<< Climate Change is not an academic subject, it´s a matter of life and death.>>
– Henry Puna

In the early morning hours of the 18^th November 2017, the climate change COP 23 in Bonn came to an end after two weeks of negotiations, discussions and debates. The conference didn’t result in tremendous progress but met the overall expectations. Progress in implementing the Paris Agreement was achieved and next steps towards the coal phase-out were undertaken. Bonn was a necessary step on the way to Katowice next year where the members of the parties will come together again.

One main outcome of COP 23 consists of the further elaboration of the Paris Agreement’s Rule Book. Clear and consistent standards were needed regarding measuring and reporting CO₂ emissions as well as advances in climate protection on the national level within all participating nations. Aiming for the prevention or at least for slowing down the global heating, a draft of around 200 pages was presented. This document will be finalized and adopted at COP 24.

Despite the disappointing German position concerning the withdrawal from coal use, the initiation of the global “Powering Past Coal Alliance” was a great step towards a coal free future. Under leadership of Canada and the UK, more than two dozen countries, provinces, states and cities agreed on the phasing-out of the climate killer within the next decades. Germany might follow in 2018. Its role as a financial supporter of climate protection is very important but others took over political leadership.

Contrasting Americas official position, positive signals came from other US representatives including civil society members, companies, states and cities: “We are still in!” – a clear message and support to keep the spirit of Paris alive in Bonn.

Further achievements are the adoption of the Gender Action Plan, the development of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform and the launch of the Ocean Pathway Partnership. In order to promote and stimulate the process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue, the Talanoa Dialogue was initiated. This facilitative exchange encourages action in climate mitigation by bringing together science, industry and the civil society.

Apart from the negotiation processes in the Bula (Fijian for “hello”) Zone, the organization of the climate conference in Bonn in two zones, also provided room and opportunities for showcasing projects and examples of implementation. Countries, industry and civil society presented a wide spectrum of climate action solutions in hundreds of events in the Bonn Zone.

The COP 23 was characterized by the shared general consensus to get active in climate policy. That is a strong signal but a lot of work remains until more groundbreaking decisions will have to be made in Poland next year. From our perspective as scientists, the statement of His Excellency Mr. Henry Puna, Prime Minister of Cook Islands, should provide motivation and be seen as a mandate: “Climate Change is not an academic subject, it´s a matter of life and death.”

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Event Date: Monday 14th November , 2017

Location: German Pavillion, Bonn Zone, Freizeitpark Rheinaue

Tuesday of the second week of COP 23 was Gender Day, focusing on side events that highlight women’s role in environmental movements and on indigenous women and their fight for representation in the environmental community. Every day at COP 23 had at least one talk about gender in this field but Gender Day was meant to specifically emphasize this topic, including a Gender Market Place where NGOs and other organizations focused on women and gender in environmental fields came together in one of the meeting halls to hand out flyers and share information.

Gender Day Relevance

There were several themes that came up during these Gender-themed side events. One was the importance of women being included (or rather failing to be included) on panels. Noele Nabulivou, in a panel titled “Behind Goal 13:Women Leading the Climate Agenda”, spoke of her personal protest of “manels”, male-only panels, and “wanels”, white-technical panels, as a matter of the lack of representation of diversity in the environmental field. She and several other women emphasized the role that women, particularly indigenous women, play as stewards of their environments and how that so often fails to be represented at the larger, international level. The voices that get projected are largely male and largely white. This is a systemic problem in a lot of the governments and institutions present at COP. This became evident by the fact that these gender-focused events continuously brought up the uniqueness and importance of majority-female panels here and in other realms of their professional lives. There were speakers encouraging women to seek out female networks, to lift one another up and create space for one another. There were others challenging the notion of “female empowerment”, claiming that to feel patronizing, that women indeed have power, it need not be given to them. Others mentioned the finalization of the Gender Action Plan, finally approved at the COP 23 to be more mindful of gender-specific environmental policies and programs but criticized the reluctance to fully adopt this protocol.

Some of the most powerful speakers were the indigenous women from many different countries, from Peru to Kenya to Canada (..)

(…) sharing their stories of how they hold up their communities, raise their families, feed their families and act as environmental stewards. They share how climate change is making these jobs even more difficult.

From Fiji to Peru 

As Fiji hosted the presidency of COP 23, one could feel the urgency and upset coming from the Fijian women who proclaimed:

<< Our lives are non-negotiable >>

In a consortium with other Pacific Island Communities, these women have come with a united front to call out the developed countries who have colonized their land, exploited their natural resources, and contributed most largely to climate change while their homelands disproportionately feel the negative effects. It is undeniable that these small island states face urgent threat from sea level rising and intensified natural disasters and those women and children will be especially vulnerable to this. The women from ONAMIAP, a group of indigenous women in Peru, pointed to the necessity Land titles, legal access and rights. They are fighting for legal security of their ancestral lands, where they have been cultivating and preserving local biodiversity for generations.

By the end of Gender Day, it became clear that many women on the forefront of environmental movements in their communities feel underrepresented at best and entirely dismissed or ignored at worst. Having one day in the entire conference just simply isn’t enough. Who we choose to let in these negotiation rooms, sit on the panels, speak for their countries matters. Who we acknowledge as those in positions of power and knowledge and solutions is important.

The motto of “leave no one behind” has circulated the conference a lot. This includes women and indigenous voices. This means calling out the current power structure that has blatantly disadvantaged them thus far. We, as environmental scientists, lawyers, policy makers, government officials, as neighbors, need to acknowledge the power-biases that take place in our field. Inclusion and visibility of indigenous knowledge and the efforts of women are integral to a just transition to a “1.5 degree world”.

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Organised by CARE International (Sven Harmeling), Center for International Environmental Law – CIEL (Sebastian Duyck), Women’s Environment and Development Organization – WEDO (Bridget Burns)

The Guaranteeing Rights & Gender Equality side event, organized by CARE International, invited a panel of four speakers to debate about human rights as well as gender implications and action strategies for including these priorities within the achievement of Paris goals.

The first to introduce her perspective on the issue was Noelene Nabuliron from Fiji. She saw potential in relying on increasing transparency and accountability to track progress towards equity. Communications, as an essential part for reporting on indices of transformation, were proposed by her.

“With all these strategies, the process would also have to placed in the wider context of a country’s culture and tradition, to understand deviations among nations.”
– Noelene Nabuliron from Fiji

She rounded off her speech by highlighting current problems, such as work of women that is not accounted for, the underlying systemic injustice, and the excessive and extractive production and consumption as major causes of inequality. She concluded with: “Nothing about us, without us.”

Her speech was followed by that of Sebastian Duych from the Center for International Environmental Law, who shifted the focus to the human rights legal perspective. The preamble of the Paris Agreement, he pointed out, can be seen as a very inspiring underlying message. Therefore, he pleaded to ensure that the spirit of the preamble should serve to influence all enforcement mechanisms when discussed during the negotiations and not just the technicalities.

Duych likewise urged states to inform about their status quo on equity at the community level. As a concluding remark, he stressed that only with an advancement of obligations toward including concrete measures to ensure human rights could real progress be expected.

After him, Bridget Burns from the Women’s Environment and Development Organization took the microphone and elaborated on the status of gender and the Paris Agreement. She proposed that gender should not only include women, but also all other sexes. With that she also stressed the recession of development in engagement of women in delegations and the disparity between policy and practice.

Five main claims were brought forward by Burns:
1. Gender responsive climate policy
2. More sex and gender disaggregated data and analysis
3. Meet goal of gender balance
4. 100% gender-responsive climate finance
5. Financing the gender action plan.

She underpinned her speech with the statement : “No gender equality on a dead planet.”

Lastly, “CARE International” closed off the session with a perspective on agriculture and women’s roles, which is not treated with adequate recognition at present. Land ownership and extreme events are striking the most vulnerable the hardest.

All in all, the side event was very helpful in filtering concrete actions and procedures out of the Paris Agreement. Besides the will to do something about inequalities in the world, all speakers demanded increasing action and a shift in focus on concrete plans. The “Gender Action Plan” can only be a first step in the right direction.

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