UNFCCC: A Feminist Perspective

1Introduction

Climate governance within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) started thirty years ago with a focus upon mitigation and the associated international legal issues of determining responsibility and liability for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.¹ The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 reflects the knowledges and perspectives valued by the regime at that time, namely biophysical knowledge and economic rationalism. As such, the early development of the UNFCCC was largely influenced by a narrow set of voices and perspectives which prioritised measuring and reporting the volume of emissions in the atmosphere and calculating the costs associated with reducing those emissions. This problematisation of climate change meant that many knowledges, voices and perspectives were side-lined within early UNFCCC instruments and decisions.² As Sherilyn McGregor rhetorically remarked:

‘Does it matter that the definition of climate change as an existential threat, the research being done, and solutions being devised, rest principally in the hands of an elite group of mainly male, mainly white European and Anglo-American scientists from the affluent West?’³

In year 2010, the Cancun Conference of Parties (COP) Agreement brought some change to the UNFCCC by elevating discussions around adaptation, which began to broaden the types of knowledges and perspectives valued by the UNFCCC, eventually leading to inclusion of climate justice and human rights language within the Paris Agreement.⁴ The reframing of climate change as a justice and human rights issue allows for different voices and knowledges to inform the development of UNFCCC policies. This expansion of voices on climate policy included an acknowledgement that environmental change, including climate change, is gendered. Recognition of gender is largely limited to adaptation policy, meaning that the gendered impacts of mitigation policies and the troubled loss and damage agenda still require more feminist scrutiny.

2Insights from Feminist Theory for Climate Regulation

Intersectional theory demonstrates that a range of social factors influence how an individual lives their life and their ability to respond to and recover from changing environmental, social and economic conditions.⁵ As Katharine K. Wilkinson states as ‘The climate crisis is not gender neutral. It grows out of a patriarchal system that is also entangled with racism and white supremacy and extractive capitalism. The unequal impacts of climate change are making it harder to achieve a gender-equal world’.⁶

Gender is one significant factor determining an individual’s experience, but race, class, geographical location, marital status, sexuality, age and ability also significantly influence how an individual will experience a changing climate, making an intersectional lens crucial when developing climate policy.⁷ Gender remains a critical variable to consider within climate policy as social and cultural norms determine gender power relationships, sexual identity, and roles and responsibilities at the household and community levels. In many societies, these social and cultural norms mean that the ability of women and girls to respond and adapt to climate change is limited.⁸ In patriarchal societies, women are often excluded and marginalised in decision-making processes, preventing them from meaningfully contributing to climate-sensitive responsive planning, policy-making, and action at international and national levels.⁹

While gender equity may be accepted as a global goal, the lived reality for many women and girls is that cultural and traditional understandings of gender at the local level differ from these global conceptions.¹⁰ Climate change is accelerating gender inequality with research showing that rates of gender-based violence increase during disasters, pandemics and conflicts, with climate extremes amplifying inequalities, vulnerabilities and negative gender norms.¹¹ The UNFCCC does not adequately recognise the role of climate change in exacerbating gender-based violence against women,¹² provide any guidance on ensuring reproductive rights during climate change,¹³ or recognise gendered health impacts arising as a result of climate change.¹⁴

This article explores how the UNFCCC frames the gender issues, finding that the regime is silent on any real guidance for addressing gendered experiences of climate change. It finds that that the language of ‘gender balance’ has largely dominated as the key gender strategy within the regime. ‘Gender balance’ within the UNFCCC is largely seen as a numbers problem, with the solution centred on increasing the number of (usually elite) women present at COP negotiations and working on regime bodies, which Hilary Charlesworth has termed the ‘add women and stir’ approach to gender mainstreaming.¹⁵ While increasing gendered representation at the COP is a worthy goal, this approach is very limited and largely benefits women already in positions of power and deflects attention away from feminist inspired reforms seeking to address structural injustice arising from colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy. Feminist critique of climate policy extends far beyond thinking through how a woman experiences and responds to a changing climate and instead seeks to ensure that values, knowledges and preferences of the “other” shape international climate law.¹⁶

This article explores the development of gender considerations within the UNFCCC by reflecting upon where we have come from, where we are now and where we are going with respect with gender. This article shows that from 2001 to the present there have been a series of small gains for gender within the UNFCCC which this article will explain and critique. It is easy to get lost in the detail of the decisions, but we need to remember to ask –is the work of the UNFCCC on gender driving change? Do the COP decisions on gender reinforce messages on gender from other international forums, national debates and local level discourses? Or are these decisions on gender largely unknown, ignored or misunderstood? Is there some common consensus on what “doing gender” means in respect of climate change? And why does work on gender and climate change matter? This article explores these questions by reflecting back upon the operation of the UNFCCC since its inception and considers the action needed for meaningful progress in the future. In recommending future actions, the paper draws on insights from the Pacific and Australian experience.

3The Meaning of Gender within the UNFCCC: Where have we come from?

An examination of the history of negotiations and resolutions within UNFCCC reveals the limited progress that has been made on gender equity and addressing gendered experiences of climate change. The UNFCCC was the only instrument to emerge from the 1992 Earth Summit negotiations which failed to mention women or gender.¹⁷ Since then, the integration of gender into the UNFCCC has been exceedingly slow, with sporadic developments spanning over two decades (Fig. 1). A key reason for this lack of meaningful progress has been the focus on numbers –specifically the representation of women within State Party delegations to the UNFCCC and their participation in formal negotiations.

Fig. 1

The History of Gender in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The focus on numbers is reflective of the language employed in UNFCCC decisions and reports. Miriam Gay-Antaki’s work explores the language of gender within the UNFCCC by tracking the gender negotiations leading up to the drafting of the Paris Agreement. Her research unpacks the significance and emergence of certain gender terms, including ‘gender balance’ and ‘gender equality’, in the context of the UNFCCC negotiations.¹⁸ This research shows that while feminist groups have sought for the language of ‘gender equality’ to be inserted into UNFCCC instruments and COP decisions, the language of ‘gender balance’ has become dominant within the regime. ‘Gender equality’ refers to equality between women and men and is seen both as a human rights issue and as a precondition for and indicator of sustainable people-centred development.¹⁹ On the other hand, ‘gender balance’ is more limited in scope and instead focuses on the ratio of women to men in any given situation.

The choice to talk about gender in terms of ‘balance’ rather than ‘equality’ within the UNFCCC regime has translated into a focus on representation rather than substantive action. Furthermore, structural issues and process barriers have hindered the meaningful participation of women, so that even as numbers have gradually improved over time, more nuanced consideration of and action on gender issues has remained elusive, despite the relevant expertise and guidance being present in other parts of the UN system. Problems have included delays in the accreditation of women’s groups as official stakeholders within the UNFCCC;²⁰ equity issues being viewed as North/South tensions rather than being defined by an intersectional analysis;²¹ the dominance of scientific and economic knowledge and thinking;²² and a characterisation of climate change as an urgent global problem justifying the exclusion of certain voices in order to solve more pressing issues.²³

The first recognition of gender within a UNFCCC was in 2001, with COP Decision 36/CP.7 highlighting the need to improve the participation of women in Party delegations and in the formal negotiations.²⁴ In 2010, the Cancun negotiations resulted in Decision 1/CP.16 stating that gender equality was necessary for effective action on climate change and encouraging parties to ‘consider’ gender, particularly in the development of national strategies and actions around deforestation and forest degradation to reduce emissions.²⁵ No specific detail was provided as to what such ‘consideration’ should look like, and no specific actions were outlined.

In 2012, Decision 23/CP.18 once again focused on the issues of gender balance and representation first raised in Decision 36/CP.7, and adopted a goal of gender balance.²⁶ The language used to describe this goal was weak, merely ‘inviting’ parties to make a commitment and to ‘encourage more women to nominate for climate bodies’.The Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWPG) was adopted in 2014 in Decision 18/CP.20.²⁷ The LWPG creates a framework for reviewing all proposed implementations of gender-related mandates, awareness-raising for delegates on gender-responsive climate policy, capacity-building for women delegates, and appointments of gender focal points at the UNFCCC Secretariat. While the LWPG recognised global commitments to ‘gender equality’ under the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the LWPG itself does not consistently adopt the language of ‘gender equality’, with this term appearing only once within the instrument. As with previous instruments, the LWPG favours the language of ‘gender balance’.²⁸

The LWPG was extended in 2016,²⁹ with a Gender Action Plan (GAP) finally being adopted in 2017.³⁰ The GAP aims to mainstream gender through five priority actions: (a) capacity-building, knowledge management and communication; (b) gender balance, participation and women’s leadership; (c) coherence (i.e. strengthening the integration of gender considerations within the work of UNFCCC-constituted bodies, the Secretariat and other United Nations entities and stakeholders); (d) gender-responsive implementation and means of implementation; and (e) monitoring and reporting (i.e. of LWPG and the GAP).

The LWPG was reviewed in 2019 and extended for a further five years in order to implement the objectives of the GAP.³¹ The extension of the LWPG is referred to as the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender (the Enhanced LWPG), which runs to November 2024. Under the enhanced program, the Secretariat is required to prepare biennial synthesis reports on progress in integrating ‘gender balance’ into constituted body processes and an annual report on the gender composition of constituted bodies established under the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, and on the gender and age composition of Party delegations to sessions held under these instruments, including a comparison with data for previous years. While the LWPG has stepped up efforts relating to gender across UNFCCC institutions and operations, its focus on gender ‘balance’ rather than ‘equality’ has continued to limit the focus to women’s representation, without meaningful consideration of whether and how such increased representation translates into different outcomes for women in terms of their experiences of climate change.

The Paris Agreement represented an opportunity to move beyond this focus on gender balance and to adopt a more meaningful commitment to gender equality in climate action. However, rather than take firm action to advance gender equality, the framing of the Agreement reflects the ongoing division over gender language. The Preamble (the soft part of the agreement)³² calls for all climate actions from States to:

‘respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity.’

There is no mention of gender equality or gender balance within the substantive provisions of the Paris Agreements, however. Instead, the section on adaptation refers to ‘gender responsive’ implementation. UNFCCC has not provided a definition of this term, but UNDP defines gender responsiveness as:

‘..outcomes that reflect an understanding of gender roles and inequalities and encourage equal participation, including equal and fair distribution of benefits. Gender responsiveness is accomplished through gender analysis that informs inclusion. Often, we must try to support efforts that transform unequal gender relations to promote shared power, control of resources, decision-making and support for women’s empowerment.’³³

Article 7 establishes a goal of enhancing adaptive capacity, and under this provision ‘Parties acknowledge that adaptation action should follow a country-driven, gender-responsive, participatory and fully transparent approach’ (art 7.5). In relation to capacity building, Parties recognise that this should be (among other things) ‘gender-responsive’ (art 11.2). While the inclusion of gender responsiveness in the Paris Agreement could be considered a step forward, confusion as to the definition and an understanding of what this term requires in practice will present implementation challenges.

There remains, therefore, a large degree of uncertainty as to what ‘doing gender’³⁴ requires in the context of the UNFCCC.³⁵ The instruments and decisions of the regime tend to focus on gender balance and gender-responsiveness, but the UNFCCC does not clearly define these terms. Furthermore, ‘gender’ seems to be shorthand for ‘women’ in UNFCCC, with instruments of the regime failing to recognise and address the patriarchal structures and systems that perpetuate inequalities and make women, girls and other gender identities vulnerable or marginalised, thus silencing the diversity of voices.

As a result of this uncertainty in combination with resistance from some actors to embedding gender more meaningfully across the regime, the Secretariat has largely focused on reporting the number of women participating in COP negotiations and performing roles within regime bodies. Analysis of the Glasgow gender-related decisions below shows that this remains true of the UNFCCC’s most recent work. Further, it shows that the regime’s COP-related decisions tend to focus on the language of gender balance, with gender-responsiveness being dealt with at side events and capacity-building sessions outside of the official negotiation spaces.

In the interim, other UN entities focused on gender equality have attempted to outline what ‘doing gender’ in the UNFCCC might look like. Bharat Desai and Moumita Mandal’s work on gender and climate change explores developments beyond the UNFCCC in other fora of international environmental law. They have examined the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and the Convention on Biological Diversity along with the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and Agenda 21, finding that recognition of the gendered impacts of climate change are emerging, but that international law does not provide a coordinated approach to recognition and dealing with this issue.³⁶

Developments on gender and climate have also occurred within international human rights and refugee law.³⁷ The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) stated in 2009 that the Committee:

‘expresses its concern about the absence of a gender perspective in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and other global and national policies and initiatives on climate change’.³⁸

Nearly a decade later, the Committee released General Recommendation No. 37 (2018) on gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction in a changing climate,³⁹ marking the first time a UN body addressed in detail the links between human rights and the gendered impact of climate change. The same year saw the release of the Resolution 38/4 (July 2018) by the Human Rights Council, which recognised that the integration of a gender-responsive approach into climate policies would increase the effectiveness of climate change mitigation and adaptation, requesting an analytical study and a panel discussion on the topic.⁴⁰ This was a decade later than the landmark Resolution 7/23 (March 2008) where the Human Rights Council first expressed concern that climate change ‘poses an immediate and far-reaching threat to people and communities around the world’.⁴¹ It is fair to say that if the UNFCCC came late to gender, the gender entities at the UN came late to climate change.

This was underscored when the UN’s only permanent forum dealing exclusively with gender equality, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), held its 66th session in year 2022 on the importance of achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programs (CSW66).⁴². The Agreed Conclusions show the breadth of gender concerns with climate impacts but also the difficult State politics involved, coming only a few months after the Glasgow COP. COP26 featured strongly during the negotiations with many Member States not wishing to go back over the same ground covered by the Glasgow Climate Pact 2021. Delegates struggled with new terms related to climate change in the highly-charged gender context, with disputes arising over the terms ‘fossil fuels’, ‘climate justice’, ‘loss and damage’, ‘Net Zero’, and ‘environmental human rights defenders’.

But even so, the CSW66 Agreed Conclusions represent a much more three-dimensional view of the intersection of climate and gender equality. The CSW recognised with concern the disproportionate impacts of climate change, environmental degradation and disasters on all women and girls that can include loss of homes and livelihoods, water scarcity, destruction and damage to schools and health facilities and stressed the urgency of eliminating persistent historical and structural inequalities, discriminatory laws and policies, negative social norms and gender stereotypes that perpetuate multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. As a result of displacement, including forced and prolonged displacement, CSW recognised that women and girls face specific challenges, including separation from support networks, increased risk of all forms of violence, and reduced access to employment, education, and essential health-care services, including sexual and reproductive health-care services, and psychosocial support. The CSW also expressed concern that the economic and social fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic has compounded the impacts of climate change, environmental degradation and disasters and has pushed people further behind and into extreme poverty in a cascading effect.⁴³

In contrast, the process-driven reforms in the UNFCCC mirror the slow progress on including gender equality issues through the ‘Women Peace and Security’ thematic agenda in the UN Security Council, which has remained resistant to deeper transformative change for over 22 years (including recognising climate change as a security risk).⁴⁴ Overall, we have seen little progress from the UNFCCC to advance gender-responsiveness in the first decades of its operation, settling instead for the search for ‘gender balance.’ The outcomes achieved at the Glasgow COP and their potential for deeper reform are analysed below:

4Where have we gotten to?

5Where to from here? Getting Strategic on Gender

Within the UNFCCC system, a concrete pathway to enhance action on gender and climate could be furthered through the hosting of a Gender COP. This Gender COP would seek to move beyond the Enhanced LWPG and change the focus of the regime from gender balance to one focused on ensuring gender equality in a changing climate. Despite the lengthy negotiation process of the UNFCCC, momentum has slowly been building to support gender, human rights and environmental justice as future COP key agenda items. For much of the 30 years of the UNFCCC negotiations, the focus has been on mitigation and mechanisms to address the cause of greenhouse gas emissions. More recently, at the insistence of the Global South, adaptation has become a more prominent agenda topic alongside issues of climate finance and loss and damage, spaces where an intersectional feminist lens is much needed.

Lessons from the regime foretell that for any issue or mechanism to be prioritised, it takes years of consistent advocacy, as well as a group of countries, including a Chair or President of the COP, to elevate the issue. At COP23, Fiji was the chair of the annual conference, and it chose to elevate two issues: a focus on Small Island Developing States and oceans. Since 2017, oceans have become a permanent issue pursued by groups like the Ocean Alliance, who have called for more attention to dialogue and addressing the impact of climate change on oceans. This has opened up opportunities for research, collaborative inter-governmental initiatives and climate financing to address national government needs like the blue economy. During the United Kingdom’s presidency, its priority was to have a goal of net zero emission and financing for adaptation. The former meant the arduous task of securing a commitment from all States to a future goal to ensure that economies like China, the United States and Australia set equally ambitious pathways for net zero compared to States like Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands. Furthermore, elevating adaptation and finance as key priorities meant assurance for the Global South to discuss steps in addressing issues of loss and damage and oceans. These past experiences on other issues illustrate the strategies for elevating gender in the UNFCCC regime.

Within the UNFCCC system, elevating gender requires a commitment from an incoming COP President to set gender as its key goal. Like Fiji and its Islands COP, or the United Kingdom and its Net Zero and Adaptation Finance COP, there is an opportunity for a Gender COP –a COP that seeks a commitment from all countries to invest in gender in all parts of climate action. A Gender COP will require the UNFCCC to further invest in systems and call for mechanisms to address not just women’s participation but gender equality and equity in all facets of climate change work. Similar commitments are seen in the space of sustainable development. Meanwhile, other UN entities such as the CSW, HRC and CEDAW are not waiting for gender to be integrated into the UNFCCC and are mainstreaming climate change into their work programs on gender equality, which may result in a two-speed UN on this topic instead of a coherent approach. At the same time, developments from outside the COP can influence the regime, so the achievements of other UN bodies could provide considerable guidance to a COP President.

The COP presidency is rotated through the five UN regions. When Dubai hosts in 2023 it will represent Asia and the Pacific. There are certain countries, as seen in COP26 Gender Day, that are champions of gender equality, such as Sweden, New Zealand, Bolivia, Samoa, Venezuela and Tanzania, who may be future Gender COP supporters.⁶⁴ The timing of such a Gender COP will need to be planned around the UNFCCC busy years, such as the 2025 Global Stocktake or the 2030 Paris Agreement commitment period year. Leadership for a Gender COP may come from countries with women leaders or may come from countries with more advanced National Gender Action Plans. The hosting of a Gender COP would pave the way for more global climate action on gender.

Beyond this long-term vision of a Gender COP, there is more that can be done now. Capacity continues to be a challenge. While some training exists, for example negotiator training for women,⁶⁵ gender training for journalists or meteorology officers,⁶⁶ or mainstreaming gender across climate finance,⁶⁷ more needs to be done. At best, capacity is channelled at the national government level but has not reached the community and sub-national government levels. At the same time, there has been limited acknowledgement or research to explore indigenous/traditional and local knowledges, institutions and practices relating to climate change impacts on gender relations in society. In the Pacific, a community of practice on climate change has developed over the three decades. At best, this knowledge and work in understanding climate action in the Pacific is situated at the national government level. To enhance the work on gender and climate change, acknowledgement of and investment in understating how climate impacts gender relations is needed at the local level as well, not only in the form of equity and equality but also in understanding how climate is linked to tension and violence.⁶⁸

Furthermore, to be able to influence decision-making, information power is needed. While academic research is wanting in terms of understanding gender and climate change, so too is information in the grey literature. Only a handful of technical reports or projects have focused on the nexus of gender and climate change, as well as the contributions to global action. Programs run through UN Women on gender, climate and security,⁶⁹ the Food and Agriculture Organization on rural women and agriculture,⁷⁰ Oxfam on climate finance and women⁷¹ and the current work of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR)⁷² are attempting to fill this information void. An investment in research and technical work will build a body of knowledge to support the claims and positions of countries and coalitions of Small Island States in climate negotiations. One major area for research is to support the work of National Gender Action Plans in investigating how such reporting systems can be an extension of current reporting systems and not a burden. It is essential to build the gender climate change body of knowledge through academic, private and civil society research to inform policy and governments.

There is also a need to enhance participation and meaningful engagement with the existing gender processes of the UNFCCC. With the second phase of the Enhanced LWPG, Parties are ultimately saying the program can do more but that this requires political will. While the gender framework is starting to emerge, as discussed above, only 18 countries made submissions on GAP implementation. States in the Global South and their coalitions need to be active in setting the agenda and in their participation in these gender spaces. This means negotiating funding and support to do the work and ensuring that gender work is carried out in culturally appropriate and locally specific ways. In addition, lessons on gender from other international forums show that, in order for gender to be meaningfully incorporated, it must be properly financed and supported.⁷³ As such, there is a need to ensure that a funding modality exists to fund national gender climate focal point positions and their initiatives. This will require amending existing UNFCCC financing mechanisms to either include a direct gender funding modality or to ensure that the Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund and other funding bodies embed and prioritise gender projects beyond a gender balance approach.

Gender is a priority issue in the Pacific and the Australian government has expressed interest to co-hosting a future COP with a Pacific country.⁷⁴ Gender should be one of the priority goals at this COP. In order to build an effective campaign on gender in the Pacific and Australia, work should be carried out through the One CROP Plus initiative to identify a political champion to spearhead the Pacific gender campaign. AT COP27, the Niue Minister for Natural Resources (Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Meteorological services) was the Political Champion on Gender to elevate the issue through the negotiations and in the international media; it would prove beneficial for Australia to have a similar champion or ambassador for the cause. Woven into such campaigns are the diverse stories of women from across the Pacific, the resilience of the community and local, traditional and indigenous institutions and practices, leadership of government and civil society, and the innovation of regional organisations. A Pacific-led COP campaign on gender equality and climate justice supported by the Australian government would be an incredibly powerful forum for improving political attention to support gender equality in a changing climate.

6Conclusion

This article has explored the past, present and potential future of gender within the UNFCCC, showing that most progress has been largely tokenistic in terms of addressing gendered risk and vulnerability in a changing climate. As this article has shown, developments on gender within the UNFCCC started very slowly with gender first being recognised in 2001. From 2001 onwards the language of gender balance has dominated within the UNFCCC leaving confusion as to what gender means and what it requires beyond increasing the number of women participating in COP negotiations. While progress on gender balance is important, it is only a first step in taking action on gender and climate change and more critical feminist approaches and action on embedding gender more meaningfully in climate policy implementation are urgently needed. Progress on gender and climate from forums outside the COP frameworks such as international human rights law bodies, multilateral international environmental agreements and international refugee and displacement law should be used to inform UNFCCC gender equality future endeavours.⁷⁵

Turning to the present, the article has demonstrated that current gender work is focused upon the Enhanced Lima Gender Action Plan and specifically on creating national climate change gender focal point positions and embedding gender into Nationally Determined Contribution commitments. Work in this space has the potential to move gender beyond a counting game to one of ensuring gender equality in the implementation of climate policy. There are two key barriers blocking progress on gender equality climate policy, however. Firstly, there is a lack of a specific funding modality to support gender beyond ensuring that women are included within UNFCCC projects. Secondly, there is a lack of political engagement by most Parties on gender within the UNFCCC.

In terms of a concrete pathway forward on gender, this paper suggests that the hosting of a Gender COP would be a strategic way of overcoming these two barriers blocking progress on gender equality and climate policy. Significant traction on gender could be achieved by a group of countries working together to host a ‘Gender COP’. Such an event would result in collaborative inter-governmental initiatives and financing to support gender implementation of climate policy and signal to all Parties that gender is a legitimate and key priority of the regime. The question that remains to be answered is: which country or countries will take charge on gender and climate within the UNFCCC?