“The world as designed by men has destroyed many things,” leaders and campaigners told Cop26 delegates, warning that the climate crisis could not be solved without women’s empowerment. 

Women and girls suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change because they are poorer, less educated and more reliant on subsistence farming than men. According to a UN report, women make up 80% of those displaced by the climate emergency.

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On Tuesday, indigenous women and politicians, including Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives, demanded increased investment as their discussion focused on gender equality.

Angelica Ponce, executive director of the Plurinational Authority for Mother Earth in Bolivia, said, “The world as designed by men has destroyed many things. The world should begin thinking like women. If it was designed by a woman, it would end violence against women and children.”

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“We want to be in the corridors of power and take part in decisions at the international level to end this struggle of climate justice,” she said. “As indigenous women, we live day-by-day the cruel reality of climate change in our land.”

Sturgeon said, “When world leaders gathered here last week, of the 120 or so, a tiny minority were women – that needs to change and it needs to change quickly. There is no doubt, we must ensure that climate change is a feminist issue. [But] women are not pleading to be supported. We’re demanding to be empowered.”

Alok Sharma, the UK minister and president of Cop26, said, “We know from our efforts to tackle climate change that it is more effective when we put women and girls at the heart of those efforts.”

According to a report by the Malala Fund, climate-related events will prevent at least 4 million girls in low-income countries from finishing their education by 2021. The climate crisis will cause at least 12.5 million girls to drop out of school each year if current trends continue.

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“That is an absolute travesty and a dangerous one,” Sharma said. “Because, as well as being a fundamental good in itself, education empowers girls and equips them to deal with the effects of climate change and to take climate action.” He announced that the UK would contribute £165 million to combat climate change while also addressing gender disparities.

Per Olsson Fridh, Sweden’s minister for international development cooperation, told Cop26, “Women are not the polluters of this world, yet, they carry the consequences of climate change on their shoulders. Without a gender perspective, we miss out on invaluable knowledge needed for a sustainable green transition. A feminist approach is simply the only smart thing to do.”

Pelosi added, “If I ruled the world, the one thing that I would do is invest in the education of women. When women succeed, the world succeeds.”

Åsa Regnér, from UN Women, said, “Only 3% of the climate overseas development aid actually targets women’s rights and gender equality specifically. The UN, with its convening power, should really address that because as long as we don’t have the resources, little will happen.”

Gender justice will also be a “guiding principle” for Germany’s €4.5 billion (£3.8 billion) International Climate Initiative. 

Diaka Selena Koroma, a Sierra Leonean ActionAid climate activist, witnessed the devastating mudslides in Freetown in 2017 and was supposed to attend Cop26, but her visa did not arrive in time.

“If women and young people who are most affected by climate impacts are not represented at platforms like Cop26, leaders will not feel the pressure to commit to climate targets,” she said.

Sharma said, “We have the [UN climate convention’s] Gender Action Plan, agreed back in 2019. But what we actually need is for every single country to implement this plan and to be guided by the UN Women-convened Feminist Action for Climate Justice Coalition, which launched earlier this year.”