 Welcome everyone to this session on women's climate leadership. We are very excited to see you all here. I think that we will wait a little bit to welcome additional participants but in the meanwhile I will start sharing some housekeeping messages. First please note that this session is being recorded by IID and that parts of it may be posted on our website at a later stage. Secondly, please do not share the Zoom link to join this meeting on social media. This will help us reduce the risk of Zoom bombing activity. Next slide please, the housekeeping rules. We ask you to please update your name and add your organization and you can do this if you select on participants at the bottom of your screen on the menu and select the rename option. Gentle reminder that if you have any technical difficulties please write to us in the chat box and we will aim to help you. We will use Mentimeter during this event so we can hear your views and learn from you so we will share the link later so be prepared for that. To get started we invite you all to introduce yourself in the chat box and tell us your name, your organization, the place you are connecting from and your favorite food. In my case is Mexican mushroom tacos. Welcome everyone. Next slide please. Next. Great, that one. This session is co-hosted by the Climate Investment Funds, Engine Collaborative and IID in collaboration with the Rights and Resources Initiative, the Asian Development Bank, Hualio Commission and SSP. This session is framed by the CIFS Women's Leadership Initiative in which Engine and IID are collaborating to examine the barriers and enablers of women's climate leadership in just transition, renewable energy integration, climate adaptation, nature-based solutions. In this session we explore what women's climate leadership means in the context of LLA. Next slide please. And given that this is a conference about LLA, this is closely related to LLA principle number two, which advocates for addressing the structural inequalities faced by women, indigenous peoples and other traditionally marginalized groups. And this means ensuring their meaningful participation in leading adaptation decisions and ensuring exclusive streams of adaptation finance to be led by traditionally excluded groups. Next slide please. At the local level, we believe that advancing women's climate leadership also means advancing effective and just climate adaptation. On the other hand, this, we know that the gender, economic and political inequalities that disempower women, such as discrimination, gender-based violence, lack of access to finance, pervasive gender norms are the same structural issues that determine exposure of vulnerability to climate hazards. Next click. So addressing these structural issues on their opinion climate risk means strengthening women's empowerment. Next. Well, at the same time, reducing the climate risk for women and other marginalized groups. During our work, we found evidence that at the grassroots level, meaningful engagement and participation of women in climate decision-making spaces and the leadership, especially of women's organizations, is key to mobilizing and responding quickly for local adaptation, nature-based solutions, disaster risk reduction initiatives. And all of this is essential to address climate risks. And evidence also shows that diversity in decision-making spaces also allows for different perspectives to be included in decision making, in decision-making. And thus, this includes the quality of decision-making, which in terms contribute to locally led adaptation. Next. And finally, climate adaptation finance is key both to support women's climate leadership processes and to support effective LLA. But the logic of women's climate leadership is not only about efficiency, but about rights and justice. Today, we have a fantastic panel of women's leaders from various sectors, from the grassroots, the government community, the donor community, NGOs, and we will hear from them on what they think they are the enablers, barriers and opportunities for advancing women's climate leadership. But before that, we would like to turn our attention to you so that you can tell us what you think women's climate leadership means in the context of locally led adaptation. And for that, I hand over to Mei, who will facilitate the first interactive session. So to you, over to you, Mei. Okay, I trust that you can see my screen. Can we have a thumbs up from everyone? If you can see my screen? Yeah, great. So you may already be familiar with Mentimeter. But if not, please go to menti.com and enter the code in 82589242. And over there, you'll be asked a question, what does women's climate leadership mean to you? And Rakesh, I saw you in the plenary earlier, so you are already well versed on this topic. We'd love to hear what women's climate leadership means to you. You want me to comments? I would suggest that both me and I and another person, we've already said what we wanted to say, I would rather love others love to hear others and then come on whenever it's required to. Yes, let's hear from others. If you could go to menti.com, enter in the code, and then share your perspective on what women's climate leadership means. Go for it. Okay, we have one response. Women's climate leadership means true participation and decision making and not tokenistic. It also means leveraging representation across different spheres. So saying that there's diverse representation from different people of different backgrounds. Women's climate leadership means breaking down barriers and being able to meaningfully participate and influence climate planning and decision making. It means equity fully engaged at all levels with their needs, being heard, acknowledged and met. I'll give you one or two more minutes to finish up this question and then we can move to the next one. It also means challenging the structures that marginalize people based on gender and also other intersectional aspects. It means placing power into the hands of people who often know issues first hand. It also means putting women in the center of adaptation planning and policy making processes. Okay, thank you so much for all these insights. We will discuss them more in the panel. But next we'll go to the next slide where we have the same exercise. What do you think are the barriers to women's climate leadership in your country or the area of work that you are involved in? Give you a few minutes to think about the barriers of women's climate leadership. We have patriarchy, resources, social and cultural norms, gender stereotypes, discrimination. So panelists, I hope you're taking notes since you'll be reflecting on these capitalism as well. Okay, give you one more minute and then we can move to the next question. Cultural norms is emerging as a major barrier. Excellent. Let's move to the next slide. If I may be permitted, just two more simple points that we discussed in our lack of education and lack of opportunities is one of the major barriers. Yes, and I think lack of resources is the broader category that relates to education as well. Thank you so much. Okay, so let's talk about the enablers of women's climate leadership. Give you all a few minutes. Political will. If there is political will, it can be a big enabler of women's climate leadership. There's also faith in legal and policy frameworks or formal rules to increase women's climate leadership, flexible finance. I'd love to unpack some of these more from all of you. We'll have an interactive section in the in the end. So love to hear what you are all thinking with these words. Community buying, balancing household chores. Excellent. And we have one final slide. In your perspective, what is needed to strengthen women's climate leadership for locally led adaptation in your country or area of work? So this is bringing together women's climate leadership and LLA, local led adaptation, which is at the heart of CBA. What do you think is needed to strengthen women's climate leadership for locally led adaptation? Oh, I'm sorry. That was supposed to be the last question. So I'll continue to let you all think about it. And then we'll come back to it at the end of the end of the session. Sorry about that. So thank you very much for participating. And I will now hand over to Nina to talk about women's climate leadership and examples. Sorry, I'm trying to figure out, can you see my my PowerPoint? Yes, we can. Great. It's not it's not shared full screen though. It's not a full screen. Sorry. How do we do this? Well, I mean, it is just one slide. But so thank you so much for for forgiving me the floor and for inviting CIF to be the co host of this event. And we're really excited to be able to interact with such a diverse group of participants, focusing specifically on LLA principles and how in connection with the LLA principles, we can think of women climate leadership. Climate Investment Funds is a facility that is working with multilateral development banks with the six, six major multilateral development banks, and has been over the years investing very significantly both in mitigation and adaptation projects. And in our work, we try to make sure that all of those investments have a focus on on gender. In the beginning, if we look back at the very early projects at the beginning of our work, the focus was more on gender informed approaches, gender informed projects. So we're making sure that gender is taken into account and that gender requirements are addressed and that there are some targets. And that was kind of the the ambition at that level. Gradually, we had started to shift the focus more significantly on on making sure that the projects are gender responsive. So digging deeper at the level of the analysis before the project is even designed to identify what are the specific needs that women face in relationship to this either large infrastructure project or a project that is focusing on renewable energy or on on resilient agriculture, where where are women accessing those services differently? And what can be done in order to make sure that their access to to them is facilitated? So we're looking at access to markets, access to land and resources and access to services. And within within those categories, designing various on the ground activities to to to make sure that equality of access between men and women was facilitated with the project activities as much as it was possible. But in the in the last few years, we've realized that this this is also not not enough that without addressing structural, institutional and normative barriers to equality. Those type of activities are kind of like a band aid, but they're not really changing the systems that that create their inequalities. And we have raised our ambition to ensure that that projects that SIP is supporting our gender transformative. We fully acknowledge that it's not always possible in the context of our work. And that also it is still important to continue working and to ensure that there is a level of gender informed gender responsive elements and activities and the projects. But whenever possible, we try to to now look at what are the structural reforms that could also be addressed directly and directly with the project activities, as well as the theme that we're discussing today, significantly, is the voice and agency and how through support to which kind of governance mechanisms and what what what activities can be implemented to to really make sure that that that women play more leadership role. So in the context of this work, one of the activities that we're doing is our collaboration with IAD and and gender collaborative to come up with a knowledge product that would combine both kind of really conceptual and an academic approach to to really try to understand it on on rather deep level. What are the barriers? What are the opportunities for women climate leadership? And well, not only in general, but really with with application to specific sectors, how how is it playing out differently in different sectors? What are the regional regional specifics? And the purpose of this knowledge product is not to just inform the the broader debate, but we also see a very applied use for it as as over the past two years, SIF, SIF launched a number of new programs. Specifically, there's a program on accelerated coal transitions, program on renewable energy integration, we're just in the final launch stage with the nature based solution program, both the old programs, several of the old programs are also continuing to run. And we're trying to come up with very applied recommendations that can be taking directly into the design of the new project. So this is our ambition and we see the session is also one of the one of the sources of information that from this conversation with the panelists, but also with the audience through the engagement, we can we can get some some some really exciting ideas. We also will have a chance to apply some of those ideas through a particular grant mechanism that that we designed for one of the one of the new programs, the accelerated coal transitions program. We we have a grant mechanism that is called wallcott women led coal transitions, where we will be working with our implementing partners, the multilateral development banks to develop models for channeling the sub these grant this grant funding, finding formats for channeling the funding down to the local level to the local women groups and putting them actually in the driver's seat in deciding how this funding is used. And that's what we see quite innovative. Again, we hope that the discussion today will inform this work going forward. So my speech mostly focused on on going forward on our ambition. However, and although kind of formally we've only been focusing on gender transformative approach in the last few years, if we look back at our portfolio of projects, we can actually find some interesting examples where we've had some successes with it. There are several programs that that that come to mind, particularly our forest investment program FIP that has a direct grant mechanism that works with indigenous communities, but has quite a significant focus on gender with within it. And we have some really interesting stories from that. But I wanted to invite my colleague Irini to speak specifically about another program that she's currently leading kind of evaluation or a knowledge product, really spotting specific examples of how broader investments under the program has has led to supporting women leadership agenda. So over to Irini. Thank you. Thank you, Nina. And thank you for inviting me. Nice to see everyone here. So yes, as Nina mentioned, we are putting currently together a knowledge product focusing on women's climate leadership for the pilot program for climate resilience, our PPCR portfolio, which focuses on climate resilience. So the PPCR is at a mature stage of implementation. And for the last two, three years, we've been drawing lessons learned and good practices from our portfolio based on specific themes. This learning and knowledge is captured under our Knowledge for Resilience series. And so far, we focused on resilient climate resilient infrastructure, weather and climate information services and local stakeholder engagement. And as Nina mentioned, right now, we're collaborating with the gender team to focus on women's climate leadership. So from our research and data collection, we are finding that PPCR facilitates and promotes women's leadership in climate action, primarily in three ways, which are very interrelated and connected to what we've heard so far. So the first one is enhancing women's access to an ownership of assets, whether these are financial land technologies. The second one is enhancing women's economic empowerment and capabilities through employment, training and education. And the third one is elevating women's agency and voice with informal and informal governance structures by increasing women's participation and representation in planning and decision making bodies. So based on PPCR's experience and the knowledge product that we're putting together, some early findings and specific examples emerge. So I'm briefly going to highlight three high level findings and specific examples that show how PPCR is promoting women's climate leadership. So the first one is we're finding that enhancing women's access to finance for climate resilient activities is a key enabler for resilient livelihoods and economic empowerment, which in turn can promote women's climate leadership. In St. Lucia, for example, the PPCR financed climate adaptation financing facility has enabled households and businesses to access concessional finance for building climate resilience of their assets and diversifying their livelihoods. This facility is gender, quite gender responsive, serving the needs of both men and women. And actually as of June 2022, the share of female subloan borrowers is 60 percent against the 25 percent target. Similarly in Tajikistan, we have another climate adaptation financing facility that provides finance to residents, farmers and small businesses. About a third of the borrowers are women. And women have actually reported social and economic improvements from accessing loans for climate resilient activities in the areas of reduced time poverty, increased agricultural productivity, and also increasing their ability to influence financial decisions on assets and equipment. And in Zambia, another example, the PPCR has approved 96 adaptation subgrants for women individual champions. And these subgrants, this access to additional financing is actually improving women's livelihood, increasing their incomes and advancing their decision making and leadership. I believe we'll hear more from Chitembo about the Zambia experience. In terms of the second finding that relates to improving access to education, training, skills development and employment for in climate related fields, we are finding that this is another key enabler of women's climate leadership. And a couple of examples emerge here as well. So for instance, through a PPCR project in Cambodia, women's knowledge and capacity for community based disaster risk management has enabled women to lead and implement disaster risk management initiatives on the ground at community level, which is enhancing their protection and preparedness against floods and droughts, improving agricultural productivity, increasing their incomes and enhancing their resilient livelihoods. And we are finding that their participation in community based disaster risk management has also led to the recognition of the role in resilience and adaptation and starting to change gender relations. In Nepal, the PPCR project is promoting women's educational attainment, where a third of the recipients of the scholarship that the project provided were women for tertiary level studies. And another really good example to highlight here is the Niger, where the project provided PPCR projects provided hands on technical training to women to ensure the uptake of climate resilient technologies. And in this case, drip irrigation technology. And this project we found it basically allowed women to increase their incomes through improved yields, ability to farm during the dry season and a higher number of cropping cycles. And in terms of our last high level finding, the last team here, which pertains to elevated agency and voice within formal and informal governance structures, we are actually finding that the PPCR has been having some gender transformative results in this aspect. And a key finding here is that setting specific targets for women's representation in community, local or national planning and decision making bodies can actually empower them and increase the benefits they accrue from project activities. So to conclude here, a couple of examples to highlight the climate financing facility in Tajikistan is actually starting to shift gender and social norms as the community is starting to recognize the benefits of women having access to finance for climate resilience and actually women taking on leadership role for climate resilience and adaptation initiatives. In Cambodia, PPCR has improving women's representation in community governance structures, as well as women's participation in planning resources and in planning processes. And this has led to the consideration of women's needs in project design and implementation. And lastly, in Niger, again, another good example, the PPCR actually used a gender sensitive approach to increase women's access to drip irrigation technology. And we found that women were actually among the early adopters of this new irrigation systems. And this had as a consequence, these investments are also starting to shift the social dynamics and easing gender gaps by showing the value that women can bring in climate resilience and adaptation. So these are just a few examples that we're finding and that I wanted to highlight. And just to let you know that this knowledge product is in the works and is forthcoming. So that's it from my side over to Nina or whoever is taking the agenda forward. Thank you. Thank you so much, Nina and Irini, for sharing your insights and these examples. They're really exciting and really set the scene for an exciting discussion with our panelists. So panelists, can I ask you to turn on your cameras? As Karen mentioned before, we have an exciting lineup of panelists that have represented a range of different perspectives on women's climate leadership and can share a number of different examples as well. So, panelists, I will ask you to introduce yourself. So first, can I call on Naseem? Would you like to introduce yourself first? Not sure if you're still there, Naseem? We can come back to you. Omaria, may I ask you to introduce yourself? Yeah, thank you. Hello, everybody. Good morning from Ithaca, New York, United States, and Omaira Bolaños, and originally from Colombia, but based here in the United States, and work with the Rights and Resources Initiative, which is a global coalition that works towards securing their collective tenure rights of Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local community, and focusing on the rights of women in collective tenure. So we have a large program that we will share later on that. Thanks. Thank you. Chotembo, please go ahead. Hello, everyone, and thanks for inviting me to this. I'm a development planner by profession and by practice, working for over 15 years in the development space, very interested in emerging issues, such as climate change, gender issues, the youth and population dynamics of the influence development outcomes. I will ensure that that takes into place and that overriding the development planning systems, especially for developing countries, that has been my focus for much of my career, and much more now focused on climate change the past six or seven years now, resilience, building and adaptation to be nice to have the discussions this afternoon and then morning or evening somewhere else. Thank you. Hello. Hello. Good evening. Yes, I can hear you the same. Go ahead. Hello. Yes. This is Naseem from from India. So I'm Sikshen Priya, and I am a member of VIRU Commission, and we are we are working with women farmers in India, which is across seven states of India. Women farmers, all women farmers are closely working on the climate and agriculture resilience for food security and climate adaptation. And my my first personally, I'm involved with Sikshen Priya in last twenty nine years to empower women as a leader for their community change. So. So. Here, I'm going to share my experience with the women leaders, how they are involved in their communities and how how we are working for the resilience building in our community. Thank you. Thank you very much, Naseem. And last but not least, Sony. Hi, my name is Zonabel Woods. I'm a social development specialist with the Asian Development Bank. My work focuses mostly on the intersection between gender and climate change. I've been working on this issue first on women's rights within sort of environment and sustainable development. And that has obviously for obvious reasons evolved into working more on the intersection between climate change and and gender. At ADB, we work quite substantively on mainstreaming gender. And we have a target of 75 percent of of all our projects have to be gender mainstream. So I'll be talking a little bit about that later over to you. Excellent. Thank you all for your introduction. So let's just jump into it. The first question for you, panelists, is to reflect on the comments about women's climate leadership that came up. And I'd love you to reflect on how these comments from the audience relate to your own conceptualisation of women's climate leadership. So can I start with Amira, please? Sure. Thank you. Women's climate leadership, what it means to me, I think many of the comments in here represent part of what we are working on and precisely means to be part, fully part of the discussions, fully part of decision making and in the planning, designing on different type of initiatives at the territorial level, national or international level addressing climate change. I think one of the main issues to address is that women's across the world, I think, as trying to to be recognized as a peer, as a magic of change and as a political actor that has a voice, their own perspective and roles that are critical to address climate change, adaptation, climate change, mitigation, resilience. And across the world, women has been demonstrating that has been at the front line and has been addressing the most critical moments and just to remind all of us that we just getting out of getting out of the global pandemic, COVID-19 and at the territorial level, women were at the front line addressing all the additional complications that the COVID brought besides addressing resilience to address the pandemic, bringing back their traditional knowledge on medicines, on food sovereignty and resilience to be able to address the accumulations of the different hardship that communities were suffering and are still trying to overcome and women's roles and all these phases of pressures and their capacity to continue mobilizing, continue contributing with their roles in the local economies are still being a base for addressing and overcoming the difficult difficult situations. So I repeat, women need to be seen as a peer in all discussions of climate change, agents of change and as a political actor, peace of mind, everybody else. Thank you so much for such a rich insight into women's climate leadership. Chitembo, would you like to reflect on this as well? Yes, and thank you so much. Picking it up from where Umayyar has said, has mentioned when we understand and appreciate who is most affected by climate change, its impacts, the shocks that come with it. It's the woman at the center of this all. When you consider the effect it has at household food security, when you consider the effects of climate change for the girl child to go to school or for the boy child to to be able to attend to his chores. It's the women who are most heavily affected by that. And they are the ones that. It's it's somehow natural that the women always have to look out for the other person. Not that I'm saying the men don't do that, but the women are more quickly reactive, trying to be proactive. And so if we leave them out in addressing the issues of climate change, if they are put on the sidelines or if they are put on the way where you feel sympathetic towards them in addressing issues of climate change, then definitely we can't see the results that we intend to see as a global community towards enhancing towards responding to climate change. Hence, when I saw these reflections coming from the audience, it's it's great to find to know that we're all sort of coming to the center, realizing they really need for ensuring there's equity and, of course, sustainability, because if we leave out the women who are most affected, decisions are made on their behalf on what tends to be done or how that should be done, then we don't expect the sustainability in the interventions that are going to be put in place. So this is is is good. It's we need to all be deliberate and intentional about it, that the women are given the space to lead. And there are several examples that we can share that have happened on the programs that have been working on, especially the PPCR program right here in Zambia, where women have taken charge of their own destiny around the climate shock beyond what were given as the investments to address the shocks that they perceived around the risk planning that they did. They said, we need to go into these interventions. We found that those activities, those sub-projects that were funded in that manner, have expanded beyond the initial submission. They are they are growing. Tenbo, I might come back to you on that really successful case about demonstrating a point about sustainability, which you're making. So we put some great things already, Amaria talking about the roles, what roles that women should have as peers, as political leaders. Chutembo, making a point about sustainability, that we need sustained investment in women and how they can continue on if we give them the the tools to. So can I come to you, Zona Beb, to reflect quickly on these questions around women's climate leadership? Sure, just very quickly, I won't repeat what has already been said, which I think are all very important points. But, you know, quite quite succinctly, I think if we if we look at women's climate leadership, that's four billion solutions that we're talking about. And so, you know, these four billion women on the planet at the moment could bring innovation, they can bring skills that they already have, you know, which really sort of links back to what Omair was talking about in terms of women at the community level, indigenous women, there's a lot of traditional knowledge there already that we should be using to address the climate crisis. I think, you know, we are in a crisis and therefore we really need everyone's talent and contributions. And so women's climate leadership is essential for those solutions. And I think finally we know and there's plenty of data that talks about how with women's involvement we get better development outcomes. And so if what we're looking for is building resilience, then I think women are critical and women's climate leadership is critical for that. I'll stop there. Over to you. Thank you, Zoni. We need an all hands on deck approach, a whole of society response so we cannot leave women behind. Thank you for that point. And Naseem, over to you. Oh, for me, women's leadership, women's climate leadership means women are at the forefront of community and they are the in charge of their own communities. So here, all the time women are demonstrated through their organizing, how they are supporting to the one side, they are supporting to their community to to safeguard their community. And on the other hand, they are trying to come back with the natural climate ease and day to day climate climate related issues in their community. So they are champion. They know how to deal these and because of the only strength they they are organized and they are always trying to innovate themselves to develop innovative practices in their community. As my other colleagues and other friends say for food security, women are responsible for all the all their family responsibility providing the food, safeguarding their their family, like in a example, I can say without women like loss of farmers in our area doing farmers suicide because they lost their agricultural income. But women are there who are standing in behind the behind their families and they are keep doing their work and even they are finding the new solution by using their traditional knowledge how to increase the agricultural income because most of the climate effect comes on the agriculture and when the agriculture losses, the whole family and the community get destroyed. So here women are the safeguard for their community. So we have to we see the power there. But if we can involve them as a as a equal partner when we are planning the climate resilience approach or climate. So we have to see women as a equal partner in their community and then only we can reach out to the last mile and the unreachable community. So I will stop here. Thank you so much, Naseem. You're pointing out that women are already the backbone of many communities. Providing not only financial livelihoods, but also psychological, as you're saying, they are supporting people from who are undergoing severe stress from loss of livelihoods because of climate change. So, yes, now we started talking a little bit about some of the pressures that women face. Let's talk more about what the barriers are that women face in their leadership on climate actions. So I'll start with you, Maria. What do you think of the barriers to women's climate leadership? Thank you. I think among all women in the world, when we are talking about indigenous women, women from local communities or women from Afro-descendant communities in the case of Latin America, we can make a big difference from the rest of us. And just to say that women from these ethnic groups experience a broad and multi-faceted and complex spectrum of mutual reinforced and systemic human rights violations. All these act together to even limit their cell determination and control of the natural resources and control over the way they interact and have a voice. And all this is reinforced by structures of many forms of discrimination and marginalization based on gender, class, ethnicity, race, origin, customs and socioeconomic status. I think when we address climate change action, we need to differentiate all women across the world with ethnic groups. And we need to also take into account that indigenous Afro-descendant local community and in general women from the rural area comprise more than half of the 2.5 billion people that live in the rural areas and depends on the forest and community lands for the livelihood, food security, energy, traditional medicines and cultural and religious traditions. And we know that women take primary responsibility for preserving land and resources of communities without enjoying the legal structures that their male counterpart has to own and manage land from what they really do. And women legally own less than 20% of the world's agricultural lands across the world, even though they help to manage the 50% under the control of community across the world in different type of communities. And climate change as we know reinforces gender inequalities. It affects differently men and women, depending on their role, responsibilities and status in different communities, the way women is accepted and not as a peer, as a political leader in the community. And as women, as climate change affects livelihoods and systems, food systems, it affects directly women that are in charge of those systems for providing not only for the families, for the whole community and also limited access and made more difficult access to land and resources, water, forests and affect their roles in their communities so this means that women are being affected by the role that they are already pledging but has not been recognized in terms of their contributions to adaptations and resilience to the many effects of the climate change. And so that's why we need to include gender climate adaptation initiatives with a gender lens focuses on the rights of women, not only gender, in order to use their knowledge, put in place their knowledge, recognizing their contribution. And another big idea where we are working with communities across Africa, Asia, Latin America is in the huge gap in the funding to women and direct funding to women lead initiatives, local economies, food security organizations and there are little record on how women has been receiving funding. Previous research informed that women across organizations without differentiating between indigenous and for the same number of communities and the rest of women receive less than 1%, 1% of all recorded human rights global funding despite then using managing and conserving a community territories that comprise over 50% of the lands that communities across the world are managing. So there is a big need for helping to lower this barrier to overcome this barrier and one of them means supporting communities on the ground, women groups, women associations, women network that are working without any support or very little support from stone organizations and they are working on critical issues that are helping to maintain the health of the planet, the health of the communities and access to different resources without being recognized and supported directly. Thank you, Maria. You have covered so many different issues that I think are actually reflected already in the audience question as well in the responses on land rights, lack of recognition and delivered some really harrowed statistics about the ownership of land that women have actual control and access to. So can we go now to Naseem? You spoke earlier about the women as the backbone to communities. Now, what do you think are the barriers that women face? Yes. Women are backbone of the community and their family but still there are a lot of barriers like the barriers starts from their own family because we have a lot of cultural norms and the priorities, women get least prioritized in their own family so they have to struggle, fight and create their own image. So here in my experience when we provided the opportunity to women to come out from their own families and organize into the self-help groups or the agriculture groups where they can demonstrate their potential what they have as women to fulfill the family needs by demonstrating economic empowerment of women. Women are involved into the economic activities so that where they start, they created path to come out from their family. So they are overcome the family barriers but still there are a lot of barriers for women at policy level because there are policies as Nina said but the policies are not gender responsive. Most of the time we see women are not having land access they are not having land ownership on their names so they can't go to any bank or any access to any government schemes but all the policies mainly in agriculture, if you can see agriculture as a sector where women stand as a laborer still they are doing 80% of the work in the agriculture sector so this is the biggest area where we have to think and act for the women how we can bring women into the centre of the agriculture work to address the climate issues because women are not having any access for finance flexible finance very far away from the women but women are not having the normal access to finance women are not having the access to technology now the whole world is talking about the digital literacy digital technology all these things but women are always kept behind for that whatever the support we are getting it is very few if the policy will provide that support to the women about the finance, about the technology about the markets even in the market space also men are like male dominated spaces are there women enabling markets are not there and alternative business models are not there where women farmers can go and they can sell their produce so climate one side they are facing a lot of barriers from the climate and other side policy programs and the culture and financial mechanisms are keeping them behind still they are doing their best to make themselves visible in the community I think I will stop thanks so much Naseem for pointing out that there are both explicit and implicit barriers to women at different levels of society so in the market in policy in the government and at home women face implicit barriers and there are these in turn turn into explicit barriers which are policies that are limiting for women as Amariya pointed out earlier these are issues around land ownership as well where women don't have access so can I come to you now Zoni to maybe turn the table a little bit and talk about the enablers of women's leadership based on your experience okay sure but you know there's a couple of things I just wanted to just go back to a few points that were made in the previous slide that I think are really important to underline one of them is that we have limited data so I think what my previous colleagues were talking about generally the lack of understanding of women's real role in agriculture the issues of intersectionality that were brought up by Amariya I think these are really important and this is where as boring as it is to talk about data I think that one of the biggest barriers is that we have really limited understanding of how climate change is affecting women and so when we're trying to make a case with policymakers with governments with other colleagues even working on environment or climate change we don't necessarily always and with donors we don't necessarily always have the data to support what we're saying and a lot of times it's still kind of anecdotal and so I think that's a really key barrier that we're starting to overcome in terms of how we look at farmers it's always about the data mostly around the male farmer and we don't quite understand sort of women's roles in agriculture or value chains it's the same thing with fishing and so on so I think data is really important others talked about social and cultural norms and I just wanted to say we have a barrier particularly in the transition to green economies and blue economies we have a very real labor market segregation where women are not equally participating in the labor market and in Asia and the Pacific which is the region that I work on I mean aside from the fact that we have women disproportionately represented in the informal sector we are a region where women's labor market participation has actually been going down and so when you put that again sort of the fact that we are undergoing sort of a green transition where we need women to be entering into the renewable energy related careers for example where we need STEM education for girls that is a big barrier for us and then on this slide also a few people put access to resources and I think this is also when we were talking about climate finance in particular it's about really looking at how much of climate finance is actually going to benefit women and girls directly and OECD and Oxfam have done some research on this and they looked at the percentage of OECD DAC resources the climate finance that was actually going to women and I think it was like I don't have the numbers off the top of my head but I think it was less than then I think 7% or something like that maybe even 4% but not significant amounts and this is gender mainstreamed and then the the amount of resources that is actually of climate finance that is going to benefit women and girls and the number of organizations is even less it's not even 1% so I think we have a huge issue with the amount of resources that are being put at women's hands now you asked me about the enablers and I think those are some of the enablers you know we actually need to have gender responsive climate finance at all levels and so that means there will be transformational changes to women's lives that will directly invest in women not and not just sort of consider sort of gender mainstreaming but actually make those resources intentionally dedicated to getting to women at the community level I think that's really important we've heard how you know critical the role is building resilience at the community level so we need to be getting those resources into community women's hands and another enabler as has been mentioned as a barrier but we still have a lot of work to do around legal frameworks, laws and policies to ensure that they are gender responsive and that they are informed by the needs that women have so whether it's disaster risk management laws, whether it's agricultural policies and you know starting from the ensuring that national adaptation plans national disaster programs and other sort of policies that fall under climate change that they are actually gender mainstream gender informed and that women have been part of the decision making process in getting to these plans so I think in terms of enablers you know it is really the flip side working on the flip side of all the the different barriers that we have mentioned and I think you know something that doesn't get mentioned very much but I think it's also important to bring up here is the addressing the role that women have the multiple roles and care responsibilities so you know as countries are transitioning to green economies why can't childcare policies also be addressed and seen within the context of how important they are as an enabler for women to really participate in both green and blue economies in addressing climate change and finally sort of linked to that I think one of the other issues that is critical is looking at our education systems and really working with the education system so that we have climate change education where young people both boys and girls grow up with some of those sort of critical skills that will be needed for addressing the climate crisis as well as incorporating sort of principles of broadly equality and justice but more importantly gender equality education system which I think would go a long way in helping young people confront the climate crisis so I'll stop there thank you thank you Zoni for really helping us think that yes definitely we need to think of the barriers when we think about the enablers because the flip side is of the barriers are the enablers and vice versa so Chutembo I know you started off giving us an example when you spoke to us earlier so let me come back to you on talking about the enablers or the barriers whichever you want to thanks and yeah I totally agree with what my other colleagues have since spoken about both the barriers and the enablers and listening to the many barriers you start wondering whether we are doing much already or we need to do a little bit much more to unlock women leadership in climate change there are so many barriers that have been mentioned so I want to start it from a government perspective on having recognized the barriers as they have been put out this in this session it takes first at constitutional level to recognize the role of women in general development because if that hasn't been taken care of in any particular nation it's very difficult to come and recognize that when we start discussing climate change and how the gender issues come into that in the Zambian case we have the constitution that provides for women effective participation in development and also to be given decisions the level positions of decision making not only just in government but also quasi-government institutions and everything that the government is working on and or incidental to so that gave opportunity when it came to ensuring that our response to climate change is gender responsive not taking away the fact that there's still a lot more work to be done because of the high literacy levels in the rural areas there's still access to former education facilities but that is a plus because it has given room for us to invest in the women provided that there's that legal framework that provides for that and then the climate change policy in Zambia did identify the case sectors that are affected by climate change and of course you find this water this land this forest and earlier on Nassim was speaking on how women in the agrarian land and they don't have access to land so that complication that makes us of access to capital resources access to finances comes up as you are implementing climate change so that recognition in the policy on climate change makes us move beyond how do we address the effects of women on climate change taking into consideration their limitations due to not having land at all but again we run back to the laws that provide for women when any land parcels of land have been given out the government of Zambia has made a deliberate policy to say 30% of any land that has been given out should be reserved for women only so there is room there and that means again they will still get access around the 70% that remains for any other sectors at all so there is need for being deliberate and being intentional in ensuring that the women have got space in decision making that the women have got space in championing actions around climate change in any development space and we went further as a country to also bridge the gap between what at the time those just agenda policy and then the climate change policy came in place so how do we ensure that what these two policies are talking about is effected on the ground takes shape takes root and starts being implemented everywhere else climate change and climate change agenda action plan that brings all these together to say how then do we get to do this it explains the actions it explains the hows how do we get the women to do and for us that is what gave room and authority to give the women champions access to financing which is very difficult if it was just left alone so you have these women groups that get access to financing but don't just give them financing so you look at some of those barriers mentioned like they have limited access to land so in accessing that financing you link it say if I want to give you financing where are you going to undertake your investments or do it in area B, X and Y but do you have land rights to that area no we don't okay fine so if you don't have can we get the application and then work through the locals reach and the traditional leadership gets on board to make that land be accessible to the women so they get to have access to this land not just at the time that they're making the investments through this financing but that's a lifetime access to land so in providing the access to the funding you also ensure that some of the barriers such as lack of access to land which is critical decision making because it's just a women's group now they're able to make their own decisions and at times it's very interesting you find that they hoped in one or two men and the reason being is there are certain hard jobs that women can do so we hope that in these two men they'll be doing much of the tilling because we can do it as women or it will take us much longer time to take away much of our other time we need to do other things so they can co-opt in one or two which we found very interesting to say how can the men now be able to wait alongside the amount of women and then digest to the two of them so you're starting this transformation happening in our in our societies because of the being delivered and being intentional about addressing the barriers of women in a play mission through creating the enabling environment in that that the holistic support to two women in in climate leadership is very critical so as I've mentioned about they have access to finance they have got access to to land now but so what do we do with these women who've never been able culturally been able to lead themselves and be able to voice out or hold right this so you bring in financial literacy you bring in group management dynamics you you bring in skills that they start opening up their minds so there's so much that we can do with our lives and grow but these are niches which are being done and these needs to expand and grow them and tell the story so that we build on them to ensure that everything that is being done is not only climate responsive but also gender responsive I'll have to ask you to wrap up since we only have one minute left yeah so all in all is having the I'll conclude by saying that having an enabling policy and legal framework supported by good political will ensures that climate women climate leadership is championed so it helps to unlock the barriers that's what we mean to most of that thank you okay thank you everyone for such a rich discussion we are out of time right now but we have covered so many different things from different barriers in different contexts to success stories as Chitembo was demonstrating a policy that is actually gender considerate and how that can enable women's climate leadership so we have an interactive section now which is going to involve the audience so audience get your thinking hats ready and I'll hand over now to Emma and thank you again panellists for such amazing insights and really hope that we can talk together again sometime thanks very much May and I hope everyone will forgive me not turning my camera on I'm joining from South Africa and alcohol transition is certainly not advanced enough and we're currently experiencing six hours of load shedding a day so I'm hot spotting so we won't test my bandwidth to try and add my video as well Catherine has reshared the meant me to link and should be sharing screen shortly there we go for our kind of closing question which is going to the audience which is any perspective what is needed to strengthen women's climate leadership for local in your country or area of work a few people already completed this when this came up earlier but for those of you who didn't or maybe the panel discussion has prompted additional thoughts or reflections that you'd like to add and we'll invite you to pop those in now and we're a bit tight on time but may even be able to invite some audience members to to share a bit more as well by unmuting themselves I see what's been included already is intentional finance formalizing roles and focus intentional finance I think as well understood but in terms of formalizing roles I wonder if that is reflecting perhaps those unrecognized and unvalued roles that women often play in many of these landscapes and in households and communities but whoever added that if you do want to elaborate more on that please do go ahead and similarly focus I can perhaps read into that and assume that that's referring to having that kind of dedicated visibility and attention on women's climate leadership including those elements as we all know the risk of being gender neutral is ending up being gender blind and it's even in the best of conditions always good to make sure that we are including that recognition and that consideration of men and women's roles within these different spaces is it meant to be to link working I'm not seeing any new additions coming up but I can make oh there's one in the chat thank you David is to support intentional policies support women's roles and voices great one obviously those formal institutions are very important advocate for women's agency another great one coming through is there anyone that would like to unmute themselves and speak more to the point that they've raised or even to reflect on anything that the panelists raised the discussions about barriers and enablers or perhaps to share briefly a particular case or instance in their own communities organizations that that might be worth sharing now please please do go ahead yeah thank you this is some Aida Volanos and I wanted to share something and I'm gonna paste in the chat as a way to support and break the bias against women's finance there is a global initiative among indigenous Afro-descendant and local community women across the world that are already supporting and making a call to climate finance to ensure that indigenous Afro-descendant and local community women are not behind behind in the promises that has been done in the COP26 in the finance promises to indigenous communities across the world and there is a call to action defined by 41 organizations across the world led by women and that are defining what are the ideas where donors should pay attention to fund women's efforts on the ground and what are the issues that the donor community and government needs to adjust change to make funding available to indigenous Afro-descendant and local community women and among all that I just want to highlight one is to allocate dedicated funds to secure women's access, ownership of land for the resources, water and the decision making access, ensure funding to allow women to prepare for dialects with governments, donors and climate change scenarios to bring their knowledge and perspective and general call for donors to ensure that the compliance with the standards accountability and transparency of governments on the funding that they are providing to governments, ensure compliances to the promises are achieving gender equity and women's representation and support and conscience to donors also conscience efforts to distribute information about funding opportunities to indigenous Afro-descendant and local communities women that have little access to information sometimes it goes to certain groups but not all and to ensure the legal and administrative mechanisms are simplified that means easy to follow, not so complicated to understand and to make effective funding opportunities to reach women. I have pasted in the link information and feel free to contact us at rice and resources initiative for this information we were pretty much going to launch this at the COP and the formalization of the network that will try to speak at different scenarios that need to fund women's organizations women's groups and associations and the way indicating some ways to do it thank you. Thank you very much Amara and we obviously recognize that the intersectionality is obviously a crucial aspect in any kind of discussions of women's climate leadership both in terms of diversity of indigeneity and race and culture and caste and the like as well as even going to within gender diversity itself I see there's some additional comments in the chat. Unfortunately we've run out of time but there are some sharing of links and the like I see Azane has also shared some more information about the ADB's community resilience partnership program and I think we'll be able to share those links as well in a wrap up email I see a few more people have added to shift gender stereotypes, formalize social dialogues and strengthening women's organizations before we close we're going to add one more Mentimeter that will trigger now but we won't be sharing the results on this page but it's essentially just a way for us to capture your information if you're interested in continuing to engage in the women's climate leadership initiative you can pop your email in there and if you're not active on the Mentimeter link you're also welcome in touch with us directly and we can make sure that you're included in any follow up consultations as well as being notified when those knowledge products have been released we also invite you to if you have any additional submissions or thoughts or reflections from the session please feel free to send those on to us as we refine and revise that research and those knowledge products I'm going to hand over now Nina to close us off again thank you all for joining us Nina over to you Well thank you so much colleagues this was really a very engaging discussion with a lot of very practical points for going forward and as we started in the beginning saying that we feel that this session is not just a discussion in general but a very direct contribution to the knowledge product that we're working on and that we will also be using the findings of this knowledge product for very actionable recommendation for the investment project so definitely the subject of how to get that finance down to the local level and empower women to be driving the decisions to be prepared to be more actively engaged seem to be like a theme that was going across all the discussions and looking forward to really continuing engagement on that Thank you Nina and thank you everyone for joining this session I don't know if the panellists have final words to close and grab up this session and if not then we invite you all Naseem I see your microphone I want to say like when we are looking at women's leadership in climate change we should not look women as a victim we should see women as equal partner of the climate change issues to tackle climate change at the community level and we have to invest them because without investment we can't see the results so I invite all the donors all the partners and policy makers they should invest into the women in women's groups and especially grassroots women because they are at the forefront of their communities and provide them flexible financing mechanisms in their hands and invite them as equal partners at the policy design and implementation so thank you Thank you Naseem Equal partnerships, flexible financing, a developing decision making to the grassroots level I cannot find better words to close and grab up this session so thank you very much everyone for joining and keep engaging in other CBA sessions if you do want to keep engaging in this initiative please share your email with us and we will add you to our list of interested participants and stakeholders and thank you again for joining