Women and gender constiuency statement

Earlier this year, gender and climate change campaigners secured recognition of a Women and Gender constituency by the UNFCCC secretariat. This was a great step in recognising the importance of gender issues in the climate change debate, and allows some practical advantages at the negotiations, including the possibility of making interventions in the proceedings.

Today Andrea Guzman of Bolivia made the following statement on behalf of GenderCC – Women for Climate Justice

Chair, thank you for giving us the opportunity to address the floor on such a historical occasion. My name is Andrea Guzman and I am speaking on behalf of GenderCC and the Women and Gender Constituency.

I come from the Altiplano region in Bolivia, 3,500 meter above sea level, where I work with peasant women’s groups who tend their land, care for their cattle and do handcrafts work. These women are already facing climate change problems and are coping with them. For instance: the need to fight exotic plants which are invading the area due to climate change and are harming the people, their crops and their animals. While women have to find solutions for such problems, it is disappointing to know that the countries most responsible for the climate crisis are still seeking new mechanisms to avoid real action to cut their emissions.

At this stage, it is not only important but it is absolutely necessary to recognize the central role that women play in addressing climate change and therefore include their knowledge, expertise and wisdom as intrinsic requisites for any adaptation, mitigation, technology sharing, and capacity building activities.

As the name states, a shared vision should be shared by 100 per cent of the world population! Not only by 10 or 50 per cent. If we want to have a truly shared vision, we cannot leave out half of the world’s population: women and their vision. Therefore, we call for the Shared Vision to include that:

The full integration of gender perspectives is essential to effective action on all aspects of climate change, including adaptation, mitigation, technology sharing, financing, and capacity building. The advancement of women, their leadership and meaningful participation, and their engagement as equal stakeholders in all climate related processes and implementation must be guaranteed.

Chair, distinguished delegates, without mentioning women and gender, the Shared Vision would be weak and critically flawed.
We demand climate justice.
Climate justice means: respect for Mother Earth;
Climate justice means gender justice.

Thank you.