The power of Women and Girls in confronting the Climate Crisis

Women have a crucial role to play in facing the climate crisis, and their leadership and decision-making are needed for an effective climate action.

African climate advocates and feminist activists are now participating at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), addressing their concerns, methods and suggesting solutions to achieve climate and gender justice.

On Monday, November 14, 2022, our coordinator Siouar Doss, took part in the panel discussion “Confronting the Climate Crisis: Investing in the Power of African Women & Girls” organized by ‘The Climate Mobility Pavilion’. The session opened the floor for women in positions of leadership to share their vision for a just climate action and their thoughts on how to elevate the contributions of women in mitigating the impacts of climate change, and building a sustainable climate resilient Africa.

The Nalafem coordinator tackled various topics during the panel concerning women and the climate crisis including the critical importance of education and financial freedom for young women and girls in Africa. In addition, she highlighted the significant impact of flexible funding and mixed monitoring methods to track progress in centering gender equality in climate action.

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Many questions were discussed in the session regarding women’s vision of Africa, how climate change is affecting women’s aspirations and what are their strategies for achieving them, how can women leaders affect change for the vulnerable women in Africa including displaced women and girls, the needs of African leaders and activists to tap and expand their activities to make progress.

Answering some of these questions, Siouar Douss highlighted the role of Nalafem in carrying inter-generational discussions and offering women a platform and space to tell their stories and to be involved in finding and suggesting solutions to the issues that affect them the most.

She also addressed the need for developing national climate learning strategies that are gender-transformative and recognize the importance of women intergenerational leadership by prioritizing civic engagement, green skills, life skills, policy processes, and activism, and meaningfully engage girls and young women in the development of these strategies. Besides addressing the importance of having cross-country commitments based on feminist solidarity to reaching an adequate, affordable and flexible gender-centered climate finance.

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Nalafem believes that women are not only particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, but also powerful agents of change in terms of both adaptation and mitigation. For centuries Women have carried indigenous knowledge of natural preservation, and passed it on to generations. This knowledge can be transformed to education that serves the whole world. Therefore it is crucial for development monitoring systems to extend out of numbers and include women stories and lived realities to track progress and perform evaluations.

The panel was organized by BMZ and the Global Centre for Climate Mobility.

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