- Formal negotiations
- Finance
- Global review
- Global report
- Digital sequence information
- Harmful subsidies
- Marine biodiversity
- Planning, monitoring, reporting and review
- Article 8(j) implementation
- Biodiversity and climate change
- Links with other bodies
- Around the COP
- Armenian presidency
- Protests
- Lobbying and influence
- Carbon and biodiversity markets
Tracy Kajumba is the director for the Least Developed Countries initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience (LIFE-AR) interim secretariat and a member of the climate change research group at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
I’ve been working on gender equity since I joined the Ugandan civil service over 20 years ago. As a young woman I was never nominated for training even when I was qualified; male counterparts got those opportunities.
I was called a bully for having the guts to apply for a senior management role perceived as a man’s domain. When I reported for my first day, a senior male official offered to change my posting for fear I couldn’t manage the large division I’d been allocated, proposing to transfer me somewhere less busy.
Most professional women will have had experiences like these, which unfortunately are often downplayed or ignored. My stories aren’t from a UN COP climate summit, but they easily could have been. As recently as the past couple of years, women have reported being the targets of very similar prejudice at the UNFCCC’s flagship climate negotiations – in addition to bullying and sexual harassment.
That’s despite 2025 marking 30 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action on women’s rights was adopted – and the existence of myriad initiatives and schemes designed to improve women’s representation at international events like COP.
Weak gender focus at COP29 risks leaving women behind in greener future
These efforts notwithstanding, it’s clear women are dealing with the same challenges today as I faced two decades ago, and others faced in the decades before I entered the workforce.
At COP29, hosts Azerbaijan had an all-male team of 28 before criticism forced them to add 12 women. Only eight of the 78 world leaders who attended were women.
Overall, women made up little more than a third of COP29 delegates, suggesting there are barriers to their participation not just within the UNFCCC process but at national level around the world.
Recent research by the International Institute for Environment and Development bears this out. We surveyed delegates and other COP attendees – men and women – from the Least Developed Countries group (LDCs) to understand these barriers at a level of detail top-line global statistics just can’t provide.
High costs, low expectations
Travel emerged as a huge issue. Attending COP and its preparatory meetings in Bonn is expensive for low-income countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. With limited travel budgets, senior officials get priority. As a result many women – who are often in junior roles – are excluded or must find funding elsewhere.
This year’s Bonn meetings are just around the corner and observers will be watching closely to see whether talk of improving women’s representation is being translated into action.
The divide also raised the question for our survey respondents about whether they felt their participation at COP was meaningful. They noted that women were more likely to occupy logistical, note-taking or report-writing roles while male counterparts engaged more prominently in negotiations.
COP officially lasts two weeks but preparations and post-summit debriefing add another fortnight to the schedule, so this support work can be onerous. Adding to this challenge are social expectations on women not to stay away from their families for too long.
Brazil seeks early deals on two stalled issues at Bonn climate talks
Unsurprisingly, deeply entrenched gender norms and patriarchal views still influence the structuring of jobs and power. Women told us they were frequently considered incapable of managing complex negotiations. One male interviewee said he thought women found COP “hectic”, especially in their high heels, which put them off attending future summits.
As a mother of two and a frequent traveller, I know what it’s like to leave young children behind – and to wish you could bring them with you only to realise there’s no support system to enable that. Mothers told us they faced higher travel costs and that accreditation and visas for their babies were difficult to obtain, often being processed in different countries. There are no childcare services at COP.
Time for a COP creche
So what’s to be done? Quotas and other gender-responsive policies are often counted as a metric of success. But if they’re not actually deployed, they don’t work. While many LDCs have policies that support gender equity, we found their implementation at scale appeared to be weak.
There are some bright spots where LDCs are addressing this problem. Rwanda has a gender monitoring office tracking how policies and laws are put into effect. Mozambique is developing criteria to support female participation with experienced women negotiators mentoring up-and-coming officials, while Sierra Leone is creating a transparent nomination process that builds on its national gender and empowerment act, which stipulates 30% female representation.
UN action on gender and climate faces uphill climb as warming hurts women
It’s important to say these issues affect women globally. IIED supports the LDCs at COP and hosts the interim secretariat for the group’s initiative on climate change adaptation, called LIFE-AR. This partnership enabled our research, which we hope will inform efforts to improve women’s representation worldwide.
Imagine if there was a COP creche where children from around the globe could play and learn about each other, while watching their parents work to secure their future. Simple solutions can coexist with the hard daily grind of challenging power dynamics and patriarchy, while more formal schemes like a mentor system give intentional support to the next generation of negotiators.
COP29 last year was rattled when former leaders declared the negotiations “not fit for purpose” and called for a major rethink. Such large-scale reform will involve painful geopolitical wrangling. There are less complicated changes we can and should implement now that will make UNFCCC summits more relevant and representative for everyone, ensuring COP lives up to the UN’s 2030 goal of “leaving no one behind”.
The post ‘Hectic’ in high heels? Women still face gender hurdles at UN climate talks appeared first on Climate Home News.
‘Hectic’ in high heels? Women still face gender hurdles at UN 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.