With the 2030 deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development
Goals approaching, the fight against climate change intensifies each
year, with governments pumping resources into achieving them.
One of the most critical SDGs is SDG 5, achieving gender equality
and empowering all women and girls, because it will have positive
cascading effects on the achievement of the other SDGs, including
quality education, poverty alleviation, clean energy, reduced
inequalities, good health and wellbeing, zero hunger, clean water and
sanitation, decent work and economic growth and most importantly,
climate action.
SDG5 is central to achieving all SDGs.
Image: UN Women/GenUrb
We are already seeing some of the devastating effects of climate
change, with increasing floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters.
Women are the most vulnerable in these situations, facing the maximum
risk due to their socio-economic status. With 70% living in poverty,
women are disproportionately affected by extreme weather events, loss of
agricultural productivity, destruction of life and property and so on,
all of which stem from the climate crisis.
Women also have the knowledge and understanding of what is needed
to adapt to changing environmental circumstances in order to determine
practical solutions. But women remain a largely untapped resource due to
existing biases, including restricted land rights, lack of access to
training, technology and financial resources, and limited access to
political decision making due to under representation. For practical and
effective climate change mitigation, we must unleash the knowledge and
capability of women.
To find sustainable solutions, it is critical to recognize the
important contributions of women as decision makers, caretakers,
stakeholders, experts and educators across all sectors. Greta Thunberg,
Christina Figueres and Franny Armstrong, to name a few, are already
leading the way in not only climate change advocacy but also in crafting
sustainable, long-term solutions.
What is the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact summit?
It’s an annual meeting featuring top examples of public-private
cooperation and Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies being used to
develop the sustainable development agenda.
It runs alongside the United Nations General Assembly, which this
year features a one-day climate summit. This is timely given rising
public fears – and citizen action – over weather conditions, pollution,
ocean health and dwindling wildlife. It also reflects the understanding
of the growing business case for action.
The UN’s Strategic Development Goals and the Paris Agreement
provide the architecture for resolving many of these challenges. But to
achieve this, we need to change the patterns of production, operation
and consumption.
The World Economic Forum’s work is key, with the summit offering
the opportunity to debate, discuss and engage on these issues at a
global policy level.
According to McKinsey,
in a “full potential” scenario in which women play an identical role in
labour markets to men, as much as $28 trillion, or 26%, could be added
to global annual GDP by 2025. This is more than enough to bridge the
climate finance gap needed to fund the battle against climate change,
which stands at €530 billion ($585 billion) per year by 2020 and €810
billion ($894 billion) by 2030. Just increasing the participation of
women in the labour force will sufficiently increase the world's GDP for
financing sustainable development.
One of the most potent tools for increasing the effectiveness of
women in climate change mitigation is renewable energy, which can help
transform the lives of women by improving their health, providing them
with better livelihood prospects, improving their education
opportunities and more. In fact, it offers women many entrepreneurial
avenues for further deployment of renewable energy, which in turn
mitigates carbon emissions.
And rural women will be the primary beneficiaries. Looking at examples such as Solar Sister
in Africa, renewable energy increases women’s relevance in society,
shields them from harmful health effects of indoor pollution (through
burning of biomass) and makes them agents of climate change mitigation
through their involvement in renewable energy deployment.
The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2013
found “a nation’s competitiveness in the long term depends
significantly on whether and how it educates and utilizes its women” and
whether they have “the same rights, responsibilities and opportunities
as men.”
As elucidated by a position paper by UN Women in 2015, “women’s
empowerment and gender equality have a catalytic effect on the
achievement of human development, good governance, sustained peace, and
harmonious dynamics between the environment and human populations”.
What is the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact summit?
It’s an annual meeting featuring top examples of public-private
cooperation and Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies being used to
develop the sustainable development agenda.
It runs alongside the United Nations General Assembly, which this
year features a one-day climate summit. This is timely given rising
public fears – and citizen action – over weather conditions, pollution,
ocean health and dwindling wildlife. It also reflects the understanding
of the growing business case for action.
The UN’s Strategic Development Goals and the Paris Agreement
provide the architecture for resolving many of these challenges. But to
achieve this, we need to change the patterns of production, operation
and consumption.
The World Economic Forum’s work is key, with the summit offering
the opportunity to debate, discuss and engage on these issues at a
global policy level.
At the national and sub-national level, effective policies,
projects and programmes for gender equality must be crafted to ensure
equal space and resources for women and men to participate in climate
change decision making. There must be investments in multi-stakeholder,
multi-sectoral and participatory Climate Change Gender Action Plans to
integrate gender-related concerns and build on the capabilities, unique
knowledge and perspectives of women, to not only build their climate
resilience but also make them active agents of mitigation. Climate
finance should be made available to men and to women to share the mutual
benefits, rather than exacerbating existing inequities.
The endeavour to protect the Earth and survive in the
Anthropocene stage requires a collective effort, which, as the Agenda
2030 motto says, cannot “leave anyone behind”. Gender equality is a
prerequisite, and the new world order must include women leading the
way, capitalizing on their caregiving, educating and nurturing selves.
As Neri Oxman said: “It demands of us for the first time, that we
mother, nature.”
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