 So welcome to the gender and intersectionality session. The session is co-hosted by IID and women climate centers international. But before we start, I want to hand over to Nora to take us through admin issues on the tech side especially. And then we'll continue. So Nora, Nisi, over to you. Thank you, Tracy. As Tracy mentioned, I'm just going to go over a few housekeeping rules. It shouldn't take too long. So I just want to let you know that the Zoom meeting is being recorded. And we may make parts of it available on our website at a later date. We've also taken security precautions to discourage uninvited participants from joining the meeting. So if you could not share the link on social media, that would be great. This is a place where people you can take the link and zoom bomb the event. And for the best meeting experience, we encourage that you close all non-essential applications on your device, such as Skype or Teams, so that they don't distract you. Many of you probably already know how to use Zoom, but I'm just going to go through some of the functions. You will have a mute and unmute button. If you click this, it'll mute you and unmute you. We encourage you to please only have your unmute off if you're actively speaking or at the event. Otherwise, please keep yourself muted as to avoid too much background noise. You can share your webcam video if you choose. We'd love to see everyone's faces. However, if you're experiencing connection problems, then you should try turning your video off as sometimes that helps. You can use the chat that you will find the chat link just between participants and share screen where you can enter your comments and questions. If you have any technical issues with Zoom, my name is Nora, just send me a message and I will try to help you out as best as possible. And finally, you can do reactions. You can do the like and dislike icons as a quick reaction. You can also update your name to let us know who you are and your organization. If you go to the participants button below, select more and rename, then you can rename yourself. Finally, a reminder that IID again is recording the meeting. And if you have technical difficulties to please just message me directly via the chat box. And that is all and over to you, Tracy. Thank you very much, Nora. So welcome once again for those just joining us. Gender and intersectionality are some of the key things that we thought would look at today. They involve difficult conversation. And in the previous CBA's gender has been a cost cutting issue trying to pick out how sessions addressing gender. But in this CBA we thought that would have a dedication session to look at gender equality and intersectionality, given the increasing global inequality and our discussion today is focusing on all the CBA themes. Trying to articulate the importance of adopting a gender and intersectional perspective support climate intergenerational justice and this is linked to other adaptation agendas. The locally lead adaptation principles, especially principle four focuses on addressing structure inequalities faced by women, you children, disabled displaced indigenous people and marginalized ethnic groups. So we, we are trying to plug in this session with other conversations going on. And also at the COP26 linking with the lima work program and the gender action plan. So we think that this, this should be a start of the conversation to look at how do we consider differentiated characteristics need priorities and of different groups. So that adaptation policies and practice is fit for purpose and reduces inequality. So we hope that this conversation will continue in slack even after this session. So in case you need to share ideas connect do go to slack and share with us. But before we go to the panelists, we have a team of panelists speaking to each of the themes across CBA, how they interact with gender and intersectionality would love to hear from everybody on what you think about these questions before the panel comes in. So at this point I want to hand over to Karen to take us through the mentor where we can hear what your views are. This session is about inclusion about hearing everybody's voice so over to you Karen. Thank you Tracy and welcome everyone. As Tracy mentioned we want this session to be as interactive as possible, and for you to share your perspectives on how aspects of gender and intersectionality links to the themes of CBA. We have questions related to responsive policy to inclusion, innovation, nature based solutions in food systems and climate finance. So please go to Mentimeter at menti.com and enter the code shown, could you move to the next slide Nora please. Please introduce the code shown on the screen is 39861689 or alternatively you can just use the link that we will share in the chat box. And the first question is a nice breaker to know where are you connecting from. And after that you will be able to answer the questions related to responsive policy. The questions are how our climate policies addressing gender, local needs and priorities and we will give a little bit of time to share the responses. The responses are now flowing in. We see people from South Africa, Ghana, Amsterdam, Nepal, Bangladesh. I love the, the workloads. It looks so too global the responses that we are collecting. And then the first question related to a responsive policies how are climate policies addressing gender, local needs and priorities. And we are seeing answers that it says policies putting the gender word just for the sake of it not correctly taking actions on the ground so it's a matter of implementation. Challenges by addressing particular needs of women planning investment for gender disaggregated population in common that is still a long way to go. People highlighting the relevance of the context, the policies implementation challenges in enforcement. People of maps in having the right policies addressing gender local needs and the gap between having the plans and implementation. So more reflects on the very patriarchal approach to climate solutions comment that says that there are no. We don't see any climate policies addressing gender, and you will have the link as well to these responses afterwards if you if you want to see what others have contributed. We won't go into a lot of detail in here but we will have these these responses as a starting point for reflection. The next question is about youth inclusion, and the question is, what are the gendered experiences of your participation engagement and leadership in community based adaptation. And there's a question here about the lack of recognition female needs to be needs of female needs often overlooked. I'm just wondering about this one. Sometimes there's more space among youth to promote gender equality and addressing equality is depending on the context. A comment that highlights that girls are traditionally excluded. We can see an increased gender awareness among young people, we need more female participation in youth in youth groups. And that highlights the issue of the work burden of women that highlights the different roles that that women have in in society. And the next question is about innovation. The question is, how can innovation address gender based exclusion and facilitate effective engagement of women in community based adaptation. And also race management, someone that says that not sure, not sure. Innovative women led initiatives should be given a chance and resources to be implemented. This solutions, not sure. Someone highlights the Pomorja voices toolkit that was developed with partners in that with IID. A great example of this of how can how can the voices of women and youth can be for and center of the planning processes in developing priorities and identifying priorities for gender for girls and women and youth. So for women by mobilizing women and reducing their work burden. Someone highlights something that Greta Thunberg has frequently highlighted that it stole talk talk not necessarily innovation, engage women and diverse groups and youth. Household dialogue to share roles and responsibility. This is a recognition of balancing the. Some of the of the roles that that women in have the reproductive, the reproductive role that is usually associated asymmetrically to women engage women and diverse groups with youth for monitoring and tracking results. And now we move to the nature based solutions team. And the question is how can gender and intersection and local knowledge and action deliver more resilient local food systems and restore ecosystems. Someone act answers to inclusion. Couple dialogue to divide workload. This has highlighted has been highlighted in the in the previous slide as well. The need to balance the different activities that different reproductive and productive work, providing equal opportunity and responsibility to all, again highlights the need of providing equal opportunity and recognition to all. Someone no idea, which is also a great answer. We will have breakout group discussions afterwards that will focus on what needs to be improved. How can we address the gaps that highlight that are highlighted in the different topics. Increase knowledge skills of women and marginalized people to listen. It needs to be a community driven for it to be sustainable. Understanding the deeply held gender knowledge about natural resources management and food production. Equal rights. Someone highlight the important role of women in food production and water resources in the home, even then boys in community makes food systems more responsive and better managed. And the final topic that we will address is how is climate finance responsive to gender needs and priorities that enhance local adaptation. Someone highlights that we need to raise financial literacy among women. And remember that these questions are the same questions that will be answered by the panelists and after that we will break out in groups to discuss what what actions need to be taken to improve the gaps that we collectively have identified in each of these of these things. Increase access to finance that helps improve their own business. So it, it tackles highlights they are the question of, and they need to have women at the forefront and the importance of self organization and autonomy and agency to start own business and and then having opportunities enhance opportunities to access climate finance. Often is still only in small grants it's time that we step up our game we need to trust and the colonize development. Stop sharing my, my slide. Thank you everyone for participating in this mentor session. We have I think a very good reflections start warming up reflections that will help us through the session, especially in the breakout groups. And with that I hand over to Tracy, who will introduce the panelists. Thank you Karen, and thanks everyone for your contribution and interventions there. So we now have a panel with speakers that I want to speak to each of the themes. And I will start with the Desmond alumno. So Desmond is a coordinator for the Africa member support program under the global lens for incident alternatives. He works with the guy or Ghana, and he's a co founder is a climate expert focusing on zeroist models and organizational management. But what is interesting is that he focuses a lot on building movements provide youth and gender based leadership. He supports frontline communities to adopt climate change and is championing the call for eco friendly menstrual pads, and the abolition of government taxes on central parts in Ghana. As well as building capabilities of vulnerable groups and providing solutions on youth empowerment and public education. That's impressive for a young male working on issues that are affecting young women. And so in the previous CBS, especially CBF 14 we had a theme on the youth, but most of the other key messaging around the youth inclusion was that policymakers need to seek youth inclusion in climate policy and programming, and not to look at youth as just volunteers, but focus on models that can compensate them and motivate them to contribute. And also supporting their leadership capabilities to address the generational gap. But we also know that youth are not homogeneous we have young men or girls we have young women and boys we have those living in informal settlements. We have then employed the disabled those in developed countries and developing countries. So this month what are your gendered and interception experiences of youth participation, engagement and leadership in community based adaptation, given that you're interacting at those levels. Thank you, Tracy. And first of all, I would like to appreciate the fact that we have this session on the CBF 14 offering young people the opportunity to also participate and listen, which is in line with this particular topic we are discussing today. And when I was told to talk on this topic, I started actually to talk with some of the youth within the networks, just to also understand their perspectives and then to share with the broader group that will be here, so that it doesn't come only from me and it was interesting that I speak, I spoke with young agriculturalist and landscapers in Nigeria spoke with people working on biodiversity and community resilience in the Philippines I spoke with other groups across Africa and also other places. What we can see is the fact that it's not homogeneous like you said, it's a matter of how do we balance the aspirations of all these young people. The experiences from myself and from all these young people vary. But then there are certain underlying things, which have to do with their participation in policy making processes, their participation in, in the community level, whether it's under the government or in the global processes. And when I just take agriculture alone when talking to a lot of young people, whether it is traditional norms, or it is government policies, they have issues having access to land. They have issues having access to funding or having access to anything that makes their work convenient makes their work or having an increased potential to success. And of course we can acknowledge that there are a lot of sessions like this where young people get the opportunity to come here. But then for conferences, symposiums and other things that might span five days, one week, you would see that only two or three sessions. That's maximum goes to these young people. If they are not traditionally or originally part, if they are not recognized as a confident and reliable stakeholder in these discussions. At the end of the day, whatever happens will definitely not a uniform benefit. The other thing is also the approach. A lot of a lot of young people also have quite not a pleasant experience regarding the approach with which we discuss matters at global adaptation meetings, at which we discuss matters with community based adaptation planning, or even at the adaptation national adaptation planning at country levels. And much of this has to do with the isolation and as exclusion that some of the people already noted on the Jamboard. A lot of young people have experience having to participate in parallel sessions of certain crucial discussions. Now you participate in this parallel session no matter the energy that these young people bring. At the end of the day, they are not at the main session that actually takes the final decision. To what extent do they have their views reflected? To what extent do they have their aspirations balanced? When you organize these isolated sessions and parallel sessions, and then it becomes a situation where their names are being mentioned, but in reality their views and vision is not being perceived. So that is one key thing. The other key experience that some young people also have encountered is the fact that there is such a distance, whether it is in the field of research or it is in practice. There's such a distance between the male, the female, as well as the young and the old. They do not have integrated activities whereby you see young people having the same opportunity to directly participate and produce knowledge for communities to use. It is a disjointed process and when it is disjointed, it does happen that young people who are traditionally handicapped because they are yet to grow, they have therefore lesser experience, they have therefore less financial capacity, and they have little to no links or contacts that they can take certain information or make certain inputs. They become the people who are at a losing end because these approaches that you are very much on your own does not help them, does not give them the grounds that they can have the ability to contribute effectively to adaptation efforts. There are a lot of other things concerning how much of support these people actually get if they are mobilizing communities, if they are trying to bring out certain discussions and trying to influence policy at the end of the day, how much of it actually work. But then, considering that we have the opportunity to actually discuss in general, and also break into groups, I wouldn't talk much more about the problems concerning how these young people are being marginalized and how these young people are continuously suppressed at their local levels, but then I would rather make it short so that we get the opportunity to discuss what we do going forward. However, those I have spoken to, and Tracy in my introduction also mentioned what we do at the Green Africa Youth Organization in Ghana, in line of mobilizing these young people supporting local communities, helping them to start initiatives that are helping them to actually adapt, and among other young people across the world. In initiatives like this, how do we make it more realistic in the rather than the rhetoric, how do we make sure that every process that is towards community based adaptation does not recognize young people as people we need to recognize, but rather as key stakeholders that are capable of providing solutions that anybody else could also provide. I end my talk here, and then I hope that we go forward and have reliable solutions, and we hope that at the end, the main stakeholders, and I feel bad to always say this, and not to put myself as a young person in the category. But then my belief and my hope is that at the end of the day, the people in charge would allow women and youth to climb the ladder to that level to the extent that whatever their wishes are able to be reflected. Thank you. Thank you very much this one for that reflection. And it keeps coming out again how we don't take young people seriously. And yet we know that they dominate the highest population across the globe. So thank you so much for that. And our next speaker will be Rosemary Ateno. Rosemary serves as the project lead in Kenya for Women Climate Centers International, who we are co-hosting this session with, and a consortium of women led organization working in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South African USA. She's a member of the Global Women's Water Initiative and founder of the Community Mobilization for Positive Empowerment. With over 15 years of experience working with NGOs and public sector, including Kenya Ministry of Agriculture, Kenya International in Kenya, Kenya Meteorology Agency and concern worldwide. She has lots of experiences, including on agriculture technologies, water conservation environment, and in 2015 she was dubbed Women Making Change Kenya Water Initiative, and she an award-winning series that she was part of. So Rosemary, with all the experiences that you have and technology has been a theme across CBA over the years. And what comes out is that technologies need to be people-centered, women need to be at the center informing policies and planning. Young people need to be drivers of technology. We need gender analysis and technologies. But these are conversations that are going on and on, but exclusion has not stopped. So from your experience, how can innovation address gender-based exclusion and facilitate effective engagement of women in community-based adaptation? Over to you, Rosemary. Rosemary, you're a mute. I'm trying to unmute her just for a second. I don't have the chance. Okay, I've unmuted. Can you hear me? Yes, Rosemary, you're welcome. Okay. Thank you so much. Welcome fellow panelists. Thank you participants for wanting to attend our session. I'm happy that we are talking about women and innovation. And I would like to say that any society that fails to harness the energy of women is at a huge disadvantage in the modern world. Because women are key players in the climate change adaptation and mitigation issues. They are affected much by climate change, yet we are the least contributors to climate change. So I would want to say that it is important that we look at women as key players in climate change issues and try to bring them on board. As my colleague has said, the women and youth are actually disadvantaged in all sectors. We are disadvantaged in terms of knowledge sharing, in terms of finances, and in terms of gender roles that are socially constructed by the society. So when you look at women's involvement in innovation, we are usually left behind because people think that we are not supposed to be there. It is important that communities realize that we cannot be avoided in the fight in climate change, and we have to be brought on board. What we are trying to say is that there is no shortage in innovations. There is a lot of innovation. But the question we need to ask ourselves is how do we use these innovations to help the women to move forward in the climate, in the fight about climate change and creating locally led adaptations. Through incorporating gender transformation activities, we need to look at strategies at all levels, from the conception of projects to implementation through to monitoring and evaluation, and see how we can bring women on board to be able to try and encourage critical awareness among them on their gender roles and promote the participation of women, despite the various challenges that we are facing. I would want to say that as we walk along this talk, and as we walk along this path, can we look at ways of involving women. For example, rural women in the village, I want to give a very critical example, the cookstove. We are the women using the cookstove in the rural kitchen, where all the smoke is being inhaled by the woman and her little child on her back. All this is because of the gender constructed roles, because the woman is supposed to be in the kitchen. At the end of the day, it's the woman suffering the consequences because death occurs, and women die in their large numbers because of the gender constructed role. The woman does not go to the kitchen. So we want to look at a situation on how can we bring women on the table? How can we bring women on the steering wheel where policies are being made that can be fit for the women? Women can contribute towards those policies that are being made, that makes it very conducive for them to be able to access finances in order to act in the climate change mitigation roles. Are we looking at women and what they have to say in what happens? We do not want to be left behind because someone thinks that we are a lesser being, we are not lesser beings. We have a lot to contribute in the fight around climate change. I also want to say that if you look at the way innovation should be used, you should be looking at innovation, recognizing the vulnerabilities that affect women and build strategies to target these women in their homes and villages. I also want to say that we need to talk a lot about attitude, the people who are sitting on the steering wheel, what kind of attitude do they have on us as girls, women or boys, so that they must have a positive attitude towards us to be able to help us get on that steering wheel. We also need to build strategies that aim to empower vulnerable women through community conversations and mentorship programs where we have an active conversation going on and we have women contributing towards these conversations and contributing towards the policies that are being made. I would like us to look at the issues of policies, can we promote policies that are specific to gender and allow women to participate in such activities? We also need to look at easy channels for women to access resources so that they are able to access the various technologies that are existing. For example, the mobile phone is a very common technology. Can all our women be able to access the mobile phone with simple language, simple to interpret messages? When you look at some of these messages, they are really meant for the people who have gone to school. Let us look at the woman who has not gone to school and give her the technology with messages that she can understand. For example, in the local dialect, so that when I'm talking about adaptation, I'm able to talk about adaptation in the local dialect and be able to bring the woman on board my conversation about climate change. I want to say that this is why at WCCI, at the Women's Climate Centers International, we are trying to have a conversation with the grassroots woman to understand what she really understands about climate change. Climate change adaptation, those are big words. Can we demystify these words so that we are able to bring the woman on board about this discussion? Can we be able to look at technologies that are really friendly to the grassroots woman so that she's able to participate in this conversation? It really hurts me a lot when the woman's voice is not being heard yet she's the one suffering. We talk a lot with the grassroots communities. Yet these voices, by the time it reaches the policymakers, the voices has been distorted to the level that the woman's voice is not being heard. So I'm saying that we need to create a center stage for women to discuss. We have to create a center stage for women to have the discussion going on. For example, at the CBA 15 now, was it possible for us to bring some grassroots women to voice their voices and be heard so that we feel what they feel when it comes to climate change? So we need to really look at these things in a critical way to be able to involve our women in terms of knowledge, in terms of financial muscle, in terms of the gender roles as constructed by society so that we have a talk where everybody's involved for the benefit of the woman. So I hope that as the discussion continues, we will be able to come up with key points that will be able to help us to see how we involve the grassroots women in terms of innovation and how to create proper leadership at the grassroots level. And for this, I want to say that it was once said that when you want anything, say it. You went on mute Rosemary. Rosemary muted herself there. Yeah, my experiences will be able to capture what our communities are saying sorry for there's a call that just came in. So I hope that as we go to our group discussions, we will be able to have interactive that bring the best of the world on board and be able to take it to the next level. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Rosemary for those very. Thank you so much Rosemary. Please mute yourself. Yeah, thank you. So thanks Rosemary for those interventions Rosemary raises very key issues of intersectionality as we said, and those conversations that are focusing on educated, the educated women, those that are not how do we package information for different groups of people, who do we bring on the table how do we prioritize them. And that links to a chat conversation from Tracy man. We define technology as internet SMS and connectivity but then we ignore the technologies that facilitate the roles of different groups to ease how they cope with adaptation. Thanks Tracy for clarifying on that. I'm talking about issues of internet one of our panelists is actually struggling with internet I hope she'll be able to join. But these are challenges that we work with the digital divide between the developing countries and others the policies and all are all things that really still are affecting us in the way we do our interventions. So, our next speaker is the victim be called Chikono. He's a pan-Africanist involvement worker with over 15 years experience in implementing climate adaptation and mitigation at national, regional and global levels. He has worked with care USA on learning and policy influencing on nutrition climate agriculture investment. He has coordinated global climate change policy influencing work with act alliance in Geneva with his land, and his efforts focused on advocating for proper and gender sensitive outcome for COP 21 in Paris. And then currently he is working with the pan-African advocacy project African agriculture technology foundation and specifically on the open forum for agricultural biotechnology. So victim be called the integrated approaches to adaptation, especially in nature best solutions is something that is being talked about a lot. And it addresses key interlinked to certain challenges, especially local food systems climate change impact on food security is one of the key challenges facing different parts of the world. And we know that indigenous people women local communities are already championing nature best solutions, they hold valuable traditional knowledge that could be used. And this is built on decades of practical experience, but most times it's not recognized it's not valued. We respect a lot scientific knowledge, but when somebody has something to share, we don't listen because sometimes we feel maybe it's not important and yet those solutions work and have worked for centuries. So from your vast experience at different scales, how can gendered and intersectional local knowledge and actions that are already happening contribute to resilient local food systems and contribute to ecosystem restoration. Thank you very much Tracy and also to my panelists, but also to all those that are attending this session. I'm quite excited to be on this panel and the, I'm looking forward even to a deeper conversation after my interventions during the breakaway groups. Just to really pick up from where you've started Tracy that it's unfortunate that he sometimes we really just focus on science and the completely sometimes neglect local knowledge and the local dynamics that do inform most of our interventions, but also sometimes exacerbate some of the vulnerabilities that we would be working on. So in terms of to speaking to specifically to your question. I think I would want to record two or three examples of work that really spoke to a try to pick on the local knowledge and build on those local knowledge towards something that he has over time increased the resilience of communities where I worked previously. I want to pick an example on the, the care example for on village savings and loans. This is a technology that he probably was not famed at first, but it was actually brought forward from Guinea and the people thought about how can we increase or build the resilience of our communities, women, and all that who are affected disproportionately from the impacts of climate change. And that technology has actually grown and by and large, all the reviews that have happened have showed that women have been the biggest beneficiary of that technology. And I know that you wait with care so you also bear witness to what I'm talking about. But it is a technology that when you read how it began it faced a lot of resistance because this was in contrast to the formal banking systems that we know it couldn't work. These are women that don't know anything. How are they going to account for their shares and everything else. But I think over time we've seen how it has actually become a very good solution to climate adaptation challenges that these women face. And by and large we've also seen how, for example, the proceeds from village savings and loans have enabled the whole household in many cases to move away from destructive natural resource exploration, for example, chaco making. So communities or households that have embraced through a woman, village savings and loans have actually moved away from chaco making and embraced other entrepreneurship activities at household level that have enabled natural resources to thrive in that setup. Another example that I want to give is also how, for example, during the El Nino scenario in Mozambique. We noted how women were disproportionate or affected. And along the way we also noted how especially girls were actually adopting very destructive practices. Most of them went into sex trade. Even those that were just newly married after their main trade to Maputo, the only thing they could do is really go into sex trade. And we saw how this actually affected their communities in terms of HIV prevalence, how this also affected or maybe increased population growth in those setups. And in the end, we also found out that HIV rates went up. And all those kinds of things really taught us some lessons that probably when it comes to engaging in the climate change adaptation, there isn't just one way out but probably to really look at the responsiveness of a society and look at all issues that are affecting the society and bringing out an integrative programming that addresses the specific needs of different groups in that society. So with care again we adopted a very integrative programming in those communities where I worked and in the end I think we found that the resilience of these communities as children started going back to school. Those that got pregnant were able to be rehabilitated into the communities into the schools again. And those are the things that for example in the end of the day because when we're talking about resilience, we're not just looking at one aspect, we want the whole community to thrive. And therefore, if we just see one aspect doing well and the others really crumbling, then we need to be questioning our development model whether we are achieving or not. I think this is also what has also enabled, for example, the emergence of our cash and markets as one of the disaster risk management practices because I think before that we always looked at cash as something that we're just giving out money. We've noted that, for example, if we want to address the food systems issues, we need to look at the fact that some of the nutritional challenges in the communities are not just going to be addressed through production. So how do we want to bring in, for example, nutritional elements in the community where they cannot produce. So by and large what I'm trying to say is that I think to a greater extent it does lead to better programming does lead to better adaptation. And we are able to save communities whole assembly or holistic as it were. I also, I think Rosemary, my fellow panelists, well articulated the point around participation. I think participation is very important, and I have put that point down in terms of how do we want to bring in women into a policy and influencing spaces. Sometimes I think our engagement at that level is reduced to how many women, how many men did attend the meeting. And in the end of the day, you find that indeed the our choices of who should attend our meetings is also informed by whether they're going to be able to engage in that meeting because we don't find value in somebody who is not going to engage in that meeting, but really just to reiterate what Rosemary said, it is very important that we bring in women and engage at that level. And I had an experience with that while working again with CARE, where I brought a woman from the rural areas of Ethiopia to engage with policymakers at AU level on mullable processes. The point being that indeed women at different levels in as much as you trust and others on this call can represent women, but I'm very sure that you're not to represent a woman who is affected disproportionately at the same level as she would represent herself. I took that challenge while working with CARE and she was able to engage in that meeting in her local language and somebody had to translate to the policymakers that were in that room. So just to emphasize that that is extremely important point that my colleague Rosemary made. I want to also talk about, again, when you look at different societies that affected by climate change, we see, for example, societies and cultural practices that we cannot leverage on and I know, for example, in my own country, Malay, where I come from, we've seen societies where women do make a very strong decisions, for example, in electing the next leader, there's those kind of communities. And if women are disproportionately affected by climate change and we know on one hand that yes they're affected, but they have these agents in them. So how do we want to leverage on that in helping them elect leaders that are going to help really restore ecosystems, build resilience, but more important to be progressive in every aspect of their life. So that again is something that we need to explore what are the situations in the local setup that we're working on. And now do we want to leverage on those. There are lots that, for example, can we can do in that sense, not just on natural resources management but basically even to impact on the on governance. My last point basically is again, this kind of work around gendered intersectionality and all that does demand that we do a very deep analysis to really arrive at what is the situation obtaining in a particular meaning. And it does seem to me that it is actually something that will require a lot of investment. And my core on this one is probably the fact that I haven't seen a lot of movement on the development partners to provide resources that will enable such level of deep analysis. So when you look at the core for proposals, that aspect for example for deep intersectional analysis and how that for example should form programming is not well articulated. In the end, I think those of us that are implementing on the ground, we do not have any other option than to print to implement based on what we have actually been given. And sometimes with all the fact that these proposals are time bound and everything. And then we really don't have enough time to be extremely intersectional and engendered so that we can bring out all these differences on the fall, and also integrate them into into our programming as it were. But by and large, I would say that I think if we had that at investment level, then I think it would go a long way to support these holistic engagement and programming that we're doing on the ground and help to restore ecosystems and improve resilience at large. So I would want to stop there and really to hope that we can have a deeper engagement during the breakaway sessions and once again to reiterate that I'm really pleased to be here. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. You raise very important issues, meaningful participation, meaningful engagement, the agency of women and how they relate with other things including policy. So we'll hear from other speakers on those and those who have questions please drop them in the chat. Some of them you'll ask when we go for the breakout sessions and we'll try and see if maybe the panelists could respond to some of those if we have time. Thank you very much the tombico that was really, really interesting to hear your perspectives of and your experiences. Our next speaker is Taylor gamma. She's been struggling with internet connection, just as we had. Taylor is an LDC negotiator and at the UNFCC and deputy director of forestry at Malawi's Ministry of Natural Resources energy and environment. She's been in the forestry sector for over 20 years. She's very passionate for enhancing women's effective participation in climate and environment diplomacy. She's been working at climate diplomacy at the UNFCC advocating for women's empowerment gender balance in the real convention bodies, gender responsive climate policies technology development transfer. And she's also been an advisor on the list of countries initiative for adaptation and resilience. I'm getting a message that Stella has dropped off is she here. Stella you still here I might be. She's gone now. Oh she's back great. So good to have you Stella so from that very rich profile and experience and Stella was recognized by a political adding matches one of the most influential people on gender policy are on climate. So Stella, we've been having lots of conversations around policy in CBA and the key messages coming out have been that government needs create gender transformative spaces where women can make their voices hard. And we're not looking only at women but other groups that might be vulnerable that might be impacted differently. And also the emphasis that adaptation must be enabled through inclusive policies at country level, which is country driven using a whole of society approach. So from your experience, how are climate policies addressing or not addressing maybe gendered local needs and priorities. Thank you very much, Tracy, and greetings to all participants. My apologies, I think I had not updated my calendar to 15th I had still kept the 17th date. So we are traveling outside the longer. So I just stopped to briefly to take this presentation. Yeah, thank you very much so I'll let allow me to start from where we come from under the climate change convention. Under the climate change convention, we now have the gender action plan, and the gender action plan has been influenced at the negotiations it's a long history. First of all, we started with decisions, which we are looking at gender balance in the UNFCCC process, but later on we said we should move beyond just the gender balance. We should also look at women empowerment and effective participation, not just numbers of women, but the women who should be effectively empowered to participate in decision making. And then we also said no we need to go beyond gender balance or women participation, but we also need to look at the policies themselves. So we started now looking at gender responsive policies, so that all the policies that are coming out from the climate conventions should be gender responsive and it's not only the climate convention under the real conventions, we have the UNCCD, we have the CBD, they are also looking at gender responsiveness. But now we have the gender responsive policies at global level, for example we could talk about the NAPS and recently the CDCs. We should also be able to link this gender responsiveness which is happening at a global level and link it to national level. And we should go beyond that. When the national level has linked the gender responsive policies, we should also make sure that this is reflected adequately at local and village levels. So how do we do that? An example is for example at national level, at global level we have the national police, the global policies which have filtered to comprehensive probably policies at national level. For example in Malawi, we have a national gender policy, but the sectors are also looking at gender responsive policies, for example climate change, forestry, and also environmental management in general. So we should be able to go further than that, just having gender responsive policies. We need action. And one proposed action from policy to action level is that the policies that we are developing should have at least a gender action plan. And within the implementation plan, we should have specific and gendered actions that will show that the policies are really showing impact on the ground. And from the national level, how are we feeding to local level? For example, Malawi, we are saying that at local level we are decentralized. How are those decentralized policies also gender responsive? If we look at the community activities, do they show that the policies they are implementing are gender responsive? For example, if you look at waste management, waste management, I look at it as an area where we have not really engendered that process. In the energy case, as I've seen in the chat, energy security, it is an issue because we do not have local level gender action plans. No one is looking at the gender security at village level or at local level. Maybe sometimes we're just looking at energy security as provision of the grid. But if you look at least developed countries like Malawi, we are still dependent on biomass. And biomass, it is a women's, it is a girls issue. As such, no one wants to bring the issues of biomass at policy or strategic level because it is only about women in the village who are going to collect firewood or who are going to use charcoal. And another example in disasters. In disasters, we might think that we have gender mainstreamed, but sometimes it is not. During disasters, for example in Malawi when we have floods, men would want to relocate to areas where they can get jobs and support the families in the areas where there was a disaster. So it is both the needs of men and women, boys and girls in different situations, in different roles and in different needs. What is it that we need? First of all, I've talked about the tool of coming up with gender action plans that is beyond policy to have activities that can be implemented and also activities which can be monitored. So the implementation plan will also require that we have a monitoring and evaluation plan. Another important tool is to conduct gender analysis as we are programming before conducting the interventions. In that case, as it has already been highlighted, we will look at the different situations. It's on a case-by-case basis, which will be based on regions, districts, different cultures, different religious beliefs will present different situations, different interests. So we need to take all that into consideration. For now, allow me to talk from there that at global level we have these global policies whom we have struggled to ensure that they are gender responsive. The work is still ongoing. At national level, we have embraced that discourse that we also need to have gender responsive policies, but is the action on the ground showing that. So I would just say that we need these two tools at local level to ensure that the gender responsive policies are reflected in our day-to-day action, the gender analysis and also the gender action or gender implementation plans at local level. In that way, we will have everybody or the population participating effectively and including development without leaving anyone behind. Thank you. Thank you so much Stela. Stela raises very key issues. It's not just about policies, but how we're implementing them. And I think we know most countries have so many policies that on the shelves are not being implemented. She also raises the issue of how policies are made, who is targeted, what is targeted as well. So who is feeding into the policies? Are they fit for purpose? Are they considering issues of different groups in community and the experiences they are having around adaptation? So thank you so much, Stela. There were some interventions in the chart, observation that the NBC assessment noted that gender equality was not very well addressed. There's another one which is asking if the examples of impacts that have resulted from gender responsive language and policy will look at some of these in the group discussions. We are picking the questions and we'll follow up with those. If there's time at the end, maybe the panelists will speak to one or two, but please bring up most of them into the group discussions. So our last speaker, last but not least, is Margo. And Margo Granat is the director for Engine Collaborative. She's a gender and climate specialist with over 10 years of international experience and experience and intergovernmental experience, delivering work on technical advice for inclusive and sustainable development results. She has worked across climate sectors on integrating gender responsive and social inclusive approaches, policies financing, and on the ground action. She has also worked on integrating gender and intersectionality in climate finance mechanisms at different levels, and her recent work has been an inclusive gender responsive climate change budgeting and financing in Africa, which is looking at how ministries of finance and other climate ministries are working on integrating gender into the budgeting process. So Margo, of course, climate is a very widely spoken subjects, very contentious at the moment. And we know that their structural barriers to funding, the climate architecture is generally oriented towards larger projects or initiatives, larger organizations who can demonstrate capacity to deliver, versus the groups that we are looking at today, the women organizations, the youth organizations, indigenous people organizations, or global south CSOs, for that matter. The evidence shows that very little funding is trickling down to these organizations, and because of those barriers that they're still struggling with. So from your way of experience, how is climate finance responsive or not responsive to gendered needs and priorities that could enhance local adaptation from what we've had on what is possible, what could be done. So and climate is one of those catalysts for everything to happen. So over to you, Margo. Thanks Tracy, and thanks everyone. It's great to be here with you all today and following on all these great interventions from other panelists. I'm just motivated and excited to hear everything that people are working on. And it is fitting to speak, following all these pieces as financing is sometimes the glue to this as it is always demonstrated as the gap. We hear time and time again that there just isn't enough financing at all levels from international multilateral to local grassroots level like you were saying Tracy. And like Stella was just saying translating from the policy level down to the national and action on the ground, it's just not happening. And, and we know this and the scale that we know we need for financing the climate crisis and building resilience across all these communities is not available, even at any level and then exactly like down at the groups how is it getting to these local level communities. We really see that it's not happening it is exactly a trickle, even though it's often talked about in in channels. We're not seeing that larger, you know, wave of money making it anywhere into the in the communities that we need it to be in. We're coming from so many different spaces and angles that it's very difficult to track. And there's a lot of really great research out there right now on how challenging it is to track, and so we can't show where the money is really coming from and what is really happening on the ground and what kind of results are being are impactful. And because this complex web of financing has been created. You know, there usually are the, the usual suspects who are well equipped to access these funds and they receive it. They understand the entry points. And, and so the can we continue to see that these barriers for accessing financing for local communities local organizations. They're just upheld. And so, these are some of the challenges. You know, I want to provide a bit of context right now and I'm going to try to do that rather quickly on how gender is being integrated at the different levels. I'm realizing that I could probably speak for several sessions about this. And, and also in the interest of time but we can discuss this more in the sessions as well when we hear from all of you. So, what is climate financing off often. We really don't know it is such a term that is evolved over the past decade or so. I Googled it just to make sure I had this definition correct and the UNFCCC defines it as finance that aims at reducing emissions and enhancing sinks of greenhouse gases and aims at reducing vulnerability of and maintaining and increasing the resilience of human and ecological systems to negative climate change impacts. And so that's fairly technical. It does include a human element which is great because as Stella was just pointing out, integrating gender and human rights into the international policy space that took a pretty long time. But thankfully that now does exist and it's we're also seeing it in the financing mechanisms at the international levels, particularly for the UNFCCC the implementing entities which are the Green Climate Fund, the global environmental facility the Jeff, the Green Climate Fund, the GCF, and also the adaptation fund those three are the large multilateral public finance mechanisms. And also Stella spoke about the Lima work program on gender, which does include gender responsive climate financing and gender responsive budgeting that is encouraging national governments to also take that up. And so each of these funds these finance mechanisms now do also integrate gender within them. They all have gender policies. And they also have, you know, social inclusion or indigenous policy as well so starting to go beyond just gender but have that much more intersectional approach to how they're looking at things and they also usually have gender action plan and gender and social inclusion plan. And these include different elements, such as operations for the secretariat of the funds, building capacity knowledge sharing. And these are specific elements that are important around gender, because there needs to be a lot of capacity building. Yes, for women and local communities on the ground on what climate change is, but exactly the one of the questions of, you know, how do we engage and also need to be a part of this they need to know what it means to have a gender responsive gender transformative approach and so capacity building across all different levels for the national governments, you know, ministries of environment and climate change, forestry and waste, all of those especially in spaces where it hasn't been traditionally seen to have, you know, the human dimension incorporated into those activities. So that is a really important element that is included within those action plans. And of course then a huge component of that is how gender is integrated into the projects by the climate climate finance mechanisms. And as people have mentioned there's a gender assessment a gender analysis. It can be not as robust as we would like to see them be them. Sometimes we see that organizations that are conducting them, they're there are time, you know, bound they have to be done quickly they have to be done before the proposal proposals are done. It's hard to really, you know, have a strong intersectional analysis that then also plays into what is the gender action plan, and how that also is integrated into the larger project. And the huge component of that is also how you budget them for those activities within that project and there are mandates within each of the finance mechanisms now that need to integrate gender. But it is more of a you should, you need to do this rather than a, you know, a specific benchmark of how much having conversations with those implementing entities from the funds about how they actually budget for those different activities is something that's starting to be picked up a lot more. And it's coming out in the results frameworks. It's realized much more so now that, you know, to achieve any of these climate goals we also need to be working and integrating a gender responsive and intersectional approach. There is a very cursory view of the international level. There is also so much more climate financing. And again, because it's so challenging to track but climate financing, coming from philanthropy coming from bilateral aid donors development organizations also. The intermediaries that get the financing from the international mechanisms and also coming into the national level there. And something that I think is really important that Tracy mentioned work I've been doing recently is looking at how to integrate gender responsive budgeting at the national level with the ministries of finance and a double mainstreaming so to say of climate change and gender at the same time. Countries are realizing and working very much so towards, if this money is going to be channeled down towards their, the national level how to bring it into the public financial management system. And when we're doing that by integrating the climate. You know, with different markers and doing assessments of how climate is being incorporated in the budget looking at budget statements we also need to make sure that those statements are also playing in and integrating gender and intersectional dynamics to make sure that the budget is providing resources to the very communities that we need to be supporting and and that's actually a really good entry point I think for local communities to be able to access resources is to advocate and provide the research that shows that this is influential for those communities. And a lot of those tools have already been mentioned actually by other panelists today which I think is really great. Such as like cash transfer programming, different mechanisms to provide innovative tools and technology, getting the different women's rights groups involved, you know, how to build their resilience more structurally as a comprehensive mechanism in those communities rather than just addressing some and responding to perhaps a climate change issue or impact. At the local level, something I think that is also really important to touch on is getting women's participation youth participation, marginalized groups participation to build their capacity about what exists for climate financing, break down this web of where it comes from what's happening. I ID is also doing some work right now on getting that information to grassroots organizations by mapping climate funders. There's a whole heap of them out there and I also think, you know, there's a there's a new kind of angle if anyone's heard of the project draw down there. They're realizing that to support and make sure that we address the climate crisis, there need to be structural changes around public health and also education. And those are things that maybe have not necessarily been historically thought of as climate work, but that is going to be integral and the role that women and girls play in those two different places to increase their access to education and sexual and reproductive health rights and and and general health resources. Those can now become climate financing so looking for that financing through different funders that maybe haven't tagged their financing as climate finding funding I think is also a really good opportunity just to be able to know and build your capacity about what exists and what can be done. There's a couple of, you know, tools that can be accessed and I can share more about them in the breakout group but really like nitty gritty details about how to get involved and learning about the different climate finance mechanisms the international mechanisms are still where we are trying to, you know, make it the most sound institution and and channeling for financing so that that can get down to national level and it can get down to community levels. So, learning about those and learning how you can engage through either civil society groups that advocate and participate in the board meetings that review all the different project documents. And also I think, you know, for donors and funders that are maybe on this. It's particularly, I think I saw someone from both ends, both ends has done a lot of support to make sure that those local level women's rights groups will be able to actually participate in those sessions because it takes a lot of time and effort and again resources to be able to participate in that. So I'll stop there. Since I know we're running behind. Go ahead. Thanks, Mago. Thanks very much for that. A lot of information in there. The learning is not only for organization but also for donors to restructure on where they put the money who they fund. And also, it's not only that donors even governments actually prioritizing different groups at country level including funding into the budgeting systems. So it needs action across different scales. Thanks for that and more information can be shared in the group. Mago will be facilitating the group on finance. So if you have any questions or discussions, please raise them. So, thank you all panelists for your very insightful contributions. Let's continue the discussion. I want to hand over to Karen right now to take us to the breakout groups to brainstorm a bit more on what needs to happen. We don't want to lament on problems all the time. We want to be solution focused. And that's what the groups are going to do over to you Karen. Thanks, Tracy. And thank you everyone. Thanks to all our panelists for such important points that opened the door very neatly to our group discussions. And thanks for everyone who have contributed as well in the chat box. There are some topics that tend to be overlooked but Melvin, Van Der Veen and Gabriela Mercurio highlight the aspect of bringing attention to the need to think about the role of men and brings attention that the gender or gender dynamics respond and are shaped also by men's roles and activity and masculinity that this highlights the need to rethink masculinity and gender roles and how to deconstruct this patriarchal systems by examining the ways in which men can shift the ways in which masculinity are created. So thanks for everyone who have highlighted different points that need to be addressed. There are some additional very important comments in the chat box. So bring your perspectives into your breakout groups. We will have five breakout groups. Nora, could you share the questions please? We will have five questions, breakout groups, and one question that you will address. We will have 20 minutes. You will be allocated randomly to these discussions. If you have a strong preference to join one group, you can do so. We wanted to be allocated randomly so you can share and even share even if you are not engaged in that conversation but maybe we can have the benefits of going differently to our comfort zone. But if you have a strong preference to join a different group, please do so. And at the end of the discussions, we will have time to bring two central core messages from your discussion. So be prepared to highlight and choose among yourselves who will feedback. And Nora, how do you set everyone? You will be invited shortly to join. I have to start to bring sharing. We just have to click join and we will see each other in 20 minutes. So welcome back from the groups. I know it's never, the time is never enough. I know some of you were cutting between the discussions. As we mentioned, we are going to post the report of this session on Slack. We have also used Jamboard to take notes. We'll also put the Jamboard on Slack. So if you have other ideas to add in or get in touch with other people, please go ahead. So at this moment, I want to hand over to my name sec, Tracy Mann, to listen to the feedback and close off the session. Tracy, thank you so much. I'm always honored to share this name with such a distinguished scholar activist and passionate, passionate practitioner as yourself. It's really an honor and a pleasure. And thank you all who participated today. And we're very interested to hear some of the top messages that have come out of your discussions. I'm just going to go by the list of breakout groups and that I have here on my sheet. And so I will start, Margo, with you to give us a couple of messages from the Climate Finance Group, please. Sure. Thanks, Tracy's. So we had kind of a conversation with some questions and did share some experiences which I thought were really interesting. And two things that I want to share is how important a holistic approach to climate change and resilience is, and especially in thinking about financing. We talked about, you know, it can't just be specific climate change activities but, you know, looking at the breadth of what development and support can be especially for local communities, how to get financing into their hands so maybe the usual suspects and the usual mechanisms. And the other point that I thought was really interesting, we talked a bit about doing financial training and financial literacy and how to build the skills that that can be a really important component for climate financing all the way down to that really local level that community level household individual level for them to be able to build their business skills and engage. And really also there was a point tagged on to that which I think is really interesting to share as well from Tracy was how important when we start to increase financing down to the local level and when that is existing that, you know, yes, we're going to provide this financial training and that is absolutely critical so that there's transparency and understanding about where this money is and where it's going. And also that there are professionals that, you know, do this, who are accountants, and they can also be hired and if that's included within local level financial support to actually be able to engage them, how, you know, revolutionary that could be to, you know, have them actually provide that service then to the local community so, you know, we all can be kind of like broad based knowledge around financing but we don't need to be CPAs and account executives, etc. That's not happening. So, stop there. Thank you very much, Margo. Thank you. Next will be Rosemary. Rosemary can, can you report out on the innovation group. Okay. Thank you, Tracy. So the innovation group had a very nice discussion. And it is coming out very clearly that as we look at innovation in promoting inclusive leadership. We've heard a few key things, one key thing that is really coming out that it is important for communities to have a platform for conversation. Because innovation is not just about technology, it is anything new that can be used to create new activities for local level adaptations. It is important for conversations to be held so that we understand the situation that the various vulnerable and differently abled groups in the community are having, so that we're able to integrate all the voices, so that as we use technology to pass the information, then all the voices have been captured. Another point that really came out so well is that when you have conversations with communities, you get very creative ideas for the future, especially from the youth. So you will be integrating the youth ideas, the indigenous knowledge and using technology to convey the same. So we do not really push everybody towards technology, but looking at the different groups, let them pick the kind of innovation that they want to move forward with. Then we have come up that during innovations, there's a very important aspect of co-creation. Communities have knowledge, communities have ideas. What we are doing is we are co-creating solutions with the communities. And if we co-create solutions with communities, then we have high chance of sustainability, high chance of replicability, and achieving more in terms of output and outcomes. Lastly, we came up with the point on technology that after all ideas have come up from the very innovative ideas, we are able to use technology now to pass on the ideas that have been shared. For example, storytelling. We could get stories being told by grassroots communities and use our mobile phones to pass that story to make somebody know what is happening or entice somebody. And then we need to look at innovation in terms of the new versus the already existing in relation to the context and outcome that we are looking at. So in short, we concluded that if we are to be innovative, then our innovations must have an aspect of empowerment. Our innovations must have an aspect of providing a center stage for community discussions. And then we must have constructive dialogues and then we must promote strengthening of partnerships and networks for addressing climate change impacts as we come up with our innovations. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you so much and thank you too for for defining technology in a in a way that is relevant relevant to local communities. I find we often discuss technology on the global north level of internet connectivity and this kind of thing and you're really talking about what's meaningful community level so that that's a very, very valuable observations there. Now I'd like to go on please to the nature based solutions group that was led by Mr Chicono. Thank you very much, Tracy for a group Melvin is reporting on our behalf so maybe you have the floor. Thank you. All right, so I'll be brief. The first thing that came up quite quickly during the conversation is that gender should be really integrated at the start of a project, make sure that you don't make it just a tick the box at the end of the project cycle. Really think about it carefully. And then at the end of the conversation, we touched upon something that I think would require another hour. It's which is really interesting because on the one hand you want to promote local knowledge, you want to build on local knowledge. And you may have an objective a goal to ensure that gender equality is being promoted. And sometimes that that can be a dilemma sometimes local knowledge can be hampering for achieving gender equality or how you understand gender equality. So, there was a response as well from one of our attendants from participants from Bangladesh, who mentioned that for them it's it's really important that their work is bottom up that you start from the communities that you built on local knowledge and that sometimes yet it may take time. It may be a long road, but that will be much more sustainable if you really look into the needs and the wishes of communities. And don't try to push, as I understand it for all types of gender related outputs, but really take your time and respect the context that you're working in. Thank you so much. I think that was a great follow up actually to Rosemary's remarks or seem to be some synergies in terms of the local level as as you described. All right, let's go on to Desmond, would you speak about your group and your participation please. In my group we we focused much on few issues so the first one is the need to understand youth as a group and the disparities that also exist within this youth group. So looking at South North, looking at the city and in the rural areas and looking at even people with certain disabilities, but also young people. And then the other thing was how do you reach these people and get their ideas to contribute to the agenda. So the institution that want to engage these young people have to tailor a message to these people, whether it is going to be social media that you would use to mobilize them, or you would go from community to community or house to house. It depends on the youth particular category that you are looking at. And also the other thing was that you need to also tailor a message in a way that even though you would not engage every individual, whatever results you are getting it's a reflection of all of them or the majority. The other thing is that the institutions usually tend to approach young people in a little of a bias manner because the focus is more on, for example, a youth group that is more organized, a youth group that is more vocal, and that might not be effective. So one other thing to consider could be actually supporting that that provides support for such youth groups to actually also organize so that then they become more reflective of what the institutions consider relevant to to to consult. Yeah, I think these were most of the things there were also other things regarding the understanding level of these youth groups, whether whatever they are usually pursuing is the same. It's everybody within the group thinking the same way, and it's all of them having the capacity to also contribute, and that's places that institutions need to also take note and and provide whatever support is needed. I think we had more issues that we discussed and my my group members who were in this group. Feel free to to come in. Desmond, thank you so much. We're running a little bit over time but I certainly think we will want to hear please from the, from the responsive policies group and I'm not sure is Estella able to lead us on that or is there another spokesperson from that group that would like to contribute. Thanks, Tracy Stella was not able to join. Okay, so just quickly share knowing that we're over time the two key things agreed one of them is addressing the disconnect between global policy and local implementation realities. We are hearing GCF and others have policies but are they aligned with what is happening on the ground. Are they looking at how they are being financed and others. And the second one was on doing things bottom up locally led adaptation policies, because most of the policies are not fit for purpose, because people are not included it's the technocrats who do these policies without realities on the ground. So those are the two major ones we agreed, but we will share the rest of the information plus the report on slack in case you're interested in following up and do continue with the conversation and gender equality and intersectionality. Thank you. Thank you so much Tracy and I just like to close by by reinforcing the messages that we've heard today from all of our groups there was a theme of bottom up community based approaches and to the degree that we take this out in our work this week in our conversations and our work throughout the year until we meet again in the CBA community. I encourage you to communicate through all the channels that CBA offers through IED and many other partners are great resources and their individuals who want to support you in this challenging and so necessary work, and I wish you all a very good day and evening. Thank you so much.