Climate change affects everyone, independent of race, nationality or gender status. Nevertheless, there are countries and people that are more affected: In many ways, women exceptionally suffer from climate change’s effects. But how are climate change and women’s rights connected with each other?
To what extent do G7 nations provide developing countries with funds for climate change activities? How do they promote gender equality? Do the G7 nations correctly report their aid activities?
This book shows the unsatisfying quality of the nations’ self-reporting and explains the possible reasons for as well as the consequences of the deviations. It detects to what extent gender equality is promoted in climate change projects and recommends improvements concerning women’s rights.
Keywords:
- Feminism;
- Global Warming;
- Emissions;
- Adaptation;
- Sustainable Development Goals;
- Inequality
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
2 Introducing Climate Change and Gender
2.1 Climate Change in a Nutshell
2.2 Adaptation: What, Why and Who?
2.3 Adaptation Costs and Responsibilities: Questions of Justice
3 Gender Dimensions of Climate Change: Understanding the Linkages
3.1 Starting Point: Feminist Political Ecology
3.2 Gender, Inequality and Gender Mainstreaming
3.3 The Gendered Impacts of Climate Change
3.4 Gender Equality and Climate Change: Growing Recognition
3.5 Criticism: “Vulnerable Women of the Global South”
4 The Credibility of Gender-Responsive Adaptation Finance
4.1 Data and Methodology
4.2 Literature Review: Assessing the Rio Marker Data Credibility
5 Analysis
5.1 Descriptive Analysis
5.2 Qualitative Analysis
6 Conclusion
References
Appendices
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten
List of Figures
Fig. 1 a) Who is hurt by climate Change? b) Who caused climate change historically?
Fig. 2 Principles of fairness translated into policy principles
Fig. 3 Simplified Overview of the Landscape of Adaptation Finance
Fig. 4 Climate-related bilateral development finance 2013-2016, commitment in 2016 USD thousand
Fig. 5 Shares of adaptation, mitigation and cross-cutting finance 2013-2016
Fig. 6 Trends in DAC members' climate related ODA targeting gender equality 2013-2016, USD million commitments, constant 2016 prices
Fig. 7 Adaptation finance by G7 donor countries, 2013-2016 average
Fig. 8 Ten sectors with most adaptation finance (2013-2016 total)
Fig. 9 Ten recipient countries with most adaptation finance (2013-2016 total)
Fig. 10 a) DAC donor coding of projects as adaptation related (2013-2016) b) My re-evaluation
Fig. 11 Proportion of over-coded activities 2013-2016, country by country (adaptation)
Fig. 12 a) DAC donor coding of projects marked as gender equality-related (2013-2016) b) My re-evaluation
Fig. 13 Proportion of over-coded activities 2013-2016, country by country (gender equality)
List of Tables
Table 1 Scoring System for Climate Markers
Table 2 Scoring System for Gender Equality Policy Marker
Table 3 Overview of methodologies applied by previous research
1 Introduction
Climate change is non-discriminatory and affects everyone, independent of race, nationality, gender or economic status (European Capacity Building Initiative 2017: 3). However, it does not impact all geographical areas equally and certainly not all people have the same capabilities to deal with negative impacts. Developing countries do not only carry the heaviest burden of climate change impacts, by experiencing floods, droughts, storms and other weather extremes, they also have fewer resources and less capacity to cope with and adapt to these adverse effects. In addition to that, developing countries have historically contributed least to anthropogenic climate change. Due to this “double injustice” (Betzold/Weiler 2018: 2) of least contribution to, and less capacity to adapt to, climate change, there is a moral as well as legal obligation for developed countries to help vulnerable developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change. For a long time, the discourse on climate change and its consequences was conducted solely from the perspective of climate protection policy and mitigation, trying to achieve legally binding commitments by governments to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (IPCC 2007: 878). Due to several reasons, but mostly because countries simply didn’t mitigate enough and had to realise that global warming was no more stoppable, adaptation to the impacts of the changing climate became more and more important within the global climate debate. At the 2007 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC[1] ) Conference of the Parties (COP), the Bali Action Plan recognised adaptation activities to the consequences of climate change as urgently needed measures (Rodenberg 2012: 116). Through the UNFCCC, developed countries are required to provide financial assistance to particularly vulnerable developing countries. In 2010 the World Bank estimated that developing countries need between 70 to 100 billion USD per year to adapt to climate change, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates in a 2014 report that the costs could even be four to five times higher (Peterson Carvalho/Terpstra 2015: 5). Questions often raised by researchers, as well as the public, in the context of climate change adaptation finance is whether countries are contributing what they have committed to and if the money reaches where it is mostly needed. The highest need refers to where people are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change – in terms of geographic locations as well as their socio-economic situation. This thesis aims to target both questions. While one research interest is the actual financial flows from developed countries to vulnerable developing countries, the second focus is on the gender equality aspect of climate finance projects of international development cooperation. Among the poorest populations, climate change threatens especially the most vulnerable: women and girls - because neither the impact of climate change on people nor the ways in which people are responding to climate change is gender-neutral. In many ways, women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than men. They constitute the majority of the world’s poor and are more dependent on natural resources that are threatened by climate change. In many developing contexts, women’s livelihoods are dependent on sectors such as subsistence agriculture, forestry and water, which are highly climate-sensitive. In addition to that, women face social, economic and political barriers that limit their coping capacities. They often have limited access to resources, less access to justice, limited mobility and limited voice in shaping decision making and influencing policy (European Capacity Building Initiative 2017: 3). Restrictions on women’s land ownership, for instance, mean that many women do not have access to productive farming land, while at the same time lack financial capital and access to technologies that might enable them to diversify their livelihoods (OECD DAC Network on Gender Equality 2016b: 2). Due to these gender-differentiated impacts of climate change, it is necessary to integrate actions and solutions into climate change policies and programmes that promote gender equality and women’s empowerment analysis and objectives. This includes ensuring that means of implementation like financing, technology development and transfer, as well as capacity building accompanying climate protection policies flow in the required amounts, on a timely basis and are gender-sensitive as well as poverty-eradication-friendly (Williams 2016: 5). Referring to the importance of gender-responsiveness in climate change adaptation, the Guardian claimed in 2011 that “of the millions of dollars spent on climate change projects in developing countries, little has been allocated in a way that will benefit women” (Palitza, The Guardian 2011), although it is women who will be most affected by climate change. By assessing whether adaptation finance is flowing in the required amounts and whether adaptation aid activities are gender-sensitive, this thesis not only wants to contribute to the scholarship on the two important topics of climate change and gender equality, but also promotes more transparency and accountability regarding donors’ international aid activities.
The focus of the analysis is on the Group of Seven (G7[2] ) nations as the most important bilateral donor group in supporting poor countries with adaptation to climate change impacts. According to the “polluter pays” principle, I am going to focus my analysis on the climate financing through bilateral official development assistance (ODA[3] ) by the G7 nations, as the largest economies in the world. These countries are not only morally but also legally obliged under the Paris Agreement[4] and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs[5] ) to provide financial support to developing countries. Transparency and accountability of climate finance are essential for short-term adaptation as well as long-term climate-resilient development (Peterson Carvalho/Terpstra 2015: 5). Therefore, institutions like the OECD have introduced policy marker systems to make donor countries mark their projects and make them more comprehensible. But developed countries might be tempted to count a larger amount of their projects as climate-relevant due to the pressure of international climate finance commitments. As transparency and accountability are not given when solely relying on self-reporting by donor countries, numerous studies have assessed the financial commitments for adaptation finance and came to alarming conclusions (see section 4.2). While there is a growing amount of literature on gender and climate, assessments of the actual aid activities and their credibility are rare. Having said that, institutions such as the OECD continue to push the boundaries. For instance, in 2016, the OECD has published an analysis on bilateral ODA to gender and climate change (OECD DAC Network on Gender Equality 2016b). Another report was published by climate experts of the non-governmental organisation CARE International, monitoring support for adaptation and gender equality. In contrast to those publications, this thesis will add a detailed analysis of aid activities instead of solely assessing the financial flows for climate change and gender equality. The following research questions are supposed to be answered during the process of this thesis:
RQ 1: To what extent do G7 nations, as the main perpetrators of climate change and the most important donors of climate finance, provide developing countries with funds for adaptation measures?
There are different estimations about how much developing countries need to adapt to climate change, ranging from 70 billion to 500 billion USD per year. Although awareness of the risks posed by climate change is increasing, current levels of investment in climate change adaptation rank far below the lowest estimates (Peterson Carvalho/Terpstra 2015: 5). While the 2015 Global Landscape of Climate Finance report estimated a global funding for adaptation of 25 billion USD in 2014/15, this amount decreased to 22 billion USD in 2015/16 (Buchner et al. 2015: 2; Buchner et al. 2017: 3). Research Question 1 is addressing the issue of whether developed countries, in this case specifically G7 nations, have respected their financial commitments. As simple as this question may seem in the first place, answers have proved to be highly controversial and have led to an erosion of trust between Parties in international climate negotiations (Weikmans et al. 2016a: 5), as will be discussed in the course of this study.
RQ 2: To what extent does G7 adaptation finance promote gender equality?
Because women and girls are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change, climate change action, including climate finance, must recognise the gender specific dimensions of climate change to ensure equitable results. Climate responses should actively promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. To achieve engendered climate finance, several aspects are required. Gender should be integrated into the design, implementation and monitoring of climate relevant projects and programs. Also, climate responses should systematically consider women’s differentiated needs, knowledge, experiences and priorities (OECD DAC Network on Gender Equality 2016b: 2). Several decisions and conclusions of the UNFCCC have over the years recognised the linkages between gender equality and climate change.
The 2014 Lima work programme on gender for example invites Parties to “[…] promote gender-sensitivity in developing and implementing climate policy and achieve gender-responsive climate policy […]” (UNFCCC 2014, Decision CP.20). By cross-referencing the OECD adaptation marker with the gender equality policy marker, this thesis intends to find out to what extent G7 countries promote gender equality in adaptation projects.
RQ 3: Do the G7 donors correctly apply the OECD Adaptation marker and Gender Equality Policy marker or are there indications of over-scoring?
While the previous research question 2 allows insights into the quantitative amounts of ODA spent on gender-responsive adaptation projects, research question 3 is interested in the reliability of donor countries’ self-reporting. As previous research of different data sets has found out, donor countries tend to significantly over-score their adaptation funding (see section 4.2). This thesis is contributing to this debate by tracing over-scoring not only for the adaptation aspect but especially for the gender equality aspect.
This study is divided into six chapters. The following chapters 2 and 3 provide an introduction into climate change, adaptation finance, and the gender dimensions of climate change. First, Chapter 2 includes an overview of the different actors and sources of climate finance, presents the history of adaptation finance and introduces the theoretical foundation of climate justice and shared responsibility. The problematic relation between development aid and climate finance will be discussed, introducing one major cause for a lack of credibility as revealed in the analytical part in Chapter 5. Next, Chapter 3 establishes the link to gender equality, allowing the reader grasp why and how women are affected by climate change and the importance of gender equality - including a review of the literature, framing this thesis in the field of (feminist) political ecology, adding to the critical debate on how gender is being constituted as being equal to women and how an image of the woman as being the “vulnerable victim” is being created. The fourth chapter introduces the dataset and methodology applied by this thesis, including a review of previous studies, as the methodological approach has been derived from existing literature. Following that, in Chapter 5, I present the results of both, the descriptive as well as the qualitative analysis of this study. The concluding Chapter 6 summarizes my findings and displays them in the context of previous research results. All necessary data can be found in either the annex of this work or in the attachment it is handed in with.
2 Introducing Climate Change and Gender
Climate change is currently a key issue at many different levels. On the one hand, international politics is aiming at preventing further rise in temperatures. On the other hand, climate change is an object of science in climatology as well as in other disciplines such as law, economics, or political science. On societal level, people are more and more aware of climate change and its consequences. Through the efforts of media channels there is constant reporting on climate related topics. With the fourth assessment report of the IPCC, the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore, and the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 given to the IPCC and Al Gore, international attention of human-induced climate change has reached hitherto unseen heights. The economy is affected by climate change as well. Mostly due to regulations on emissions which have also automatically made climate change become a relevant topic for legal discourse. Even the church is communicating their worries towards the changing climate[6] (Jahrmarkt 2016: 23; Mertz et al. 2009: 743). Over time, irrefutable evidence is emerging all over the world for climate variability and catastrophes caused by global warming. One less popular aspect of climate change, at least among the public, is that its hazards increase existing gender inequalities and contributes to a greater climate change vulnerability of many women. This is caused by prevailing gender norms and discrimination against women that deny them income, legal rights, access to resources as well as political participation. At the same time women are assigned with the primary role of caring for their families and communities and providing for their livelihoods. This combination leads to an increasing marginalization of women in many communities across the globe (Schalatek/Nakhooda 2016: 1). To understand why gender matters in the context of a global climate crisis and the interlinkages between a changing climate and the need for promotion of gender equality, basic information on concepts and historical backgrounds are needed. Therefore, this chapter gives an introduction into climate change and the international community’s combat against rising temperatures and their impacts. The following chapter then introduces gender and the importance of mainstreaming gender equality into climate finance activities.
2.1 Climate Change in a Nutshell
In the beginning of the twentieth century, researchers used terms such as climatic change or climate change when writing about climate events such as ice ages. Both terms can describe past, present and future shifts, on global, regional or local scales, nature- as well as human-produced. This observation emphasizes that climate has always been changing. But the prevailing notion at that time was, that people can only alter climate locally (e.g. by cutting down forests). Hardly anyone thought humans would be able to trigger a worldwide change in climate. It was only by 1958 that precise measurements of carbon dioxide confirmed a steady increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. With the establishment of computer models of global climate in the 1960s, the idea of the relationship between increasing levels of carbon dioxide and a warming climate was supported. When global temperature started rising sharply in the 1980s, media coverage and public interest increased accordingly (Henson 2011: 8). The term climate change refers to a change in the status quo of the climate that can be identified by applying statistical tests. Indications for a changing climate are changes in the mean or in the variability of climate properties, and that such persist for an extended period of decades or even longer (Burroughs 2007: 1; IPCC 2014: 5; Henson 2011: 6). Article 1 of the UNFCCC defines climate change as “[…] a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods” (United Nations 1992, UNFCCC Art. 1). Current climate change is a central part of the public debate about the consequences of human activities on the global environment. Human activity changed the world’s climate mostly by adding enormous quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHG) to the atmosphere. Those gases absorb the heat that is radiated by Earth but release only part of that heat to space (Burroughs 2007: 1; IPCC 2014: 4; Henson 2011: 6). This results in a warming-up of the atmosphere, which in turn leads to an increase of ocean warming caused by rising sea levels due to melting ice and ocean acidification. Furthermore, the frequency of precipitation will change to such an extent, that in damp regions rainfall will increase while in dry reasons a decrease of already rare rainfall is expected (Jahrmarkt 2016: 25). The UNFCCC identifies two options to address climate change: mitigation by reducing GHG emissions and enhancing sinks, and adaptation to the impacts of climate change. As signatories to the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, most countries committed themselves to reduce or at least stabilize their GHG emissions. The recent decades have already shown, that no mitigation effort can prevent climate change from happening (Eriksen et al. 2007: 10). Increasing impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans have become visible. According to research, it is expected that climate change is going to have an impact on nearly every aspect of life. Natural disasters are becoming more frequent and intense, agricultural conditions are changing and further challenging food security, and diseases are becoming more prevalent (Wanjiru 2012: 1). Many people are already experiencing the consequences of climate change, such as landslides, floods, droughts, or hurricanes and the effects on their livelihoods. Adaptation is therefore a necessity and equally important to mitigation. Most weather extremes affect especially the already most vulnerable populations in developing countries. Climate change harms those people most, who are least responsible for its existence, as Figures 1 a) and b) illustrates. (Lottje 2017: 5).
Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten
Fig. 1 a) Who is hurt by climate Change? b) Who caused climate change historically?
Source: Center for Global Development 2015
Coping with and adapting to this future of frequent natural disasters, is becoming increasingly important and urgent – especially for countries in the Global South. While developing countries did not only contribute least to anthropogenic climate change, they also have fewer resources and less capacities to cope with and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. According to this “double injustice” (Betzold/Weiler 2018: 2) of climate change, developed countries have a moral as well as a legal obligation to support vulnerable developing countries in their adaptation efforts. The following paragraphs emphasize on the importance of adaptation for many developing countries and its relationship to international development cooperation.
2.2 Adaptation: What, Why and Who?
Almost all societies and activities are sensitive to climate in some way because to a large extent where people live and how they generate livelihood and wealth is influenced by the ambient climate (Adger et al. 2003: 181). Climate change adaptation is increasingly considered an urgent priority for global policy action, particularly in developing countries already experiencing the negative impacts of climate change (Sherman et al. 2016: 708). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defined adaptation to climate change in its Fourth Assessment Report as “adjustment in natural or human systems response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities” (IPCC 2007: 869). Mitigation, which is often contrasted to adaptation, is defined by the report as “an anthropogenic intervention to reduce the anthropogenic forcing of the climate system; it includes strategies to reduce greenhouse gas sources and emissions and enhancing greenhouse gas sinks” (IPCC 2007: 878). As Jerneck puts it, adaptation and mitigation “[…] are socially, spatially, and temporally differentiated responses to climate change” (Jerneck 2018: 404). While mitigation refers to the reduction of risks, exposure and vulnerability to the potential impacts of climate change, adaptation means the actual adjustment to current or expected climate effects (Jerneck 2018: 404). In simple words one could say that mitigation aims to avoid climate change while adaptation is coping with climate change impacts. Adaptation activities can either be reactive, trying to alleviate impacts that have already happened, or proactive, meaning strategically trying to avoid the effects of future climate change events (Sovacool/Linnér 2016: 5). The focus of adaptation is on reducing the vulnerability to disasters and other risks caused by climate change. There are four important terms in the context of adaptation: vulnerability, exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. The IPCC’s fourth assessment report defines vulnerability as “[…] the degree to which a system is susceptible to, and unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes” (IPCC 2007: 883). People’s vulnerability is determined not only by the likely responses of resources on which they depend, but also by the availability of resources and by the entitlements of individuals and groups to make use of these resources (Adger et al. 2003: 181). Exposure means that some geographical areas are more affected by climate change than others. Prominent examples are low-lying islands or drought-affected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Often also spatial dimensions to poverty and social exclusion play a significant role, with the poorest being forced to live under worst conditions because they have lesser access to resources than others. Exposure thus has two principal elements: the climatic conditions themselves and the population’s wealth and development exposed to them (Burton et al. 2006: 3). Sensitivity refers to the fact that communities relying on climate sensitive resources and activities are more vulnerable to a changing climate and climate variabilities. Diversification would be needed but is often not possible due to the lack of resources that created poverty in the first place. Finally, the fourth important concept in the context of adaptation to climate change is adaptive capacity. While adaptation is the process of coping with the impacts of climate change, adaptive capacity describes the ability to adapt in terms of innovating, self-organizing and responding to uncertainty (Nelson 2011: 6-7; Huq/Reid 2004: 16). In broad terms, a society’s vulnerability to climate change reflects its degree of exposure and its capacity to adapt. Another term often appearing in the climate adaptation literature is resilience, which is only slightly different to adaptive capacity. Resilience refers to the “capacity of individuals or groups to implement many proactive adaptative actions over an extended period of time” (Sovacool/Linnér 2016: 10). Certainly, all those concepts are interconnected and interrelated. Successful activities aiming at the promotion of adaptation are supposed to reduce vulnerability, strengthen resilience, and bolster overall adaptive capacity (Sovacool/Linnér 2016: 10).
Although mitigation is important for international climate action, there are also various reasons why adaptation does also play an important role. As already mentioned before, humanity’s “failure” to prevent enough and the irreversibility of global warming have led to an increasing importance of adaptation compared to mitigation. Between 1906 and 2005, the earth has already warmed about 0.75 degrees and different models predict that global temperatures will further rise by two to six degrees by the end of 2100 depending on societies’ development. But even if mitigation was achieved immediately, global warming would continue for several decades due to a process known as “thermal inertia”. This inertia might result in rising sea levels of more than one meter which would have severe consequences, especially for low-lying island nations, and would make adaptation strategies highly necessary (Sovacool/Linnér 2016: 12). Adaptation can also function as a safety net for so called “tipping points”. Tipping points are critical thresholds within the climate system. If they are reached, the climatic system becomes irreparably altered. Potential tipping points are for example the melting of the arctic summer ice, intensified monsoons or accelerated deforestation. As researchers are still uncertain about tipping points and the consequences in case they are reached, adaptation is an important element for better preparation of societies (Sovacool/Linnér 2016: 14). One advantage is the political feasibility of adaptation compared to mitigation. Mitigation actions are a typical “tragedy of the commons” case where people must work together globally to stabilize anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Despite many international negotiations and treaties on CO2 emission reductions, effective global collaboration was till date not successful. Adaptation, on the other hand, is not as prone to “free riders” and can be done by all countries for their own and direct benefit. Using the words of Aaheim and colleagues, “it is useful to adapt even if nobody else does, but mitigation is meaningless unless it is as part of collective global effort” (Aaheim et al. 2010: 88). In addition to that, it is worth noting that adaptation projects can also provide mitigation benefits. Reforestation can protect against floods while supporting carbon sink, reducing the exploration of offshore oil can lead to lower GHG emissions from fossil fuel combustion and at the same time lower the risk of environmental destruction through oil spills, just to name two examples (Sovacool/Linnér 2016: 15). The most popular argument in favour of adaptation is that of fairness and morality. As already mentioned above, developing countries have least contributed to GHG emissions, which lead to a global warming, but are most suffering from the impacts of the changing climate. From a justice perspective, the activities of one group overusing the atmosphere have caused continuous harm to another group. Polluters should be required to pay for the damage they have caused and support affected nations to adapt. In this sense, Barrett even describes adaptation finance as “quantifiable compensations for the inequalities of climate change” (Barrett 2014: 130). Adaptation in that way is a means to ensure the responsibility of industrialized countries since it marks a first step towards social justice and environmental integrity (Sovacool/Linnér 2016: 17-18).
2.3 Adaptation Costs and Responsibilities: Questions of Justice
At the core of climate policy goals is one fundamental conflict: the one between protecting climate on the one hand and economic development on the other hand. The latter expresses fear of global economic crisis and demands a specifically economic solution that focuses on correct cost and risk management. Efficiency is important, meaning to handle resources efficiently or implement cost-saving climate policy. Future profits are compared to present costs of environmental protection. Obviously, climate policies can not only be influenced by economic targets and calculations but must also consider the ethical implications of climate change (Bentz-Hölzl/Brocker 2012: 255). Climate change is directly and indirectly threatening human life and thus violating the principle of non-maleficence: “the human right to life; the human right to health; and the human right to subsistence” (Caney 2009: 75). The increased risk of such human rights cannot be justified by economic advantages of individual countries. A political solution that is respecting ethical standards therefore cannot stick to purely economic perspective but must consider fundamental rights of present as well as future generations. But even after a consensus on the ethical need for climate protection is reached, the question on how strategies of mitigation and adaptation should be implemented and who bears the costs involved remain open (Bentz-Hölzl/Brocker 2012: 255). While mitigation efforts through emissions reductions is primarily concentrated in richer countries, adaptation effort is needed in both rich and poor countries. However, developing countries often lack adaptive capacity leading to poor people and poor countries being less well-prepared to deal with the impacts of climate change than rich people and rich countries. Low rankings in terms of development indicators like per capita income, literacy or institutional capacity are linked to climate vulnerability. Assistance from developed countries for funding, technology and capacity-building initiatives is crucial for developing countries’ adaptation process. The primary burden-sharing problem is how to allocate funding responsibilities to richer countries to fund adaptation efforts in poorer countries. While there is no doubt about the need for international collective action, the question of who should pay is an ethical one (Lalthapersad-Pillay/Oosthuizen 2011: 373-375; Dellink et al. 2009: 411). The ethical aspects involve the distribution of the costs and benefits of prevention measures and adaptation activities, compensation for damages, as well as participation in decision-making processes (Grasso 2010: 74). A key principle in international environmental policy is the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) as it is embodied in the UN Rio Declaration 1992. The PPP is an approach of corrective justice and focuses on the responsibility of industrialized countries, urging them to compensate for the climate change caused. It states that victims of pollution have a right for an acceptable state of the environment and that polluters are obliged to pay for measures to ensure that the environment returns to, or remains in, that acceptable state. In the case of climate change, nature cannot be returned to this state and the PPP may be extended to include compensation (Bentz-Hölzl/Brocker 2012: 257; Dellink et al. 2009: 412). The starting point of just climate policy is the assumption that the global costs of adaptation to climate change impacts should be fairly distributed among countries. There are two approaches in ethics that can be applied to the distribution of adaptation costs: consequentialist and non-consequentialist approaches. While the former looks for justice in outcomes, the latter focuses on justice in guiding principles or intentions. Outcomes can either be related to actions that have caused climate change (who caused climate change), or to the distribution of wealth (who pays for adaptation). Non-consequentialist approaches argue that it derives from the act itself whether it is right or wrong and not from its consequences (Dellink et al. 2009: 412-413). In terms of adaptation this principle can be translated in such a way, that the responsibilities for adapting to the impacts of climate change should be based on the capacity to pay of countries to share the burdens of climate change. Richer countries are supposed to pay more for adaptation based on a principle of solidarity, irrespective of whether they have actually caused harm (Dellink et al. 2009: 414). It is argued, that “the basis for an internationally negotiated agreement on adaptation financing should rest on a combination of the responsibility and capacity to pay of different states” (Dellink et al. 2009: 414). Such a hybrid “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and respective capabilities” (CBDR) approach has also been adopted by the UNFCCC in Article 3.1 (UN 1992: 4). Figure 2 summarizes the above mentioned by showing how these ethical principles can be translated into political principles that can anchor choices about burden-sharing for climate adaptation (Dellink et al. 2009: 412).
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Fig. 2 Principles of fairness translated into policy principles
Source: Dellink et al. 2009: 412
Apart from the ethical questions related to climate finance, another relevant and much discussed issue is the lack of internationally agreed modalities to account for climate finance. Especially for adaptation, a lack of regulations and definitions might be one major factor for mis-labelling funding activities (see Chapter 5). This lack of definition has also caused another discussion on the distinction between traditional development aid and climate aid, which I will further examine in this chapter. In adaptation finance both traditional donor institutions as well as climate-specific actors are involved, leading to an institutional architecture that is highly fragmented. It originates through public and private channels, and as bi- or multilateral financial transfers from developed to developing countries. Multiple sources exist but most transfers are made through climate change funds, such as the Adaptation Fund, or as standard development assistance, which is most common (Betzold/Weiler 2017: 18). Figure 3 presents a simplified overview of the institutional landscape of adaptation finance.
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Fig. 3 Simplified Overview of the Landscape of Adaptation Finance
Source: Roberts et al. 2015: 17
Though the analytical part of this thesis is focussing on bilateral public adaptation finance through non-climate specific channels due to various reasons I will explain later, the following paragraphs introduce both, funding through ODA as well as through the multilateral channels under the UNFCCC. As I am going to highlight, there is, an “international climate finance accounting muddle” (Weikmans/Roberts 2017: 1) and a constant discussion on the distinction of funding for adaptation and traditional development aid, leading to non-transparent and unreliable reporting of climate finance by donor countries.
2.3.1 From Kyoto to Marrakesh: The History of Adaptation Finance
To begin, I am going to outline the history of adaptation finance within the international climate change negotiations. As I will show, in the early period of those negotiations, adaptation only appeared on the margins but slowly became more and more important. Today, it is at the centre of climate change adaptation and at least equally important as mitigation (Betzold/Weiler 2018: 21).
2.3.1.1 Phase I: The Beginning of Climate Change Negotiations
In 1992, at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, the UNFCCC was signed. The Conventions’ most important principle is the one of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” (United Nations 1992, UNFCCC Art. 3.1). Therewith, the Convention distinguishes between developed and developing countries, and acknowledges that developed countries have much more contributed to anthropogenic climate change and at the same time have more resources to address its negative impacts. To consider these different levels of contribution to climate change and to address questions of fairness and equity, the Convention divides countries into three main groups according to different commitments. Annex I contains industrialized countries that were members of the OECD in 1992 plus countries with economies in transition[7]. Annex II parties consist of the OECD members of Annex I plus the European Economic Community[8]. Those parties are required to provide financial resources to developing countries to enable them to reduce emission and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. Non-Annex I parties are mostly developing countries. Out of those countries, there are some that are recognized by the Convention as being especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. These are, for example, countries with low-lying coastal areas or those prone to desertification and drought. Others might also be especially vulnerable to the potential economic impacts of climate change response measures, for example if they are highly dependent on income from fossil fuel production and commerce. 49 countries that have been classified as least developed countries (LDCs) by the United Nations (UN) are given special consideration due to their limited capacity to respond to climate change and to adapt to its effects (United Nations 1992).
The language on adaptation in the Convention, the first COP decisions, and the Kyoto Protocol is rather weak and reflects the lower importance of adaptation, as compared to mitigation, in the early years of the negotiations. This lower status of adaptation was due to various reasons. First, it was thought that adaptation would distract from the actual tasks of the climate negotiations, which was to reduce GHG emissions and thus avoid the need for adaptation. From this perspective adaption would indicate resignation – accepting that the Conventions’ objective of avoiding climate change could not be met. Second, the discussion of adaptation and its finance was somehow linked to the question of responsibility and accountability (Betzold/Weiler 2018: 24). It was feared by industrialized countries, that accepting commitments on adaptation finance would mean acknowledging their responsibility of being the main causers of climate change.
Developed countries wanted to avoid discussion on liability and compensation for harm caused (Khan/Roberts 2013: 174). It was only over time, that the annual COPs of the UNFCCC and the Meetings of the Parties (MOPs) have made an increasing number of significant decisions regarding adaptation.
2.3.1.2 Phase II: Adaptation Finance since 2001
With Decision 7/CP.7 at COP7 in Marrakesh in 2001, parties recognised the need for additional funding for non-Annex I countries. With the Marrakesh Accords three new funds have been established: the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), the Least Developed Country Fund (LDCF) and the Adaptation Fund. While the first two funds depend solely on voluntary contributions by Annex I and Annex II countries, the Adaptation Fund additionally receives shares from the Clean Development Mechanism[9] (Betzold/Weiler 2018: 25). As adaptation is an explicit objective in all three funds, this shows how adaptation and adaptation finance slowly became more prominent on the climate change agenda. In 2007, the Bali Action Plan decided to increase action in mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer and finance. International Cooperation was supposed to “support urgent implementation of adaptation actions, including through vulnerability assessments, prioritization of actions, financial needs assessments, capacity-building and response strategies, integration of adaptation actions into sectoral and national planning, specific projects and programmes, means to incentivize the implementation of adaptation actions, and other ways to enable climate-resilient development and reduce vulnerability of all Parties […]” (UNFCCC 2007, Bali Action Plan). Unfortunately, the Copenhagen Summit two years later failed to legally frame the Bali Action Plan and only resulted in the Copenhagen Accord with unclear legal status (Betzold/Weiler 2018: 26).
2.3.1.3 Phase III: Adaptation Finance since 2009
Though the Copenhagen Summit was considered a failure in some respects, it still represents a breakthrough for adaptation and mitigation finance. In the Copenhagen Accord it was recognised that “enhanced action and international cooperation on adaptation is urgently required” (UNFCCC 2009, Copenhagen Accord Decision 2/CP.15). Parties committed to “[…] provide new and additional resources […] approaching USD 30 billion for the period 2010-2012 with balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation.” As well as “[…] mobilizing jointly USD 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries.” (UNFCCC 2009, Copenhagen Accord Decision 2/CP.15). While this money is supposed to come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bi- and multilateral, a significant share of this funding should also be channelled through the newly established Green Climate Fund (UNFCCC 2009, Copenhagen Accord Decision 2/CP.15).
The target of 100 billion USD has become an important figure, that many scholars and public stakeholders refer to when assessing the financial commitments of donor countries. During the 2011 COP17 in Durban, national adaptation plans (NAPs) were introduced. NAPs are supposed to work as a means of identifying adaptation needs and developing and implementing programmes to address those needs. With the Paris Agreement in 2015 for the first time a “[…] global goal on adaptation of enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change […]” (UNFCCC 2015, Paris Agreement Art. 7.1) was established. Nevertheless, concrete adaptation and finance commitments are missing in the Paris agreement. The 100 billion USD target of the Copenhagen Accord is confirmed, but only in the Preamble of the document which is legally less binding than the actual agreement (Betzold/Weiler 2018: 28). Adaptation remained a central item on the agenda of the Marrakesh summit in 2016. The COP urged developed countries again to scale up their climate finance with the goal to achieve “a greater balance between finance for mitigation and for adaptation” (UNFCCC 2016, Decision 7/CP.22).
2.3.2 Funding through Official Development Assistance
As stated before, the developed world has pledged to mobilize resources of 100 billion USD per year by 2020 to help the developing world respond to climate change, including mitigation as well as adaptation actions. The Copenhagen Accord as well as the Cancún Agreements describe climate finance as “new and additional”, though they fail to clarify to what extent exactly climate finance is new and additional. The distinction between aid for development and aid for adaptation is indeed a difficult one, since adaptation and development are linked in multiple different ways. A longstanding argument on whether adaptation can be distinct from development has been intensified since the Copenhagen Accord in 2009 (Pickering et al. 2013: 1). When assessing on this question, one must differentiate between the nature of activities of adaptation aid and development aid on the one hand, and the formal and institutional nature on the other hand. The nature of activities is less contested and controversial. An example is supposed to point out the closeness between “traditional development aid” and adaptation aid. The consequences of climate change for farmers in the Sahel zone are not yet fully understood. While some predict an increase of precipitation, others predict a decrease. To build resilience and help inhabitants adapt to whatever climatic changes they ultimately face, much can be done by the international donor community. Local institutions, like water resource management committees, or early-warning systems can help communities adapt to actual climatic conditions. Such activities do not specifically address climate change impacts and appear like typical development efforts, although on could also argue that only the changing climate is making such activities necessary. Critical questions arising in this context are not only, which activities are eligible for being marked as adaptation relevant and which are not, but also whether activities, like the one in my example, qualify for specific adaptation funding. While the latter is not the main concern of this thesis, it still important to mention. Many activities that do not meet the funding criteria based on the concept of “additional costs” are nevertheless the foundation of adaptation to climate change in many places. Failing to invest here may lead to gaps in the landscape of adaptation efforts, probably where people are most vulnerable (McGray et al. 2007: 9). By definition of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), ODA must address poverty alleviation and must conform to the requirements of primarily addressing economic development and welfare of developing countries (IMF 2003: 263). An increased understanding of the important linkages between development and climate change adaptation and mitigation has led to calls for integrating climate considerations into official development assistance (van Asselt et al. 2015: 393). With the adoption of the notion of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities of Parties through the UNFCCC in 1992, development cooperation agencies also started examining whether their projects influence, or are vulnerable to, climate change and how they could best help vulnerable countries adapt to the negative impacts of climate change (Gupta et al. 2010: 320). Underdevelopment, in terms of a lack of social and economic welfare, decreases a countries’ adaptive capacity and increase its vulnerability, which offers one explanation for the assimilation of climate finance into development aid (Betzold/Weiler 2018: 27-29; Barrett 2014: 139). Huq and Ayers summarize: “Good (or sustainable) development (policies and practice) can (and often does) lead to building adaptive capacity. Doing adaptation to climate change often also means doing good (or sustainable) development” (Huq/Ayers 2008: 52). In addition to that relationship, climate change may also threaten development progress and even distort past development achievements - the United Nations Development Programme estimates that one third of all aid flows are affected by climate change. Ackerman even argues that “the climate crisis is also a crisis for development” (Ackerman 2009: 3). Considering all these connections between adaptation and development, Fankhauser argues that “it makes sense to think of adaptation not as an incremental activity to deal with climate change, but as a climate-resilient development” (Fankhauser 2010: 24). The idea of mainstreaming activities of climate change actions into development aid is increasingly accompanied by political and policy guidance. In 2006 development cooperation and the environmental ministers of the OECD adopted the Declaration on Integrating Climate Change Adaptation into Development Co-operation, stating that “[…] adaptation to climate change is not a ‘stand-alone’ agenda but needs to be integrated into development policy making and planning” (OECD 2006: 6). In its World Development Report 2010, the World Bank also declared that it is “a shared consensus that climate change is a development issue” (World Bank 2010: 264). The actual adaptation finance flows reflect this understanding: most adaptation finance to date has come as ODA or development aid (Betzold/Weiler 2018: 30). But there are also arguments for a clear separation of traditional development aid and adaptation finance. Principally, climate change is an additional burden that needs additional resources, and those resources are additional to “traditional” development aid. Mariama Williams argues on a formal level, saying that climate change finance is distinct from regular development finance due to its institutional difference – arising from the UNFCCC (Williams 2016: 7). She further reasons that the line of argumentation for climate finance is very different in development cooperation compared to the UNFCCC. Under the “aid paradigm” of development cooperation developed countries are assumed not to accept their responsibility for having caused the underlying problems in the first place and hence view their financial support as patronising, solidary and from a binary donor-recipient perspective. In contrast to that, the idea embedded in the Framework Convention is a transformative “responsibility-collective and collaborative paradigm” (Williams 2016: 174). Furthermore, bilateral ODA is voluntary and non-legally binding. The international climate change regime established by the UNFCCC, on the other hand, includes legally binding commitments and provides an institutional machinery to deliver climate change-related financial and technological assistance (Greene 2009: 66). Yet, the mainstreaming of climate change into ODA raised new questions and concerns. While on the one hand, budgets for climate change will help showing to what extent developed countries are raising public finance, one major concern on the other hand is that financial resources might be diverted from other, not less important, development goals like food, health and sanitation. As the qualitative analysis in section 5.2 will also reveal, donor countries tend to “mis-label” projects and programs as adaptation finance, which points to another risk of integrating climate change action into development assistance: other sectoral objectives might receive lower priority as a result (van Asselt et al. 2015: 393). To solve the problem of the confusion about what actually “new and additional” means, four different options of definitions are prominent in the current debate. Many argue to define climate finance additionality as aid but additional in that way, that it must be above the 0.7% ODA target. As donors have pledged to provide 0.7% of their gross national income as official development assistance, any aid exceeding this amount can be counted as new and additional (Brown et al. 2010: 2; Ayers/Abeysinghe 2013: 495). This baseline might be problematic as many donors have yet not even met this 0.7% commitment (Betzold/Weiler 2018: 29). Another option, as applied by Germany for example, is using 2009 ODA levels as a baseline for measurement of additionality (Brown et al. 2010: 2). Other countries, like the UK, propose a specific percentage of aid that is supposed to target climate actions. The last suggestion is to define ODA completely separated from climate change finance. According to this approach, ODA should continue to focus solely on traditional development activities while finance for climate change should come from other sources not categorised as ODA (Brown et al. 2010: 2). There are various pro- and counter arguments for all four approaches that will not be further discussed at this point as for this work it is sufficient to know that currently there is no internationally agreed definition, leading, among other reasons, to the problematics of lacking transparency and accountability assessed in this thesis. To conclude the topic of development aid’s role in adaptation aid and its relation to climate finance, it can be said that while officially they both are different and to be separated due to the various reasons stated above, they are yet to be differentiated on the activity level. Or, as Ayers and Abeysinghe put it: “international aid is clearly relevant for funding adaptation, but it is important that this principle of adaptation funding as additional to aid is upheld” (Ayers/Abeysinghe 2013: 487). I support the arguments, coming especially from developing countries, of the involved dangers possibly decreasing ODA budgets for poverty alleviation and other relevant development issues due to increased funding for new climate priorities.
Nevertheless, the current situation is that currently most of the adaptation finance is provided through bilateral ODA and developed countries argue that separating adaptation and development finance risks a duplication of activities and misallocation of scarce resources (Smith et al. 2011: 988). For this reason, besides other pragmatic methodological reasons explained in section 4.1, the analysis of this thesis is based on adaptation-related reported donor commitments through bilateral ODA channels (Betzold/Weiler 2018: 30).
2.3.3 Climate Finance under the UNFCCC
As discussed in the previous section, it can be concluded that climate change and international development are two different programmatic and institutional areas of policy concern but are highly interrelated and interdependent. Regarding the vocabulary, one has to note that some authors (e.g. Williams 2016) clearly distinguish between climate finance through UNFCCC mechanisms on the hand, and climate-related development finance through ODA on the other hand. Due to the close and ever-growing interrelation between both strands of financial resources, I am referring to both concepts when using the terms “climate finance” or “adaptation finance” (Williams 2016: 174). Fact is, that both, bilateral ODA as well as UNFCCC funding, are financing adaptation efforts in developing countries. Although the focus of this thesis is bilateral climate-relevant finance through ODA, for the completeness of this work I am going to briefly introduce the UN climate finance regime as it marks the starting point for international negotiations and agreements on climate change adaptation as well as mitigation. Thus, the development of the UNFCCC was an important prerequisite for the OECD to advance mainstreaming of climate issues into development cooperation.
Almost all countries are contracting parties of the UNFCCC, which is an international legal framework established in 1992 to address the issue of climate change. The contract acts as the basis for the cooperation of member countries with regard to climate protection. It recognizes that the climate system is a shared resource that is affected by individual emissions of GHG. The ultimate objective of the UNFCCC are 1) the stabilization of GHG concentration at a level that prevents dangerous interference with the climate system, and 2) to achieve such a level in an efficient time frame in order to allow the ecosystem to naturally adapt to the changing climate (UN 1992). In December 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted at the third COP after 2.5 years of intense negotiations. The Protocol divides member countries into two groups, as already explained in section 2.3.1. Annex I countries are industrialized nations who have historically contributed the most to climate change and non-Annex I countries, which are primarily developing countries. The major difference between the Convention and the Protocol is that while the Convention encouraged developed countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol binds them to do so. Climate finance under the UNFCCC is “[…] conceptualized as the flows of publicly generated funds flowing from developed countries to developing countries for the financing of climate protection policies with the aim of fulfilling the objective of the UNFCCC” (Williams 2016: 168). To reduce GHG emissions significantly, large-scale investments are necessary. According to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities as well as capabilities, developed countries are to provide financial resources for the assistance of developing countries. At present, the Adaptation Fund (AF), the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) are the major instruments of climate finance. The GEF was established with the Buenos Aires Plan of Action in 1998 and is a partnership for international cooperation to address global environmental issues. It is responsible for managing the funding activities for adaptation, especially transfer of technology and capacity building (Williams 2016: 185). In 2001 the so-called Marrakesh-Accords established three new funds, namely the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), the Least Developed Country Fund (LDCF) and the Adaptation Fund (AF). The SCCF and the LDCF were created to finance activities targeting climate change adaptation, technology transfer and capacity building. The AF is supposed to finance adaptation projects in particularly vulnerable developing countries. To accelerate global response to climate change, the Bali Action Plan at the COP13 in 2007 identified finance as a key component. With the Copenhagen Accord the long-term financing goal to mobilize 100 billion USD per year by 2020, as well as the short-term finance of 30 billion USD per year for three years were agreed. The GCF was established in 2010 with the Cancùn Agreement and is the operative entity to the financial mechanism of the Convention (Williams 2016: 185-186; Betzold/Weiler 2018: 25). To conclude this chapter, one could summarize that adaptation aid is a subset of adaptation finance. Adaptation finance, in turn, is a subset of climate finance. Although some authors define climate finance more narrowly, and in relation to the UNFCCC (see Williams 2016), this thesis uses the idea by Peterson Carvalho and Terpstra, that climate finance includes all types of “financial flows from developed to developing countries for climate action” (Peterson Carvalho/Terpstra 2015: 6).
After having introduced climate change and the international regime on climate finance, its relevance for international development cooperation and the various institutional sources of finance, the next chapter will turn to the gender dimensions of climate change, before the analysis can proceed with answering the research questions.
3 Gender Dimensions of Climate Change: Understanding the Linkages
Through Sustainable Development Goal 5: “Gender Equality[10] ”, the United Nations are committed to gender mainstreaming within all policies and programmes. However, until today, gender equality is not yet realized in any part of the world – neither in developed nor in developing countries. Everywhere, men and women have different roles, responsibilities and powers, mostly leading to disadvantages for women. As this holds true for almost every sector, it is not surprising that gender roles also play a significant role in relation to climate change. Nevertheless, climate change policy has rarely addressed gender aspects for quite some time, due to numerous possible reasons. First of all, climate change has been considered as a technical problem, requiring technical solutions. The dominant issues were concerned with the causes of climate change – issues heavily dependent on answers from the natural, rather than the social, sciences. The many social and political aspects to this complex issue have not been taken into consideration (Dankelman 2002: 24; Denton 2004: 43). Another possible reason is “the focus on North/South dynamics [that] has tended to overshadow the fact that it is the poor, within both developed and developing countries, who will bear the sharpest burdens due to the adverse effects of climate change” (Denton 2004: 43). A third explanation is that the climate regime, like development discourses generally during the 1990s, was driven by market considerations and the belief that carbon markets will achieve economic benefits and the Kyoto Protocol’s environmental ends at the same time. Gender is often related with social justice and poverty alleviation, which were both not part of the climate vocabulary in the 1990s. It was only later that human security and social issues were integrated into economic and environmental areas (Denton 2004: 43). Although, as briefly introduced in Chapter 2, the question of gender equality plays an important role in the context of climate change, the focus is mostly on justice among countries, and the intra-societal distributive effects of climate policies are less well understood. Especially the policy impacts on women remain understudied. Women are often referred to as agents of policy implementation instead of independent subjects of justice. This framing ignores the fact that the capacities to adapt to climate change are not given but conditioned by existing gender roles. Approaches to gender justice in climate policy, such as poverty, welfare and equality, are neglected (Bendlin 2014: 682-683). Although nowadays there is growing acknowledgement of the fact that policies addressing climate change are not only influenced by technological development but also by local institutional factors and norms, such as gender, climate policy research has taken up gender perspectives unevenly and the linkages between gender and climate change is a relatively young topic in the climate dialogue among researchers as well as practitioners (Holvoet/Inberg 2014: 1). Since COP13 in 2007, development projects increasingly consider the special consternation of women. Also, the availability of literature on the field of climate and gender has improved since 2010. One of the first introductions on this topic was published in 2010 by Irene Dankelman, focussing on case studies from the Global South that are supposed to illustrate the impact of climate change on women. In 2013 Margaret Alston and Kerri Whittenburry published an anthology that presents the field from three perspectives: gender and climate justice, climate policy from a gender perspective, and action and strategies to address gender and climate change (Alston/Whittenburry 2013: xiii-xiv). Another anthology about gender and climate, written in German, was published by Gülay Çağlar and colleagues in 2012, also asked for gender equality in climate policy, instruments and strategies, as well as feminist discourses on climate change. Two more recent books were published by Mariama Williams (2016) and Susan Buckingham and Virginie Le Masson (2017). While Williams focusses specifically on gender and climate change financing, Buckingham and Le Masson present frameworks on upcoming topics as well as case studies from developing and developed countries. Despite an increasing trend, knowledge on how climate change interacts with geographical and social inequality is still underrepresented in policy as well as research. In a bibliometric analysis using the ISI Web of Science using the keywords “climate”, “adaptation” and “gender”, Jerneck found that only 188 social science articles have been published between 2000 and 2017, and only 17 before 2011. In comparison to that, doing the same analysis, leaving “gender” out and solely searching for “climate” and “adaptation”, Jerneck found 7,004 social science articles within the same period (Jerneck 2018: 405). Because available evidence on how climate change has differential impact on women and men is limited and highly contextual, this phenomenon is not yet widely confirmed. Nevertheless, data is reasonably consistent with the two assumptions that “[…] climate impacts may affect men and women differently and that women tend to suffer more negatively in terms of their assets and well-being” (Goh 2012: 17).
[...]
[1] International treaty signed in 1992 serving “[…] as a framework for international cooperation to combat climate change by limiting average global temperature increases and the resulting climate change, and coping with impacts that were, by then, inevitable” (UNFCCC 2019a).
[2] The Group of Seven (G7) consists of seven leading industrialised nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
[3] „Grants or loans to countries and territories on the DAC List of ODA Recipients (developing countries) and to multilateral agencies which are: (a) undertaken by the official sector; (b) with promotion of economic development and welfare as the main objective; (c) at concessional financial terms (if a loan, having a grant element of at least 25 per cent). In addition to financial flows, technical co-operation is included in aid. Grants, loans and credits for military purposes are excluded. Transfer payments to private individuals (e.g. pensions, reparations or insurance payouts) are in general not counted“ (OECD n.d. b).
[4] Agreement by UNFCCC Parties at the COP21 in Paris to undertake ambitious efforts to climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries (UNFCCC 2019c).
[5] The 17 goals are political objectives by the United Nations to achieve a more sustainable future. They address global challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate change and justice (United Nations 2019).
[6] See Pope Francis (2015): Laudato Si’: On care for our common home.
[7] Russian Federation, Baltic States, and several Central and Eastern European States.
[8] Antecedent of the European Union.
[9] The CDM allows emission-reduction projects in developing countries to earn certified emission reduction (CER) credits, each equivalent to one tonne of CO2. These CERs can be traded and sold and used by industrialized countries to a meet a part of their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol (UNFCCC 2018).
[10] Sustainable Development Goal 5 is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls (United Nations 2019).
- Quote paper
- Anonymous,, 2019, Gender Equality in Climate Change Activities. Assessing the Credibility of Gender-Responsive Climate Financing, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/495267
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