GGCA Gender and Climate Change Training Manual - Women's ...

esources to cover the cost of the goods, services and technologies needed by
developing and developed countries in their implementation of climate change
measures. It is estimated that the price tag for climate change is about 20% of
global GDP.
The challenges of financing programmes and projects to adapt to
climate change and to implement mitigating strategies have led the global
community under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC) to establish a system of climate change financing
with multiple instruments and mechanisms. Climate change financing instruments
are highly differentiated in terms of their strategic approach (adaptation versus
mitigation and technological transfer) and are supposed to be custom-built to
suit the different levels of economic development of the different countries of
the global economy.
206
Climate change financing, therefore, encompasses the role and actions
of financial institutions and financial decision makers, in the public and private
sectors, with regard to mediating between donors and recipient governments,
savers and investors, lenders and borrowers. The aim of mediation is to manage
the risk of reduction strategies and to address the loss and damages associated
with climate change impacts and mitigations.
7.2 What does climate change financing have to do with
gender?
Many of the factors affecting women’s overall empowerment and
women’s control over economic and financial resources, including microfinance,
are well known and have become stylized facts. These factors include: gender
inequality around differential access to social and physical goods; gender gaps
in education, income, time use and leisure; and gender-differentiated roles and
responsibilities in the household, community and labour markets. In the Millennium
Development Goal (MDG)-oriented literature, these factors can be clustered
in terms of their implication for women’s capabilities, access to resources and
opportunities, and security. Empirical research has also shown these genderdifferentiated
dynamics acting across a broad range of human social and
economic activities including agriculture, services, manufacturing, water and
energy distribution and use, transportation and disaster management.
Women’s response and ability to adapt to climate change issues are
critically dependent, in the first case, on the robustness of their underlying health
and wellbeing, and the depth of their control over social and economic resources.