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

Unfortunately, far too few of the more richly endowed financing
instruments, particularly those in the strategic area of mitigation, encourage
local participation, and themselves rely on a top-down process. For example,
as noted by climate justice activists, the World Bank’s climate change financing
framework is based on a percentage of GDP and so inherently ignores the
resources of the poor. In addition, the application and review processes of most
climate change financing funds are quite complex, and given the high level of
segmentation of funds, do not encourage non-governmental access to fund.
This is especially relevant for very small and under-resourced NGOs
in the developing countries. There is an institutional bias in favour of Northernbased
NGOs who operate quite large and well financed operations. Hence it
is an understatement to say that within this framework, the voices, priorities and
concerns of indigenous people and women are often the last heard and the
least responded to.
Fifth, as noted above, there is a tendency, given the bias of the system
towards mitigation, to marginalize women’s and indigenous peoples’ rights and
livelihoods in favour of high-tech and large infrastructure projects. Often this is
due not to an intention to discriminate against or to marginalize, but rather an
ignorance and unwillingness to take into account the historical situation or the
outcome of systemic gender discrimination that has impacted the present status
of women and indigenous people with regard to education, land, forests and
other economic resources.
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This is why a gender and a human rights perspective must underlie
and be integrated into the strategic approach of multilateral adaptation and
mitigation funds implemented by the World Bank and GEF-UN. This pertains as
well as to the carbon market. Overall, in order for climate change financing
to have positive impacts on indigenous people and to promote women’s
economic and social empowerment, the outstanding issues of transparency and
accountability at the multilateral, bilateral and national levels; corporate social
responsibility; capacity building; and support for advocacy must be addressed.
The next section examines these issues in a more gender-focused way.
7.6 Gender and the state of play in climate change financing
As identified in the previous section, there are specific biases at work
within the operational domain of climate change finance, which are both
structural and institutional:
Module 7