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

terms. It will further contribute to transparency and accountability in gender and
social equity objectives.
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Second, there are clearly tensions and contradictions between the
push for climate-friendly technologies that decrease emissions and the emissionintensive
stages of development that many developing countries find themselves
at. There is a lopsidedness in the sacrifices to be made in terms of responsibility
for the problems of generating climate change itself. Whose economic and
growth dynamics are to be slowed versus who will benefit from the progression
of market-based and high-tech climate change solutions? This is so whether
the financing mechanisms focus on promoting transformation to a low-carbon
economy or other forms of emissions reductions. In neither case does the set
of solutions, at the heart of the climate change financing regime, focus on
compensation for prior damages by the North, or on unearthing and enhancing
traditional knowledge, know-how and skills of adaptation and mitigation honed
over time in developing countries. Such stores of knowledge are available within
communities and households in many areas of the global south. Women in many
communities are also the keepers and practitioners of such knowledge.
Third, climate change financing mechanisms may also be implicated in
the further accumulation of sovereign debts in a context where many developing
countries, both low and middle-income, are already highly indebted and operate
with questionable debt sustainability ratios. The key culprits here are financial
mechanisms that explicitly involve lending as well as those underpinned by the
dynamics of co-financing. Another important issue to flag here is the likely threat
of the substitution of development financing for climate change financing and
the impacts that this may have for social and gender equity. Historically, social
development and gender equality interventions in many poor developing
countries have been highly dependent on aid and public finance streams.
Fourth, there is currently a strong democratic deficit in the climate
change financing governance system. Many of the funds and mechanisms do
not ensure the voice and participation of key stakeholders in the formulation,
design, implementation and monitoring of the projects and programmes
financed. More importantly, the funds and mechanisms that would tend to
be the most likely processes for development, poverty reduction and genderfriendly
inputs and outcomes are the least resourced and the most vulnerable.
For example, the Adaptation Fund is quite inadequately resourced, such that it
struggles to fulfil its administrative functions.