Advocacy in International Policy for Women and Girls

Mentorship Program for Gender Negotiators Under the UNFCCC

The Institute, in alliance with IUCN, in the latest Conference of the Parties 27 (COP27),
carried out a mentorship process with the Parties’ gender delegates to help them develop
technical and negotiation skills. These delegates were drawn from environmental ministries
as well as negotiators from Indigenous women’s groups – and included Indigenous girl
youth to shadow and learn the art of climate negotiations. In the following two years,
we will conduct a program that allows gender negotiators from various countries of
the Global South to improve their knowledge and negotiation skills, especially considering
the third ccGAP that will develop in the next two years. Furthermore, the COP28 Presidency
has requested the Kaschak Institute to support them in ensuring that gender considerations
are prominent in this year’s COP. 

Our first gender negotiators program was a 3-day workshop held July 10-12, 2023 at
Binghamton University.  Delegates from several countries were trained, with a group
of Binghamton University students shadowing them.   

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Climate Change Gender Action Plans (ccGAP)

The Executive Director of KI developed the world’s first national and regional climate
change policies. IUCN requested the support of the Institute to enhance its capacity
to develop Climate Change and Gender Action Plan-(ccGAP). The ccGAP methodology, implemented
in 28 countries, presents a path to gender mainstreaming that moves away from business
as usual by building capacity across stakeholders to construct nationally appropriate
non-conventional solutions that are concrete, practical, and innovative. The ccGAP
moves beyond framing women and girls as vulnerable victims to recognize gender equality
as a driver for transformational change. These plans foster a comprehensive approach
that embeds gender equality in the policy frameworks of technical sectors, offers
strategies to eliminate institutional barriers to implementation, and highlights innovative
activities that are driven by and engage women as entrepreneurs, leaders, and partners
in climate change response for more resilient communities and countries. 

In 2022-23 we supported the development of Guatemala’s ccGAP. This experience also
offered students a unique hands-on experience working with climate change and gender
policy.

The Development of a ccGAP has Four Steps

1. Take stock. Analyze the country’s legislative and policy framework and any institutional initiatives
in areas as diverse as natural resources, disaster risk reduction, socio-economic
issues, industry, energy, gender equality, and finance. 

2. Level the playing field.  Enhance the engagement of women and women’s organizations in the development of the
ccGAP, through a training session conducted to build both technical knowledge and
women’s confidence in climate change themes and to identify women’s priorities and
ideas. 

3. Capture diverse voices and views.  As part of a multi-stakeholder workshop, representatives from government, non-governmental
institutions, academia, international institutions, and community groups, among others,
assess the country’s current situation concerning gender and climate change, envision
a future scenario across priority sectors, and agree on action steps toward that scenario. 

4. Prioritize and put into action. A national team elected by participants in the multi-stakeholder workshop finalizes
the action steps into an action plan and continues after the workshop to gather input
from various stakeholders to complete the ccGAP.

Examples of ccGAPs in Latin America and Caribbean countries are:

Peru: https://genderandenvironment.org/plan-de-accion-en-genero-y-cambio-climatico-del-peru-pagcc-peru/

Dominican-Republic: https://genderandenvironment.org/plan-de-accion-genero-y-cambio-climatico-de-republica-dominicana-pagcc-rd/