Finance, predictably, was at the heart of the discord and deadlock at the Yerevan talks.
At COP17, discussions on finance had to achieve several outcomes.
The first part – to take stock of biodiversity finance mobilised so far to meet the nature deal’s goals – fell under the global review.
As the global report noted, developed countries failed to meet their commitments to raise “at least $20bn a year by 2025” for nature. Delegates pointed to falling aid levels and a sharp 27% decline in environmental funding for the 2026-30 period.
The second part was to agree on how to mobilise resources for the next four years, to meet the GBF’s goals and targets.
Calls to “broaden the contributor base” of who pays to protect nature – and whether that should include emerging economies – became the most fraught element of the talks.
Eventually, countries agreed on what Switzerland described as a “super, mega-delicate” text. It hinged on major “political compromises”, with “no major winner or loser”, according to Kenya.
Per the decision, countries that want to be included on a list of developed country donors can “signal interest” through bilateral, confidential consultations before COP18 and every alternate COP after.
Finally, countries also agreed on criteria to shape and resource a new, permanent financial mechanism to protect nature after 2030.
However, this did not immediately take the form of a new fund under the COP that biodiverse countries have demanded since 2022, deferring the mechanism’s institutional structure to COP18.
Resource mobilisation discussions at the GBF’s halfway mark were supposed to agree on how to close the “biodiversity finance gap” and to “increase resources from all sources” to “at least” $200bn per year by 2030, as set out in target 19 of the GBF.
The talks were largely dominated by a push, led by the JUSCANZ bloc of developed countries, to “broaden the contributor base”. This could see emerging economies, such as Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia and India, being added to the list of countries that pay to protect nature.
Article 20 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) states that developed countries “shall provide new and additional financial resources” to developing countries to meet the costs of implementing measures to protect nature.