 In order to tackle climate change alongside issues of inequalities, denial of human rights and the insustainable management of natural resources that all contribute to the global environmental crisis. So I'm looking forward to hearing from this very exciting panel of speakers about the promising practices that they have been researching, implementing and advocating for. Thank you for joining us. And over to you, Chémy. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. I'd like to introduce our panel to you for this, for the next one hour, one hour ten minutes. We have Lorena Aguila, who is our global senior gender advisor for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Eleanor Blomstrom, who is co-director, head of office, women's environment and development organization. Professor Abdelatif Katibi, president of the Moroccan Regional Sciences Association. A very warm welcome. Thank you. And Aayanda, right on cue. Aayanda Mbibi, very, very well timed. Programmed specialist UN Women. Dr. Julio Judi, who is our principal scientist at C4. And Cecile Jebet, founder and president of the African Women's Network for Community Management of Forests. So a very, very warm welcome to you all. I'd like to start with my first question, and it's kind of, it's more of a definition question. And it's a definition question when we talk about gender, we acknowledge that there are men and there are women and in this world of terms and terminology. I'd like to ask Lorena, if you could give us your kind of your broad overview of how we should be making reference of what's the right thing to say when we talk about gender responsiveness and how we can also make more impact with these definitions. Well, thank you very much. I mean, I would like to start by acknowledging, C4, especially Marcus, that for the past, I don't know, three months have been organizing all these processes. Thank you, Marcus. I mean, this event and the one that we had at COP had been on your shoulders. I have different roles in society that they have different access to resources, such as land. And we produce these incredible long books and gender analysis, and very little is done after that. I mean, we keep recognizing the differences, and a lot of people think that that is enough. And it is a good step in recognizing the differences. However, and a lot of the principle of do no harm is associated with it. Like, okay, we recognize this, and if we do activities, I mean, let us not do harm. But for topics such as red and forest landscape restoration, once you identify some of the basic elements, like for example, land, and if you don't address breaking those gaps, when you realize that, for example, the whole process of participation and benefits, it's directed to if you own or you do not own land, then we start talking about what is gender responsive. It's identifying those differences and doing something to overcome those gender gaps that sometimes are not only in women, sometimes also men confront some of those gaps, like our indigenous people, also with the issue of tenure. And there are age elements that interact and your ethnicity that interacts. So gender responsive is identifying those differences and making something about having an impact in these historical differences when it comes to gender gaps between women and men. And it's about doing good as well. And it's very active language as well. And I guess, Eleanor, the question is since the Paris Agreement, what kind of guidance does the Paris Agreement give in the end to providing, to ensure that gender considerations are taken into account, to talk about the impact and that we close the gaps that Lorena's just explained. Thank you. And like Lorena said, thank you to C4 for organizing this and to everyone for being here. So yes, we do, we're a global women's advocacy organization and we've been following the climate negotiations for seven or eight years at least, really with a focus on bringing in a gender equality and women's rights perspective. And it's been a long road as Lorena knows because we've worked with her in all these years. But in Paris did bring us some good successes, which would never have been possible without our work with allies like the Global Gender and Climate Alliance and without working within the Women and Gender Constituency. But I would say that in our goal of a just world and making sure that there's social justice, environmental justice and gender justice, Paris laid out a framework and a good temperature goal, but it didn't really give us everything that we had gone in there looking for. And so of course we have the 1.5 degree goal, which is critical and we need to meet it in order not to have islands disappearing in order not to see serious devastation around the world. And then, but Paris itself didn't, we wanted to have something more operational around gender equality and human rights. And unfortunately we didn't get it in the operational piece of the document, but there's something in the preamble. And as everyone knows a preamble means that applies to every single action that's going to be undertaken in terms of Paris. And so in that preamble there's language on human rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, gender equality and intergenerational equity. And all of these are really critical to any implementation. So that is where we have really some of our best guidance from Paris, but there's also language and adaptation and capacity building. Unfortunately we're missing language there in terms of technology or finance or mitigation, which are really crucial to having any success in stemming climate change and really making the systems change that we're looking for. So I think I would say now that it's really in the hands of governments here in Marrakesh to figure out what is our implementation plan. At the same time it's also in the hands of movements. It's in the hands of civil society to hold our governments to account. And to that point what has been the role of civil society at this cop of action? I mean what difference and what discussion and discourses have you been hearing that we can then move forward to an action plan and to seeing some more of the successes on the ground? Well there's been a very diverse group of women as part of the Women and Gender Constituency. We do the co-focal point of that. And the beauty of the constituency is that it brings together women from all different sectors and levels and kinds of expertise. And they're coming from very grassroots level, but also from more national advocacy level. So they have experience that really complements each other. And we're able to take that and build recommendations. And so prior to cop the Women and Gender Constituency put out a document that has 17 demands. And they cross the entire set of issues that's being discussed. And I think one thing that came out that we really wanted was an enhanced Lima work program on gender. We needed it extended. We needed more in it. And so we have that now. There was a decision on that. Again, it's not perfect, of course, because what we're looking for is system change and finance a real pathway for how it's going to happen. And then I think there's also been quite a bit of action from the women's groups on making sure that ambition, the ambition mechanism is ratcheted up, that there's other gender responsive 100% gender responsive finance. And we really want to see this recognition of solutions that are not simply technological, but rather are coming from the ground, coming from women that are thinking about decentralized energy, that are thinking about how is this having a just impact on communities, but also leading to addressing climate change. Lorena, may I ask you, in your experience working with governments at the national level, how are you seeing some of the top level discussions around sustainable development goals? How are you seeing that informing the framework at a much more national level? Thank you. Not only the SDGs, I think that we have seen an incredible movement at the national level taking some of the mandates that we have already in the climate change convention. Remember, as Eleanor is saying, we have more than 50 plus decisions. And when Copenhagen failed, a lot of the countries that had been updated on the linkages of gender and climate change decided to move forward. 2010 Mozambique was the first country in the world to develop what we call climate change gender action plans. And today we have more than 21 countries. And there are four countries that have a specific, for example, red road maps in relation to gender. Mexico, Uganda, Ghana, and Cameroon. And they're making the difference. The beauty is that when you get to the national level, that is where we wanted to be eight years ago, but it had taken us eight years to have a mandate. You find that these gender-linked activities, and I like to call them platinum ripple effect initiatives, because what they do, the beauty is that they mobilize more than one SDG at the same time. I mean, you're talking about forests, you're talking about climate change, you're talking about poverty. And that is what the beauty of these initiatives that we're seeing on the ground more and more and more are happening. Last night we celebrated the winners of Momentum for Change. There is a stream that is called Women for Results. I will advise you to go and look at that website. This is the fifth year that we have this, and it has the most incredible type of these ripple effect initiatives that mobilize more than one SDG. So if I was a donor and I have limited resources, that's the way forward. It's a mitigation, it's an adaptation, so that is what is happening at the country level in some places. Perhaps, Professor Katibi, you could tell us a little bit more about how it's happening in Morocco. I mean, how are you engaging with policymakers with what you hear now in terms of bringing the conversation, bringing it together? First of all, I would like to thank the organizer for inviting me. And I might say that I'm a minority. How does this feel? Very good. Welcome to our world. Well, regarding what we are doing, I'd like to give just an example of a concrete project in which we are working right now, and it's not very far away from here. It's just in a place where I just learned that my neighbor, she's going to visit the place tomorrow. And you're going to take her tomorrow. We're going to take her, maybe on Friday, or tomorrow to the area. It's 50 kilometers away from here. It's in the mountains of the Atlas. Okay, very good. The whole group, yes. Yes, the whole group. It's not far away from here. It's 50 kilometers. It's in the Atlas mountains. There we are running a project which is dealing with the integrated water management. And there is a component which is dealing with gender issues, gender sensitivity, gender responsiveness, we would say that. And for that area, I mean, why gender and why that area, the area is exposed mainly to two extreme events, one which is related to flood, flooding, and another one which is related to droughts. And as you know, women in the countryside, in rural areas of Morocco, are less educated than men, have less access to resources, are very limited in the mobility. And they are, in that case, very sensitive and very vulnerable to any extreme events, and mostly to floods which is happening there. And it's being frequent with the climate change right now. That area, in fact, it's very known in Morocco. It's Uriqa Valley. And it's known not only by its boat, landscape, scenery, mountains, or the river, but it's known because it happened one very bad flooding there in 1995. There were a lot of casualties and many, many, yes, many deaths. And the majority were women and their children because they don't have the possibility of moving away from the area. So there we are running this project and the aim of this project is to develop some plan of action, integrated water management. And we have this component of gender and to see how the gender is sensitive to this extreme events. And we have run some vulnerability studies in that area. And we demonstrate that, in fact, gender-driven women are very vulnerable than men. And we have done that in various, some ten villages, small communities around the valley. And we showed that the vulnerability, only engage women in some reflections. I may come to this point to explain what we are doing exactly with women if you allow me. Yeah, I think we'd also be interested to know how the findings are now being developed and how they're now affecting and how you're using these issues in terms of affecting policy in Morocco. Well, we are trying to affect policy mainly at the local level by implementing actions. So we are trying to define the ways to increase the adaptive capacity of women by looking to the possibility, the existing possibility of generating extra income or more income for women, either by valorizing the natural resources that are there. And we are trying also to increase the awareness of women of the risk that is there with floods. And we are trying to increase the relation between women and the information on different risks that exist there and so we have created, among what we have done for women and the way we are working with them, we have created a Facebook group of rural women who have chosen these women that have small literacy so they can use the tablets and communicate with which other who have chosen 10, 12 women along the valley. We equip them with tablets and internet connections for two years and they are connecting with themselves studying while sharing information about floods, about problems, environmental problems, how they are dealing with that and also on trying to develop some solutions for real problems they are facing. For example, one of the problems they are facing when there is a flood is that the pipes that are providing water for villages are broken and then they have to use water from the river or somewhere else for drinking so you know that women in the area are responsible for providing either food or water or fuel wards for the household. So they were working on some systems of how to purify water in case of extreme pollution and they have developed some kind of filters. Second action in which they are working right now is how to, because there is this problem also of waste, domestic waste which is not collected and people are just throwing the waste down in the river and they are contributing to the pollution of water. We have done chemical studies on the water. I am not going to talk about the scientific studies that were there. Then one of the possibilities is to develop some way of reducing the waste that is thrown into the river and right now they are working on the possibility of doing composting, of composting the organic waste in order to use it either for commercial use if they produce more in the future or just domestically in their own lands knowing that they are all agricultural women or the wives of agricultural people that are living just for agricultural practices and another vulnerability is there is about, for example another action in which they are working right now is that women are engaging the action the community action about raising awareness of people there about how to deal with garbage or domestic waste. There is domestic waste and there is also waste that is coming from visitors the area is very known by the visitors that go there for recreation people from Marrakesh go there when it's very hot in Marrakesh there it's a little hot and people are coming from different parts of Morocco the area now is in high in some periods of time more than 10,000 people go in there and they are creating a lot of garbage also in this situation having some statements to communicate to visitors or to local people in order to reduce the waste a great example how gender here is being addressed in a specific project but Aayanda what's interesting is is that still gender considerations are their absent in national climate policies and why is that and how can we overcome some of these bottlenecks Thank you for that question I think the starting point for me is to again recognize what has been said that without the work and the tireless efforts of the women's organization civil society organization we wouldn't be having as strong a mandate as we have today on responses to climate change we have the Paris Agreement and we part of the mandate of the Paris Agreement is focusing on the equal participation and benefit of women in climate change responses but also it calls for systematic integration of gender equality so if you start so to come to your question if you look at the indicators in terms of the different levels of participation and benefit of women at different levels so if you look at decision making although there has been some progress in some context at national level in relation to that but we have noted that in particular rural women rural farmers and so on have been left out of the formal decision making process so decision making process is one key important factor and indicator that we need to take into account to address but also if you look at to an extent the interventions have helped us to shift the inequalities between men and women in different contexts whether it's age or race or geographical equation and so on you see that women in some context they still work distances to fetch water they still do not have access to resources like land they can't make decisions about what they need to do and for the policy to really intervene it should articulate how that transformative gender gender is going to happen so how are we going to make sure that we increase access and control of productive resources for women in the different context because with climate change and with the division of responsibility between men and women in different contexts people who are still in many contexts responsible for food production for their families and children and so on women but without access to resources and economic empowerment so the policy needs to address that but also I think the other important thing is that if you do an analysis of different responses on climate change in the different context at national level you will see that there is inconsistency in terms of emphasis and I think that the policy should be very clear in terms of what it is that it seeks to achieve over what period of time so that becomes very easy to monitor and track and learn and focus on that and what has been useful in most context is to based on very strong evidence or baseline data that you generate to inform your policy what's been useful is to identify our great targets and indicators at national level so that everyone knows all the different indicators from the different stakeholders they know that this is the end goal and these are the key indicators that will help us to achieve that so it's a combination of different strategies but also I think the most important thing is we should be focusing on rights of women which is important we should be looking at how we are going to transform the unequal gender relations in women in different contexts and also how we link policies to resources for implementation and monitoring I want to actually ask Lorena to follow up on that in terms of equity and access and decision making you know how do we move forward to create this enabling environment first of all we have to and I'm going to go to examples because I am a storyteller and I think we understand better when we talk about these things for example when we're talking about forest landscape restoration and we're talking about red and implementing some of the policies that had been created one of the first things that we're doing at the national level is creating this fora for especially women and women organizations to come and understand what do we mean that red is not a color it's not a restoration what is Rome so I think that the power of knowledge is very important is very important for the groups that we work and also pertinent for a lot of the men that are on the field as well the power of knowledge what is red what are the entry points what is FLR, how is it going to be conducted how do you participate in mapping what does it means analysis and that understanding is for me one of the most important enabling process that we are conducting at the national level because then you can identify the risks of how you are participating what are the opportunities and that gives you a tremendous amount of power so that you intervene with knowledge and you make and you understand where you're standing what are the risks for example in the Amazon when we work with the women on red they understood very very fast that all the benefits and the possibility of participating was linked to the fact if you own or you did not own the land so they understood that in the process so in the meantime recognizing that land tenure is not something that they could change they decided that their entry point to red is MRB and that they can be trained and can be engaged through monitoring and verification systems so is that power of knowing and understanding so that you can then address the things that you can change like in Mexico the women also identify land tenure a problem they make new arrangements with the man like give me your land in concessions for 90 years okay you don't want to give it to me you want to put the title me but mean give me the land for 90 years in concession but that came and and that power of participating and knowing how to participate was based in having access to knowledge and being able then to in that fully participate and meaningfully participate is very important Cecil and in your experience when we talk about participation and as Lorena and I end up both talked about the that this process of engagement can you also perhaps give us a give us some insight into your experience of bringing other partners the non-state actors into this participatory role where we where it can also act as a influence influencing funnel so to speak okay thank you thank you for the initiative thank you for inviting me thanks to making my participation concrete here in the cup I think in our own context there red or climate change and gender is still something which is very very important and we we realize that we have women have to be on board because we need to understand and if we want to understand we should be in to be able to influence so our network for example the African women network for community management of forest we started by organizing women we realize that we were not that well organized and if we are not well organized it difficult for us to have a space where we can even give our ideas so we started by getting more organized and then as Lorena was saying it's very important to build the capacities of the women so that they know they really have to know what are their need what is the issue what is climate change what is right plus for them what are the consequences what are their ideas about that what the role what is the role they have to play in there and how can they influence the policies that will shape all those mechanisms so we started that and we build the capacities of women we are still doing that through trainings through connecting them to decision-making people connecting them to all these policy makers at national level or even regional level putting civil society and women organization into platform and if and trying to push the government to consider that they cannot do without us so we did that we said to the government in Cameroon in DRC were in there in Central African Republic in Burkina Faso in Cote d'Ivoire we told to those government that we the women we are the most vulnerable in this process climate change has more impact on us than any other and red plus will even worsen our situation because we don't have property right to anything in our own contest men are the chief of everything so we need to get in this so that our need our ideas our views are taken into account and from there we can move all together that how we started with this process and I'm very happy that it's getting some very positive impact now in the women's engagement because also we have to start from participation to the engagement and to get into a engagement women should be able to understand to practice to live in that to promote it and to take it as theirs then they can get involved then they can get engaged and they know why they have to get engaged so we are at the level of getting women into more engagement and to some extent also pushing for meaningful participation because we are not all at the same level oh yes yes we have we have we have been influencing the reforms and in Cameroon I think we we may be one of the first where we have succeeded to put in the law ownership of land and forests for the women and that is true red because when red came we said we don't want red but then we understood that if we are outside the red it red will will just blame you and maybe get you to the to the jail we said let's get in understand an influence from inside and our influence now started with all these reforms and how do you ensure that these this community on the ground that they had they have recognition that they know what they're doing is successful and that they you know again that it's this sort of swell of change that they're you know it becomes the most normal thing to do yeah when communities when we meant at the very community level have the good information have the good knowledge of what is going on have the space to express themselves their views and their ideas can apply and own the process they do it they do it and we in Rifakoff we are working from the very grassroots level to the very professional and high-level women organization so from the very very root grassroots level we have women that are organized at leaders and we connect them to their local authorities local decision-making people local policy-making making people and from their local we try to channel to the national level that how and we take it to the parliament because we have also realized that we need to partner we need to build strategic partners partnership and we did it with parliamentarians with traditional chiefs because the most important actors in these tenure issues are the chief traditional chief because even if the law is positive about the women property right the practices in the in the in the cultural situation can be very difficult for the women could I ask you really this is a great a great kind of you know segue into talking about your work and how you're building this trust and basically helping grow demand I mean you're trying to basically you know change policy on the ground through your research thank you very much I have to say that I love this story Cecil was telling right now because this is exactly reflecting the kind of work we should do also in my in my work as a researcher in many sub-Saharan countries specifically in West Africa this is exactly what what I'm saying that all I'm seeing in my in my work and what actually you highlighted and that is the most important thing is that here we are moving beyond vulnerabilities we are moving to to action to adaptive capacity to agency of women so when the woman they get the chance to take their future in their hand they do it but we need to give them this opportunity and we need to create the enabling environment for them to do so and this is where my research I found that focusing only on vulnerabilities is good because we need to understand the context is very complex we need to understand what is going on in our landscapes we talk about landscapes and I have the feeling sometimes when I am in these meetings that we try to understand every tree which is there either biodiversity of every small plot but are we understanding the social life of landscapes are we understanding power relations are we understanding access and this is where we need to work a little bit more because these two things are linked they are completely linked for instance if you move or you intervene at the environmental level of the landscape you need to know that you are changing power relations you are changing social relations you are changing access you are changing how people will deal with each other how they are getting access and this is very important also in the project like I read that when you intervene you need to understand which social impact this intervention will have and one of them is which kind of impact it will have on gender relations and in your case which is beautifully is that woman understood that in the beginning and they took advantage actually of it to get to improve their situations and this is where I think that voice and participation and you are also talking about truly participation because you see sometimes climate change project or other project where you want to to be gender sensitive or gender responsive then you have always the three same woman coming invited from the national level in the meetings always the three woman or the four or the ten always the same always the same role they silent or they say the same sentences and this is not what we mean with participation and giving voice to women Elena oh please yes please please and and it has not been only again for promoting gender equality for promoting gender equality but we're seeing for example in Brazil the FLR initiatives that we're doing with IUCN and WRI the ones that are taking the risk to start with forestless skate restoration are those women that we're giving so I mean this is about mobilizing all those different STGs that we have in our pathway they are the first ones in the communities that by allowing them to engage by allowing them those process said we we are the ones that are gonna start with FLR in our communities just to thank you and I guess one of the questions I wanted Elena to address is when you hear about the tools and the implementation on the ground you know how do we you know is this enough is what what are we what are we learning from these practices in terms of monitoring and evaluating these principles and and I guess you know what what what challenges do you still do we still face what do we need to overcome that's a pretty big question about the monitoring and evaluation and what the challenges are because I think there are many and at multiple levels there are different ways of course to monitor what's happening we could think about are we monitoring what's happening on the ground level from to seal and her within her network and what they're doing in a project and seeing what they're doing but the other question is here we are at COP and what is the monitoring what are the mechanisms to see how countries are actually implementing what this framework is and are we setting in place anything here in Marrakesh that's gonna lead us down that path I think that question is still up in the air I wouldn't say that we have any answers on that we know that there are nationally determined contributions and that there are 190 64 of them have gender in them in some way shape or form but it none of it is very is particularly substantive there are some countries yes but I think it's also interesting to note all the countries that include gender are developing countries so we really need to think about what is the accountability mechanism for developed countries who have you know been been funding some of the work on gender and climate change but are not yet including it in their own action plans as if it's not a relevant issue there and I think that needs to be challenged and looked at and how do we build that in also in terms of NDCs you know we're looking for this ratchet up mechanism so we can avoid three degrees or three plus degrees and at this time it's not clear how that will go and basically the NDCs have a mechanism to sort of support countries if they're not quite making it and that's not enough so I think we need to think about we need to strengthen that mechanism another mechanism is in terms of finance and for example there's the Green Climate Fund and it has gender sensitivity built into it from the beginning at the same time not all projects need to have that they can apply and say look we're working on developing our gender plan and so it's it's not really strong enough there's a lot that has to be done and I think that's where then comes several different roles one is to really link with what's happening as others have said with the sustainable development goals and that mechanism because we know there are national strategies being developed and they have to be developed in tandem with the climate strategies so that there's a shared set of indicators and targets that we're working towards and then we need to definitely partner with civil society on the ground who are there and are really the ones who are feeling what happens they know what's going on and they can come back and say they can we can work together as civil society groups do our own reporting and at the same time we need to demand that we're part of any reporting process so that we can say you know track the indicators ourselves and indicate when things are getting off track so that all the inputs are actually valued recognized written down and then can be addressed in enough time to have some impact and I just wanted to add one more thing on that in terms of supporting the tracking of the gender mandates that Lorena was talking about we do has just released an app that we did together with the support of the GGCA and with Switzerland and Finland and the app is pretty amazing for us because we've collected all the gender mandates and put them out sort of in a PDF or in paper form but almost immediately they become out of date and so now the app will be a living breathing document where we can track what's happening and we can say look you know United States you've signed on to this so here's what you should be doing and also it's tracking the participation data of who is coming to the UNFCCC and it has some analysis of the NDCs and all that will be able to be updated so I'd recommend thinking of that as one of the tools certainly not the only one but it's a useful one out there that we can all use immediately and it's called the gender climate tracker. And a question on the monitoring mechanisms and I guess first to Horyu and Cecilia is just how what is trickle down what does trickle down look like how how does this work on the ground in reality? How does it work in the ground? When you for us so long as we plan with communities we have their ideas and their priorities when we implement with communities they own the process and they can share their perspective and feelings. So for us it's the basic we need to get them into planning and this is not that well done so far we need to get them into the implementation and then in the monitoring but to monitor or to evaluate is good for us to have the indicators what are they looking for what are the values what are the achievement what is the impact of the action on their own livelihood. How do these initiative take into account their objective because sometime we have conflicting objective we are coming with to reduce deforestation communities need to improve their livelihood. How far the initiative the project or the program have integrated that and all that should be with indicators and when they are well trained they know how to follow up they do that. In our own realities now we still need to build the capacities of local in that but they also have a lot to share because they have a lot of traditional knowledge and tools that they have been using to follow up what is going on. This is what I can say but planning with them implementing with them developing indicators for monitoring and evaluation I'm very sure that with that we can get the good impact of any action in the in the in the in the ground. I just want to add to that that it's very complex issue and one one problems I see in terms of why is it difficult to realize is the fragmentation and in terms of policy. You have policies just if I take the example of climate change I don't want to talk about other policies get even worse. We have mitigation and adaptation since the beginning of this discussion on climate change going in parallel parallel words but both of them have have gender gender component which are important. So now if you want to monitor one of them you might have positive impact in terms of mitigation but then when you add the adaptation that you will get a completely different picture and I think that's a problem at the national level is we need to work in more an integrative way in terms of gender to look at policies in in the policies or sectors need to work with each other to communicate and to create a different type of monitoring because this is not some one indicator you can just go and then measure. This is this is much more complex than that and they are trade-offs and co-benefits from each intervention in terms of gender which are sometimes split in different different policies and then you don't get really the real picture if you look only at one. I ended a huge task ahead the universal guidelines. It is. I really like that example that she's mentioned there because it really was happening at national level in terms of translating the global mandates. The inconsistency, the different definition and understanding the shared understanding of what it is that's supposed to happen and I think one critical intervention to to support that is to provide some guidance on what it is that needs to change from all different levels so because you find and someone is mentioning now that if you look at the current indices of the different countries one prominent agenda mentioned there is about participation and decision-making but there's no issue around building resilience and empowerment and access to resources and so on so some guidance in terms of what are the key issues that needs to be addressed at the different levels to promote gender equality but also to promote women's rights and support women in particular to build their resilience and also have access to productive resources so very strong guidance is required which will which will really assist also in terms of uniformity in policy formulation at national level at the different national levels in terms of what it is that we aiming to address but towards to shift this and just impact. So perhaps we should just hand over to Haja Ambar who's our global landscape forum facilitator gender ambassador to perhaps to have the to maybe just give us your kind of insights as to what you've heard today and and and then we'll take some questions from the floor. I think before coming here I came with this idea that I grew up with as as a woman that women are vulnerable and growing up I understand that women should not be perceived as vulnerable or be victimized that's something that I really don't appreciate even in like feminist groups and people who actually advocate for women rights I don't like the fact that women are constantly being victimized I think that women have constant have this natural resilience power whether they are in rural I mean I can I grew up in Morocco so I've seen women in villages far away who are actually the ones responsible for the well-being of their children they're the ones going kilometers away to get the water to feed their children to take their children to the schools and the men are mainly responsible for working and bringing the the the money yeah but who runs the house is actually the woman so it's it's very interesting to look at how the community or international community looks at women as being victimized that's one point the second point is I think everyone would agree with me that the fact that gender inequality or the issue around gender is generally centered in developing countries it's very much you know like women need help in developing countries but which might which is true it is a fact but I really don't think it's a it's a global south issue I think it's rather a global issue it's not just something that only developing countries are leading with so these are the two points and I think women are being stronger stronger every day even though the circumstances are not very ideal but it's it's very good to be a woman it would be great to take some questions for our panelists I just want to add something and it's what we see right now I mean about this women that are not victimized what we see now in Morocco that's in the school I mean maybe starting from high school to the university that's the majority of students are just women if you go right now to the university at the bachelor level you fight 60% women at the master level you fight might be 90% women this means that women are just coming into the decision system and one thing is good I mean I mean if you want to change the the position or to influence the policies not just by lobbying or something that is just how to empower women and to get them into the decision level where they can take the decision and two days ago we have organized workshop aside event like this one with IPCC 2 and with the WMO and the IDRC and UNEP on how to empower how to encourage women to get into the decision in this science in the climate science and climate change sciences so it's kind of how to encourage women to get into the IPCC groups to be educated to participate to be educated and then to participate in the climate decision at the international level one of my colleagues who was organized excuse me was organizing with me this because I just I don't want to forget because she told me that she couldn't be with us thank you so much and for hearing so much interesting points and I'm currently undergraduate student from China I think if I understand correctly one or more presenters have mentioned the NDCs of some countries and have mentioned that almost like every countries who have mentioned the issue of gender in their NDCs are from developing countries it seems very interesting to me and I really want to know like your point of view what is the reason behind these interesting phenomena and if there are some kind of belief that this gender inequality is no longer an issue in developed countries or what do you think is the main reason behind this thank you so much I mean I can start and then I think others can add on because we've all done different kinds of analyses of the NDCs and we all have our I guess thoughts and opinions about why countries choose to do things but I to me it's the developed countries often do feel that they've made the progress on gender equality and it's about you know how are we funding through our international aid and through our capacity building that in developing countries and so developed countries feel like their role maybe to work on their mitigation and energy efficiency not understanding the important role of gender equality and social justice within their own actions at home I think it very much relates to the Millennium Development Goals too which were all directed from the north to the south and so there there's just as far as I can tell a lack of self awareness and we saw in a lot of the NDCs that were being developed in developing countries that they did engage a broader constituency when they were developing some of them and some of them included groups that were working on rights and working on gender equality and social phenomena and you see that more reflected on some of those NDCs that is not the case in the countries that we have asked from developed countries if they engage other groups at the national level at the moment that they were developing their NDCs EU doesn't have a mention United States doesn't have a mention China doesn't have a mention and I can continue with the countries on the list but it is important that at the moment that they were developed was in this very close little climate change scientist group especially because they don't understand yet sometimes the linkage between mitigation and gender equality I think in most of our developing countries if gender is mentioned is also because we the gender and women consistency we were pushing a little bit but and and it also for us it's an opportunity for those government to to to be built in their capacities because they can also mention it for them to gain some resources and capacity building to better understand gender and gender impact in these on all these climate change processes I think it we have pushed for that but the main challenge does exist they do not have capacities to translate all that into concrete and operational actions in the field I think this is a very sensitive here I just want to add something to that this is a very important question I think and well the gender the gender narrative or the gender discussion is always something which is really polar like it happens in polarization and what I observe in in some countries I work you have you can find both pictures actually you find a picture where gender is integrated in a really engagement to make life of women and other groups better but you have also this tendency and we need also to talk about it is sometimes gender is integrated to please donors because the some institution thinks if I don't have gender there I will I will get in trouble so there is a kind of gender used as a control instance of how your project is implemented and in this case you could see exactly that's nothing is happening with gender because it's just like we need to put it there and to show this is a buzzword for something but nothing happens in the reality and no transformations happens in the way project are implemented so we have to be careful when we have this is there we have them to look exactly what is happening in the ground and this is the only place where you can really understand is it really meant to transform the society or is it just to please some some donors well yeah this is a fact I mean what we observe if is it good or bad maybe the future will tell but still I mean whenever there is imbalance that's not good what is good is to have the balance in education or equality but if people I mean guys are dropping out from the school very early and maybe they go for look to look for jobs or whatever and if they graduated maybe if they don't have job what makes also girl go to master level and PhD level in my my point of view is there's culture social status in the in the society if she doesn't go to school to university after graduating and she doesn't have a job she would stay home the boys can go look for jobs somewhere else or whatever at the girls so the one way of girls this is this is just my one explanation and second is maybe there is this problems maybe of employment and people are just getting I mean the lot is appointed after getting degree so we just want to drop early from and go do some something else and the girls maybe don't have other possibility to do except if they want to to be in this society to go to school what I see the the transition in the school where I'm teaching I'm a professor in engineering school for forestry ingenious and traditionally we didn't have girls in the school because Forester is men's job I mean traditionally I mean but now we are having girls come in since maybe 15 years or so but since the girls are coming to the school they are always in generally are they in the top of the classification of above by grace in the school that means they are working harder or maybe more seriously or I don't want to say they are more smart than than man because it's not but it maybe they are more interested and working hard and getting good grades and it's not I am teaching in also in different universities at the master level and they see if I have 20 students generally I have 18 girls to two boys more generally speaking it depends so this is the fact but if it's going in the good way or the bad way I don't know what the future will tell us but the imbalance would be always in the bad in the bad way mainly for in our society or Islamic society where what you get that the man is the the one who will or he's the responsible financially for his household even though his women the the woman is working I mean the man is the responsible the woman can work and can get her salary she's not obliged to spend it for for the household she's not she's not I mean from the but the man is responsible so if the man is not getting a salary is not working he cannot go for I mean getting married and we are going to witness here some problem also in this marriage that we were witnessing this in the in rural areas where boys go away to look for jobs and stay in maybe somewhere else and the girls in the rural area are getting older and older and there are no few men to to get married to do this is one one fact that we have observed also the question that you're asking is really important one and it really emphasize the point about the importance of just of when we develop and policies we need to really think through and understand what the situation is and what the indicators are and what like in-depth analysis of what's happening on the grounds really important to inform the strategies because if you just if people just follow the trends it's nice to do gender work and let's get boys and all let's get girls and in school and so on you could easily you could easily contribute to undesired results but if you base your strategies and your programming and your interventions on sound evidence and based on very strong gender analysis how women and girls and our boys and our men what's happening with income levels of the education levels all that data put in one place and analyzed to inform what needs to happen is really important I think that's the most important thing is actually about what is the objective of a society and do we accept marginalization or not now if the marginalization looks like a marginalization of women or marginalization of man or marginalization of pastoralist or marginalization of certain ethnic or marginalization of poor people this is actually the question and of course to come back to the girls and the boys I think Hajar was saying something very important that women looks that they are vulnerable or they are classified as vulnerable but this vulnerability is actually your strength in the same time because it makes you resilient and this is why in the school sometimes because of the roles I am myself from Algeria and I grow up in a household where it's clear that if I'm not successful in the school my mother was always telling me if you are bad in the school you get married that was what she was telling me yeah so which I had not so much choices I had to be good at the school and in some places is worse they said how well-educated women is very difficult to get married that's true but it doesn't matter what I mean is that we have to understand the social roles like how you get socialized your education and what are the options and the choices you have and I mean in our societies for instance if my brother is not good in the school he is thinking oh I can go and work in construction or I will migrate I can I mean I at this time I couldn't so this is maybe it explains why this is the lack of options or which makes then the only option you have is this one so you go for it and you get very strong about it maybe just to add that in our own context also you have when you have girls in the past as my mom she was saying you you are there to go to marriage and those who are going to school where my my my brothers they had everything to go to school but the girl when you are 15 or 13 even you have to go to marriage so it really depends on where we are which education we have how have we been educated in this and what the objective of the society in my own context women when the woman have something it's for the family she cares better than the man she knows that she has to to save and she's thinking of the future compared to the husband so it's all depend but I think our society has to be built on values where no one is left behind that that the issue no one should not be left behind and if we have that value then we know how can we make sure our girl and our boy our daughters and our boys are growing up with those values and they are not competing but they are complementary that that is how I see it thanks no I just wanted to say I think maybe a bit of a pessimistic question I don't know but I mean it must have been on all of our minds I mean we're you know we were here together and we see you know we were talking about the extension of the Lima work program and we see a lot of progress and you know that should we should recognize that progress and take you know pride in that and then take sort of strength from that but at the same time I don't know like at least for me kind of the developments that have been you know now with the US election and also what has been happening in a lot of other countries it sort of feels like in terms of especially climate change gender equality we're also like while we are making progress the world is sort of going the other way so yes I'm just wondering I mean we're here together we have you know a really diverse panel and audience as well and I wanted to sort of ask all of you I mean we're all here we all work at different levels in different geographies we have different approaches might not always agree but we are sort of we're working towards the same goal so in this sort of shitty situation that the world is in how do we maintain that momentum of working you know and pushing forward and moving forward in despite all of it what's happening around us I mean do we do we need to change your strategies do we need to how do we collaborate more what do we do to keep going forward finishing but in the past years I mean I have been in this process long enough to see that sometimes it goes more to one side than it goes to the other we have in the past years had very positive movement when it comes to recognizing the gender equality and women rights and human rights are important still when you see how much that is being transformed into dollars and euros investment we heard yesterday from our finance event between one and two percent so if those are the people that embrace it this holy macaroni what is gonna happen with the ones that do not believe in that so if those were the little resources assigned from the believers what is going to happen to us right now and Marcos I think we are terrified we are we diverse women I mean we are African Latinas Asian Indian women working on gender equality and climate change in a world that is transforming to be non-believers we don't know how to hold ourselves at this moment we're terrified we are worried we're worried about what is gonna happen to this process and please if you have an answer because I mean we're even worried about our own personal well-being in the present circumstances so I don't have an answer to that I'm sorry I'm ceiling terrified and in shock and very worried okay well I am going to try to be less pessimistic and less horrified by everything well maybe not less horrified by recent events but trying to take a step back and think about what does this present us where are we who do we know that we work with and what do all of us bring to this in terms of passion and knowledge and experience and influence honestly at the different levels we're working with and how do we turn that into mobilization into real mobilization I feel like you know if we know that the forces are moving against us we're more likely to mobilize and be less complacent and so I would like to take that forward and then think about there was an event an action that the women and gender constituency led I think last week called move the money and so we know right now there's one to two percent right going to gender yeah from the friends but then we know there are trillions of dollars being spent you know in military spending so I think as part of our mobilization we can continue this and we can try to build an understanding I just feel like there's so many people even though they're connected to social media they're just not understanding everything that's happening in the world so if we can build that amplify the voices that we find the useful practical forward thinking voices and figure out how do we move the money how do we make it get to organizations on the ground women's organizations feminist organizations indigenous organizations and really add to that and accounting and regulation of the private sector rather than saying we think corporations are going to solve all the problems because they're innovative you know no there's no regulation what are we doing to make sure that corporations are not on the one hand saying oh you know we have a sustainability plant and on the other hand extracting resources and decimating a community that they think no one may ever hear about so I think that we have this opportunity with our voices and with coming together in our different ways and I would like to think how we can build on that thank you I think for me we in addition to what Leonel has said we need to build partnerships we really need to partner with all the stakeholders we can imagine to to share visions to work on at least a common common vision we need to partner we need to partner with local we need to partner with government we need to partner with donors with private sector all these multi-stakeholders who can be interested or involved in any way or in another way let partner together and see how we can move together that's first the second is build capacities on gender in our own region in Congo basing or in sub Sahara Africa we lack gender expertise we need to train government staff to understand we need to build the capacities of those government those leaders who are in charge of the implementation the implementation or the designing of the policies and the implementation of the programs and everything we need to build capacities on gender so that they understand they have better knowledge what gender is what is what are the impact of gender on all these climate change and related issues for me it's a key in my in my in my experience we started we had we have benefited from the more one of the most important program on gender training was between 1995 and 2000 since then we have not really got that there is a lack of expertise in gender they don't know what gender is let train young girls and young boys on gender the transformation we are looking for is coming from there and built partnership I saw how partnering with traditional chiefs in our countries have gave a have they put higher value on what we have we are doing they were they wrote to the president of the Republic supporting our proposition to change the law the land law and the forest law it's it's very important for me it's really how we have to continue work in partnership and train young generations and government staff on gender that will make a difference Marcus just to add something to that I really don't want to finish the this side event which is full of good experiences from different part of the world in a negative note because of what is happening we know what is happening but I think I will say it again we are resilient we need to build on that we need to focus on that we need to connect with each other and I don't believe that after all what we we reached in this in this time all what is done now that we we need to stop there and get in in a kind of we need to mobilize more that is what I mean and we don't need to focus on the on the negative what is happening but positive on the positive which is also a lot there you know when you think of all these women and in the village who work every day to look for for water for wood for where it's getting more difficult and more difficult and more difficult and they do it every day they try to figure out which with whom how they connect to each other that they make their work less less difficult how they create collective action this is what we need to do also at our level