UN commission reaffirms women leadership to address climate change
The 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66), the second largest UN intergovernmental meeting in New York, closed its two-week long session, acknowledging the important role of women and girls as agents of change for sustainable development, in safeguarding the environment and addressing the adverse effects of climate change.
The agreed conclusions adopted on Thursday by member states are a blueprint for world leaders to promote women’s and girls’ full and equal participation and leadership in the designing and implementation of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies and programmes moving forward.
Executive Director of UN Women, Sima Bahous, said: “The agreements reached by the commission come at a point when the world urgently needs new and coherent solutions to the interlocking crises that impact us all.
“We now have a pathway with practical, specific measures for global resilience and recovery, and a shared understanding that solutions depend on bringing women and girls to the centre. Let’s capitalise on the work done here, put these agreements into immediate practice and move these decisions forward through all the major forums ahead, including COP27.”
CSW66 also recognised the disproportionate impacts of climate change, environmental degradation and disasters that impact women and girls such as loss of homes and livelihoods, water scarcity, destruction of schools, 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, 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 commission also expressed concern that the economic and social fallout of the Covid pandemic has compounded the impacts of climate change, environmental degradation and has pushed people further behind and into extreme poverty.
The global Covid-19 pandemic has also increased the demand for unpaid care and domestic work and reported incidents of all forms of violence.
The commission called on the UN system, international financial institutions and multi-stakeholder platforms to continue supporting member states to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes.
Only by addressing the underlining barriers that exacerbate women’s vulnerabilities in their social and economic status, safety, well-being and livelihoods, it will be possible to tackle the pervasive disadvantages in access to, ownership of and control over land and resources; equal access to services such as universal healthcare and quality education, gender-based violence prevention; and the equal sharing of unpaid care and domestic work which hampers women’s resilience and rights.
The outcome document calls for leveraging and strengthening the full, equal and meaningful participation and influence of women and girls.
Specific efforts must be made to amplify the voices and knowledge of marginalised women, including indigenous women, older women, women with disabilities, migrant women and those living in rural, remote, conflict and disaster-prone areas.
Their inputs must be heard and included in the management, conservation and sustainable use of natural resources and climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives and programmes.