On 29 June 2021, our Executive Director, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, participated in the panel Beyond COVID-19: A feminist plan for sustainability and social justice convened by UN Women to build momentum and kick-off the activities of the Generation Equality Forum held in Paris from 30 June to 2 July. She explained how GI-ESCR’s work contributes to linking environmental degradation and women’s rights as well as our alternative approaches regarding renewable energy.

The panel aimed to launch the debate and receive inputs to develop a Feminist Plan for Sustainability and Social Justice. A visionary and practical roadmap for putting gender equality, social justice, and sustainability at the centre of the recovery. It will feed into UN Women’s Generation Equality Forum and Action Coalitions, aimed at accelerating commitment, action, and financing for gender equality.

During the panel a group of leading experts and activists addressed the importance of the current juncture as the world learns how to live with COVID-19 and recover from the health, social and economic crises exacerbated by the pandemic. Aiming to attend not only to the strategies to contain the virus but to understand how we can build back better, this conversation detonated an insightful debate among experts and activists using different approaches to transform care systems, tackle climate change and environmental degradation, food insecurity and ensure the effective and meaningful representation and participation of women in decision-making.

The event allowed for the experts to identify the most important roadblocks for a sustainable and just recovery beyond the pandemic and consider how feminists and women’s rights movements can seize the opportunities created by the current juncture to address ongoing crises in relation to climate change, care and the deterioration of women’s livelihoods.

The discussion was moderated by Laura Turquet, Policy Advisor and Deputy Chief, Research and Data from UN Women and the following experts and women’s rights advocates participated in the panel:

Mignon Duffy, Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Massachusetts Lowell

Ofelia Fernández, Member of Buenos Aires City Parliament
Shalmali Guttal, Executive Director, Focus on the Global South
Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, Executive Director, Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Crystal Simeoni, Founder and Executive Director, NAWI: Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective

GI-ESCR’s contribution

Magdalena Sepúlveda addressed the intersections between environmental degradation and women’s rights highlighting how climate change is currently one of the most critical threats to the realization of human rights. She pointed out that:

“Our dependence on fossil fuels have led to a rise in global temperatures that is threatening food and water security, leading to displacement, and endangering the health and lives of millions of people across the world.”

However, she underscored that:

“The effects of climate change are not equally felt by women and girls. Due to pre-existing structural conditions of gender inequality and entrenched gender stereotypes, she explained how women and girls tend to suffer disproportionately from climate-related impacts on their health, safety, food, water and livelihoods.”

Magdalena also emphasised the critical importance of reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) and ensuring women’s access to safe, sustainable, and accessible energy as key condition to advance a just and equitable recovery beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

“To move away from fossil fuels and arrest climate change, an energy transition is essential and underway, but what will be the implications for gender equality? The green energy transition must be more than merely a technical transition from one form of} energy production to another. It must be harnessed as an opportunity to transform the model into one that is gender-responsive, fair, and equitable.”

To contribute to the critical development of the Feminist Plan for Sustainability and Social Justice fostered by UN Women, Magdalena provided the following key policy recommendations aiming to address the gender deficits of the current energy model and to embed principles of gender equality and justice in the design of new energy systems:

Adding a feminist and rights-based lens to the approaches and social movements advocating for a just transition to renewable energy. This provides the opportunity to rethink the basis of existing injustices, extractive, and exploitative systems, and most importantly, to address deeply entrenched gender inequalities in the energy transition.
Enhance the meaningful and effective participation of women at all stages of the energy transition. From the development of policies, legal frameworks and projects to the implementation and monitoring of the production and distribution of energy resources.
Ensure women in all their diversity, including rural and indigenous women, to be represented and take part of the distribution of benefits of green energy projects and policies and have access to renewable energy to alleviate gendered care responsibilities and improve their living standards. We must recognize that access to energy is a key condition for the realization of women’s human rights.
Recognize the public value of energy and its centrality to a dignified life. Explore alternative approaches that promote non-market solutions and effective and meaningful participation of communities in the production, distribution and use of energy resources. This could allow to redefine the relationship of communities and rights-holders with energy from a commodity sold by corporations for profit, to an essential service and a public good that is provided as part of a democratically governed commons.
Foster cooperative institutional arrangements which have also proven to be successful in addressing gender inequalities, energy poverty and climate change, in both the Global North and the Global South. For example, renewable energy cooperatives can provide employment, be more adaptable to local needs, ensure more equitable access to energy resources, and combat negative gender stereotypes by ensuring women’s participation and leadership.
Renewable energies now create significant opportunities for diversification in the ownership, management, and consumption of energy, with democratic, public and cooperative means of generation and distribution assuming a more central role. We should take advantage of this transformative potential to advance gender equality.
Recognize that a feminist approach to the energy transition is critical to any efforts aimed at recovering beyond the COVID-19 and building a low carbon future. Women are not only key agents of change, but also tend to be ideally placed to lead and support the provision of energy solutions in view of their role as primary energy users in households, their extensive social networks in their communities and their critical role leading feminist social movements fostering transformative change.

Learn more about the process led by UN Women to develop a Feminist Plan for Sustainability and Social Justice here!

Learn more about

GI-ESCR’s work on Women’s rights and renewable energy

In 2020 GI-ESCR launched a new program on renewable energy and women’s rights with the publication of the Briefing Paper on Renewable Energy and Gender Justice. This briefing launched a conversation that brought together activists, Women Human Rights Defenders, community leaders and experts and invited them to begin to unpack the intersections between renewable energy, women’s rights and gender justice.

This launch event was followed by a series of webinars, research projects, development of advocacy tools and visual materials aimed at building momentum to advocate for a feminist transition to renewable energy:

Side event at the NGO 65th Commission on the Status of Women Forum in which experts, activists and women who have been affected by renewable projects shared their experiences and understanding of the obstacles that prevent women from fully and effectively participating in the energy transition and prevent the transformation from being aligned with gender equality and human rights principles.
Op-ed in several media outlets highlighting the key questions related to the energy transition form a women’s rights lens.
Parallel report on the situation of Chile to the CEDAW Committee addressing women’s rights implications of the energy transition at the national level.
Written submission highlighting the importance of a gender-just energy transition for the realization of the rights of indigenous women’s and girls. The latter, aims to inform and influence the content of the new General Recommendation to be developed by the CEDAW Committee on the rights of indigenous women and girls.
Written submission to UN Special Procedures working on just transition to low carbon economies.
Statements and participation at the sessions of key regional human rights bodies and mechanisms and civil society fora.