Following my recent experience at the second Africa Climate Summit (and with COP30 about to launch in Brazil), it is clear that gender equality remains, tragically, sidelined from high-level policy on climate change action. Here are my reflections.
Though the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) will receive the spotlight for global climate negotiations, I recently had the chance to attend the 2nd Africa Climate Summit, dubbed “Africa’s Climate Finance COP.”
The theme was ‘Accelerating Global Climate Solutions: Financing for Africa's Resilient and Green Development’, and the summit concluded with the adoption of the historic Addis Ababa Declaration on Climate Change and Call to Action, which positions Africa not as a victim of climate change, but as a driver of solutions and the next global climate economy.
Key highlights included:
-
The launch of the Africa Climate Innovation Compact and the African Climate Facility, committing $50 billion annually to scale African climate solutions.
-
Cooperation to mobilize $100 billion for the Africa Green Industrialization Initiative, advancing renewable energy and green growth.
-
Renewed commitments for adaptation finance as a legal obligation delivered as grants, not loans.
-
The establishment of the Africa Just Resilience Framework and the Climate Justice Impact Fund for Africa, ensuring grassroots solutions receive dedicated funding.
These are groundbreaking commitments for African countries that have long sought regional climate financing solutions – rather than top-down funding and approaches from global institutions. But I couldn't help noticing how gender was missing in significant ways, even on this stage that branded itself as the summit that would change the status quo on climate policy.
Women and gender equality in climate policy: the status, the opportunities
It was clear from the Africa Climate Summit that women, especially those from underserved and marginalized communities, have not been fully integrated into climate planning, mitigation, and adaptation processes to inform solutions tailored to their specific needs.
Here’s what we know:
-
Africa contributes only 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, yet it is the hardest hit by the damaging effects of climate change.
-
The most climate-vulnerable communities are some of the most affected by conflict and economic insecurity. Their lives and livelihoods – particularly women’s - are caught in the middle.
-
While women in Africa bear the greatest consequences of climate change, those living in conflict-affected contexts feel it even more acutely (evidenced in our 2023 research titled ‘Cultivating a more enabling environment’, which consulted over 550 women globally).
-
Women and girls make up 80% of people displaced by climate change, leaving them at risk of increased poverty, violence and exploitation. They are also much more likely than men to be injured or killed in natural disasters because gender inequalities have created discrepancies in healthcare, access to information, resources and decision making.
-
Climate change adversely impacts women’s economic opportunities, decision making power, health and well-being, and access to support networks, which worsens prospects for communities across conflict-affected areas as they navigate climate resilience, risk mitigation, and adaptation measures.
-
Africa needs approximately $250 billion annually for adaptation and mitigation, which were undoubtedly central themes during the Summit. However, if climate policies fail to be gender-responsive, these funds cannot build effective resilience or ensure transformative climate action.
Policy ambition must be matched with action at COP30
At the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (COP29), states agreed that a comprehensive Gender Action Plan would be developed at this year’s COP30. They also agreed to extend the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) Lima Work Program (LWPG), set up in 2014 to address climate and gender at the intergovernmental level. The development of the new gender action plan began in June 2025, with a view to recommending a draft decision for consideration and adoption at COP30.
Meanwhile, whilst gender and women’s rights were relatively absent from high-level discussions around climate solutions at the 2nd Africa Climate Summit, it was emphasized by civil society actors that the African delegations attending COP should approach the Gender Action Plan as an opportunity to dismantle the structural barriers hindering gender equality and fulsome climate justice.
African negotiators, mostly drawn from governments and civil society, were urged to close the gender gap and unite behind common positions advancing women’s rights and gender equality.
A pathway forward: mainstreaming gender at COP30 and beyond
Three recommendations came out of the 2nd Africa Climate Summit and the gender day organized by the Women and Gender Constituency, regarding the role of women in climate action and mainstreaming gender in COP processes.
-
Apply gender- and conflict-sensitive design and analysis to existing mechanisms and financing
Existing food security and agriculture mechanisms that aim to address environmental impacts and resilience in climate-vulnerable settings, such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme, should integrate a conflict lens and a more meaningful gender lens to ensure smallholder women farmers facing climate and conflict challenges do not fall through the gaps of such initiatives. This can be achieved through gender and conflict analyses, increased coordination across the gender, conflict, and agriculture sectors and actors, and including women in their various roles – community member or leader, farmer, end user, mother - in design and decision-making processes for such programs and strategies.
-
Increase women’s meaningful participation in climate negotiations
Civil society activists and women’s rights organizations decried the low representation of women in high-level climate negotiations and urged African governments to close the gender gap and ensure that their delegations are representative and champion the rights of women with regard to climate action. And this is true beyond attendance in delegations! Women should be actively involved in budget development and tracking governments’ commitments to mitigate the effects of climate change. At COP29, only 35% of all country delegates were women, suggesting systemic barriers in achieving gender equality in climate negotiations.
Our own research also emphasized enabling women’s meaningful participation in diplomacy and negotiations for peace and environmental management, including natural resource management, particularly by providing WROs with technical capacity support coupled with opportunities to attend summits and trainings for women’s rights organizations.
-
Invest in women’s resilience and leadership in devising climate-adaptive solutions
It was undeniable at the Summit – women ARE already leaders, innovators, and contributors to climate adaptation! Yet African women face disproportionate burdens in accessing climate financing.
Women shared example after example of innovations in the agricultural and agri-food sectors, and our own research demonstrates that they have the ideas and solutions, but what they lack is funding.
During the session on ‘Climate Mobility, Peace and Security,’ African Union Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, H.E. Amb. Bankole Adeoye, urged governments to invest more in climate-sensitive governance, early warning systems, prevention, and anticipatory action. Governments and the private sector must also invest in women’s resilience and finance their leadership in devising climate-adaptive solutions, thereby accelerating innovation and scaling up initiatives and innovations designed and led by women in climate-vulnerable communities.
COP30 has been touted as the ‘implementation COP’, the ‘turning-point’ Summit where positions on paper become binding action. As the Gender Action Plan is finalized and adopted in Belém this month, it is my hope that women’s rights and their empowerment are upheld and realized with regard to gender-responsive and more effective climate action. Women want climate justice – and they cannot afford to wait.
Read Women for Women International’s roadmap on conflict, gender, and climate change to see where we are making adaptations in our programming and strengthening climate resilience.
As part of the Environment, Climate, Conflict, and Peace platform. Women for Women International supported in the publication of a statement on the absence of peace and conflict on the official COP30 agenda, as well as emphasizing the importance of peace in climate action.
