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Loading...COPENHAGEN: Women Struggle to be Heard at COP15–When Will the US Lead?
Sarah Diefendorf is the Executive Director of the Environmental Finance Center at Dominican University of California. She is attending the COP15 talks under the auspices of the League of Women Voters of the U.S.
It’s tough to be a minority at COP15. Everyone wants their own representation in the final text to ensure that they are recognized and supported when adaptation financing is doled out to the most vulnerable countries. Indigenous people are especially vocal, as are the youth delegations. Forest people from throughout the planet have a number of papers that compete with farmer’s reports and glossy magazines from the International Chamber of Commerce. They are all subgroups, jockeying for position and access to the delegates, ministers and world leaders. The negotiators push back, arguing that a long list of subgroups could take up the entire text. Where do you draw the line? If you include one, you have to include them all–young, old, handicapped, wastepickers, firewood gatherers, and on and on, and on. Best to just generically call them all stakeholders and let the governments determine where the money goes.
I am not a subgroup, but I may as well be–because I am a woman. Research and history have shown that women will be the most heavily impacted population from the devastation of climate change, yet we, as 51 percent of the planet, are forced to plead our case like a subgroup, one of the many struggling for a voice, just another stakeholder. The women’s cause is simple: get gender language into the Shared Vision, into Adaptation, into Mitigation and especially, into Finance. The text we want is straightforward, non-controversial, normally less than a sentence: we ask that the COP “recognize that full integration of gender equality and active participation of women are important for effective action on all aspects of climate change: adaptation, mitigation, technology sharing, finance and capacity building.” Yet in the process of “slimming down” the text, all reference to gender may be stripped from the treaty, and slimming down is what is occurring behind closed doors, right now, in Copenhagen as I write.
I understand that there are many countries out there that don’t support women, that want to control adaptation finance to favor their male populations. I get that. But what about the United States? Where are we? The women that came before me have already fought these battles and I thought we had won. This struggle feels old, yet here we are again. Today at COP15, December 14th, 2009, we strategized about lobbying the U.S. delegation to support gender language in the text. Why? We have a female Secretary of State, we have a female Speaker of the House, we have a female Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Why are we so afraid to support the right of women to thrive and survive in the rest of the world? President Obama, support 51% of the planet! President Obama, don’t strip women from the text!
Email the White House at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact to ask that the President support gender language in the COP15 final text. And post your own view in the comments here!
Read more: cop15, copenhagen, global warming, womens rights
Photo: Graffiti on U.S. Senate Delegation office door at COP15
Courtesy of Josh Dorner
Sarah Diefendorf, Environmental Finance Center, Dominican University of California
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
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Recent Comments from Causes
Awesome!!! Thank you! :-))
@Dennis -- while Jenny McCarthy's views aren't anywhere near as pernicious as those of Palin and Bachmann,…
Thanks for the info.
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+ add your ownIf women ruled the world, it would be much better. There would be no wars, probably less careerism (women are rival only because men set the standards and a woman must be better than ten men to get the same position), and perhaps also less environmental degradation.
The U.S. isn't leading on climate change so why would they be leading on climate change and women? Money comes first.
It shouldn't be necessary to include this language specifying that women bear the impacts of global warming and are needed to help slow that climate change down. Unfortunately, it is necessary.
Gosh! You mean there's likely to be more than a couple dozen women in human history with insight, intelligence, and wisdom? No! Tell me it isn't so! Why that would mean that our global technology -- medicine, engineering, humanitarian efforts, preventative measures to ecosytem destruction -- could be significantly further than it is now by allowing the wisest and brightest (regardless of whether they sit or stand at a toilet) to participate and contribute. Golly. That certainly would be a ridiculous way for a race of otherwise intelligent animals to run their world.
Sorry. I get pretty angry about the utter waste of intelligence and talent from which we suffers just so the majority of men in the world can pretend our controlling, chauvanistic, and essentially misogynistic heritage is the best we can enact. And that doesn't even begin to consider the outrageous and unnecessary harm and pain we've inflicted upon the other half of our population.
Delegates, ministers and world leaders.....Are all greedy humans who are being seen for what they are......MONEY MONEY MONEY and the rest may go where you think it may go.......
This is important, but the most important thing is that America leads the way in doing something concrete to cut back on global emmissions.
I couldn't agree more that women are not "just another stakeholder group". I just wrote an email to the president detailing the precise language you referred to in your article (of course I referenced you) and urging him to consider women's equal participation as a critical component of any agreement on environmental policy that emerges from Copenhagen. I asked for a "write me back"...we'll see what happens....
;)
What is occuring behind closed doors is dispicable! I could go on a rant but choose to email the White House right this second! I will write a letter as well. THANK YOU!
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