Interview: embedding gender in the multilateral climate funds
Tara Daniel from WEDO discusses the Green Climate Fund's commitment to gender equality, what it means to be gender responsive and the role of the fund in ensuring finance reaches the gender space.
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) Observer Network of Civil Society Organizations (CSO), Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities brings together organisations from developing and developed countries to inform and influence the fund’s policy and decision-making processes.
Network representatives attend GCF board meetings to share analysis and raise concerns, to ensure voices of communities impacted by climate change are integrated into the fund’s operations.
Tara Daniel leads gender-responsive climate finance work for the Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO). Tara also serves as one of the CSO active observers, voicing observer network positions in the GCF boardroom.
Here, Tara discusses what gender-responsive climate change projects look like in practice, and how the GCF is being held to account on its commitment to gender equality.
Q: What does it mean to be genuinely gender responsive in the context of multilateral climate funds (MCFs)?
TD: Planning a climate project effectively means considering all the people that need to benefit from that project. Recognising the gender differentiated impacts of climate change − fully considering what gender means at every level − is integral to this planning.
A gender-responsive climate project recognises women, girls and gender-diverse people as full participants whose needs, voices and experiences, as well as data and insights, inform the project.
So, a project that seeks to improve responses to early warning systems might look at whether there's any gendered differences in literacy rates or in access to mobile phones. Women often have responsibilities as caregivers – in the case of calls to evacuate following a flood alert, how are women and girls impacted differently as they help children and the elderly get ready, and find a path to safety? And what about the evacuation setting − are those spaces safe for everyone? Are families split up? Is everyone being protected?
One GCF project examined the disruption caused by climate disasters on education. Forced to leave their homes, children often have further to travel to attend school. Girls can feel less safe on the walk to school, or are less likely to be given permission to make the journey. They are also more likely to be held back from attending school because of additional caregiving responsibilities that arise in the wake of a climate disaster.
These are just a few examples of how gender impacts at every level, and why gender needs to be integrated intentionally into project design and implementation.
Q: You mentioned the use of data to inform GCF projects. What kind of data is that and how is it gathered?
TD: All GCF-accredited entities – the partner organisations that implement the projects − are required to carry out a gender assessment which then informs the gender action plan for that project.
This requires gathering baseline data about gendered elements considering the project’s geographic area and different cultural norms, from understanding how gender and roles in the household influence who plants and tends what crops, to land ownership and decision-making on land use, and when marriage is planned or expected.
The impact of drought on relationship patterns and dynamics in pastoral communities is multifaceted and differs from the implications in an urban setting, for example.
These data points, on education, health, land titles, agriculture, marriage, and so on may come from national datasets that are held by ministries of statistics, or ministries of women and gender.
Gender-disaggregated data are vital to designing, implementing, and monitoring a project. Data may also come from civil society organisations, particularly those focusing on women's rights. It's important to recognise that civil society has rich sets of qualitative and quantitative data on the communities they work with.
Q: How has the GCF’s approach to gender evolved over time? What has been the most meaningful progress and where are the limitations?
TD: The Green Climate Fund was the first MCF to embed a gender-sensitive approach in its objectives and guiding principles – this was back in 2011. This included pushing for gender balance in its secretariat and on its board, and considering gender throughout all its operations around distributing funds for climate action.
The GCF launched its first gender policy and gender action plan in 2015 and an updated gender policy and gender action plan in 2019.
There’s been a notable shift in norms. There’s now the expectation that gender will be part of the conversation. We no longer have to push for this or justify why it’s being asked for. Every GCF project has a gender assessment and a gender action plan that runs throughout the project cycle.
Factoring gender into projects as standard marks major progress. But there’s also a pitfall as this can lead to gender being dealt with in a de facto manner. We don’t always see a strong intentionality – for example, gender may be reduced to talking about women's participation and leadership, rather than considering what gender equality means throughout the whole project.
Members of the GCF observer network meet with GCF secretariat staff. Discussion includes ways to get greater attention to the GCF's gender commitments (Photo: copyright ICSC)
Q: What’s the role of the GCF observer network in ensuring the fund keeps to it commitments on gender?
TD: It’s essentially about ensuring accountability to those people the GCF should be serving. Many network members have been following the GCF for years. Knowing the GCF’s history means we are well placed to ensure the fund is accountable to its original vision.
Part of our role is to share best practices among GCF-accredited entities. This includes strengthening their capacity to implement gendered elements of their climate projects.
Following adoption of the Belém Gender Action Plan at COP30, one of our priorities will be to ensure that accredited entities recognise the importance of gender disaggregated data and that this data is aligned with the UNFCCC’s new gender plan.
Q: There are reports that changes made by the Trump administration to diversity, equity and inclusion policies have impacted funding available for programs that support women and girls. Is this your experience?
TD: We know this move from the US is already negatively impacting so much development work worldwide. That makes it even more imperative that the GCF’s work is done effectively, without any gender-based discrimination or bias. That’s part of why having the gender policy to guide the work of the GCF is so crucial.
There’s no denying that the US pulling back on its finance obligations will lead to less funding flowing into the GCF – and that’s inevitably going to impact the scale of climate action, but we cannot allow that to diminish the focus on the gender-responsiveness of climate funding.
On this issue, it’s important to mention that many developed countries aren’t fulfilling their climate finance obligations, especially when it comes to the funds linked to the UNFCCC – the GCF, Adaptation Fund, Global Environment Facility, and Fund for responding to Loss and Damage. Climate finance is a legal obligation to address the climate crisis, yet countries are not scaling up their finance as we get more information on how much funding is needed and how urgent it is to protect lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems.
Q: In the coming year, what will be meaningful progress on gender responsiveness for the GCF’s work? What will the observer network be focusing on? Who are the key actors that can help drive change?
TD: A big focus is going to be updating the GCF’s gender action plan. With this update, we’ll have a greater level of detail on how projects are integrating gender, enabling learning and improvement across the hundreds of funded GCF projects. These lessons will be applicable both for the GCF secretariat and the fund’s implementation partners.
The GCF board has a major role here in setting the direction and the level of ambition. They can demand adequate capacity, resources and support to enact the gender action plan, which should be tracked from 2024 to 2027, in a way that we unfortunately didn't see with the plan for years 2020 to 2023.
The secretariat has the responsibility for following through on the plan. Accredited entities can and should be incredible partners based on their experiences in designing and implementing GCF projects. We would like to see more direct access entities being supported to do this work, but accredited entities in general should recognise the opportunity of working with civil society who have specific knowledge of local dynamics.
This GCF gender action plan should move us from the commitment to gender equality and expectation of gender-responsive climate projects at the design into looking at the effectiveness of those efforts, using all of the data that we have.
The GCF touts itself as a learning institution, and it’s time to learn how to better design, implement, monitor and evaluate funded projects from a gender perspective. This is the step of moving from talk to action, ensuring our climate action is effective because it addresses our dynamic, gendered realities.
