UN Climate Change News, 17 December 2024 - At COP29 in Baku, Parties decided to extend the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender for 10 years, in a decision that reaffirms the important role of the work programme in advancing gender equality and women's empowerment in the UN Climate Change process. The decision notes that gender-responsive implementation and means of implementation of climate policy and action can enable Parties to raise ambition, as well as enhance gender equality and just transition.
Parties further decided to develop a new gender action plan in 2025 for adoption at COP30, which will set the direction for concrete implementation of the work programme through specific activities. The development of the new gender action plan will begin at the upcoming UN June Climate Change Meetings when Parties and observers will come together to discuss the design, including the structure and content of the activities in the new gender action plan at an in-session workshop. A call for submissions related to the workshop is open until 31 March 2025.
Parties interested in hosting additional technical workshops on the topic during 2025 are invited to send an expression of interest to the Chair of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation.
A decade to further advance gender-responsive climate action
The COP29 decision on gender builds on crucial steps taken since the first adoption of the Lima Work Programme at COP20 in 2014, and the extension reflects a recognition that while progress has been made, there is still significant work to be done to achieve gender-responsive climate action.
The decision encourages Parties and relevant public and private entities to strengthen the gender-responsiveness of climate finance to further build the capacities of women, implement work under the Enhanced Lima Work Programme and any subsequent gender action plan, and facilitate simplified access to climate finance for grassroots women's organizations as well as for Indigenous Peoples, especially women, and local communities. It emphasizes the urgency of scaled-up support for developing countries to implement the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on gender and any subsequent gender action plan.
"More finance is the only way we can enable climate action to go from incremental to exponential. But more is not enough. This funding must also empower every single person to act," said Noura Hamladji, UN Climate Change Deputy Executive Secretary during the High-Level Event on Gender and Transparency, on COP29 Gender Day.
Among other aspects, the decision highlights the importance of the full, meaningful and equal participation and leadership of women, fully engaging men and boys as agents and beneficiaries of change, coherence, data, capacity-building and reporting. In a novel development, the COP29 decision encourages the UNFCCC secretariat to consider appointing gender focal points in relevant departments and ensuring all budget proposals have considered effects on gender equality in its own organizational structure.
Enhancing the gender-responsiveness of climate finance
In other developments in Baku, the COP29 decision on the new collective quantified goal on climate finance urged Parties and other relevant stakeholders to promote inclusion and the extension of benefits in climate finance to women and girls, among other communities and groups in vulnerable situations.
COP29 decisions relating to the Adaptation Fund, the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environment Facility also invited their respective governing bodies to consider areas for improving the gender-responsiveness of the funds' work. They are invited to take into account insights stemming from the 2024 Forum of the Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) on accelerating climate action and resilience through gender-responsive climate finance.
COP29 further urged the Green Climate Fund Board to actively contribute to the implementation of activities under the UNFCCC gender action plan, once adopted; requested the Adaptation Fund Board to further increase the gender-responsiveness of the fund's resources; and encouraged the Global Environment Facility to work to ensure that all its implementing agencies fully comply with its policy on gender equality in implementing projects.
