Making Feminist Climate Justice a Priority at COP28

As COP28 is under way in Dubai, women have a larger role in the proceedings than ever: Women’s participation in national delegations to the UN COP climate conferences rose from 30 to 35 percent from 2012 to 2022, UN Women reports. Yet this week, the organization has released an alarming report on feminist climate justice. Some of its most dire findings:

• Climate change is expected to propel 158 million more women and girls than already exist into poverty and force 236 million more women into hunger by 2050.
• Increasing conflict around the world and forced migration are fed by the climate crisis, deeply affecting women’s safety.
• Exclusionary political rhetoric about climate change targets women, refugees, and other marginalized groups.

“Climate change is creating a downward spiral for women and girls,” said Sarah Hendriks, UN Women deputy executive director. “We need to transform economies away from extraction and pollution and integrate women’s rights into all aspects of climate policy and financing. UN Women is calling for feminist climate justice, and a world in which everyone can enjoy their human rights, and flourish on a planet that is healthy and sustainable.”

But what is feminist climate justice?

The report explains that their definition of the term means conceiving of a world “in which everyone can enjoy the full range of human rights, free from discrimination, and flourish on a planet that is healthy and sustainable.”

Here’s some of what the group is urging the participants at the conference to do, urge, or implement to further this kind of justice:

• Policy must prioritize the rights of women and other groups that face discrimination. Not doing so “undermines their resilience to climate impacts.”
• Decision-makers must take into account the expertise that women, including indigenous, rural, and young women have — in addition to scientific expertise.
• The group stresses that “it is essential to prioritize gender equality in just transitions” involving economic resources. Their reasoning is that “women are already disadvantaged in economies, in terms of wage gaps, unequal access to jobs, land, technology and education,” and therefore require more investment than men when it comes to climate change.
• The report points to what the authors call four interlinked dimensions that need to be addressed when considering climate justice for women— recognition, redistribution, representation, and reparation — and that the principles of interdependence and intersectionality must be considered.

Historically, women have been the primary stewards of the environment, yet have had the least influence. UN Women says research has found that women’s representation in parliaments “is associated with stronger environmental policies, but globally, women only hold around one quarter of seats.” And, women compose only 15 percent of environment ministers at the national level.

It’s been nearly 30 years since Hillary Clinton said at the World Conference on Women in Beijing that “human rights are women’s rights.” Now it’s time to declare that climate justice is women’s justice.