In focus: Women’s leadership at the COP 28 climate conference

Ahead of COP 28, UN Women and partners—including the Offices of the President of COP 28, the UN Climate Change High Level Champion, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat, International Union for Conservation of Nature, and Women’s Environment and Development Organization—will convene a conference to highlight the importance of gender-specific environment data and to ensure that leaders at COP 28 forge policies that take women and girls into account.

COP 28 will launch the Global Stocktake to assess progress towards the achievement of the goals of the Paris Agreement, aimed at limiting global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. The stocktake will also be critical in evaluating how existing policies have impacted women and girls, and will provide a foundation for future policy changes.

As countries look to transition their economies away from fossil fuel extraction and other harmful environmental practices, it will be essential to ensure that the benefits of these changes are fairly distributed, ensuring gender-responsive transitions that prioritize the rights of women.

At COP 28 and throughout its programming, UN Women works to integrate gender equality perspectives into the design, funding, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of policies and programmes on climate change mitigation, adaptation, loss, and damage.