Climate finance is only effective when it is gender just. Read our Call to Action for COP27

The key role of women in climate action and the relationship between achieving gender equality and climate outcomes is widely recognised and documented. Yet the effectiveness of climate finance is often reduced to the measurement of tonnes of carbon mitigated and the amount of private sector finance leveraged, whereas innovation is reduced to creating top-down, high-risk, market-based financial mechanisms to generate profit.

True innovation is addressing the root causes of climate injustice through bottom-up approaches that centre gender equality and address the complexities of intersecting challenges, and scaling up the proven and context-specific solutions of communities worldwide. These rights-based, people-centred and local approaches enable communities and marginalised groups to build long-term capacities to respond to climate change and lead to effective and lasting transformation.

Across the world, women’s rights groups and civil society at large are calling for climate finance to be accessible, inclusive and gender just.

Gender just climate finance means that:

• Women in all their diversity have access to climate finance, especially those from marginalised groups (indigenous, rural, youth) that are most impacted by climate change and are leading climate action
• They have decision-making power in the allocation of climate finance.
• Climate finance projects actively challenge and address gender inequalities while promoting and protecting human rights and achieving climate impact

This year GAGGA has developed a Call to Action that provides concrete recommendations to policy makers and government officials from UNFCCC developed country Parties, to enhance and ensure gender-just climate finance.