The ‘Women and COP: Together for a Sustainable Future’ event was held on the 4th December 2023 at the Togolese pavilion at COP 28. It was an opportunity to discuss the crucial role women play in the fight against climate change and explore ways to scale up innovative women-led initiatives in the fields of climate finance, mitigation, and resilience. The event saw women leaders from a range of industries, share their experiences, best practices, and advice on dealing with climate change.Four key points were raised during the Women and COP meeting: Firstly, access to funding remains a problem: women especially, small scale farmers and SME owners, find many of the conditions posed by banks and financial institutions to be too onerous to access funding. Often NGOs act as middlemen to enable rural women to access these funds.
Secondly, representation is key: women need to occupy more decision-making spaces to contribute their unique solutions and perspectives to the fight to address the challenges brought on by climate change. Women’s perspectives are needed and ultimately enhance the quality of decision-making on climate action issues.
Thirdly, measuring and monitoring progress is crucial: the impact of women on climate action must be measured. Additionally, funding earmarked for women must be tracked to ensure that it reaches its intended targets. Increasingly, financial institutions factor gender equality considerations into their loan approval process helping to influence companies and mainstream gender equality standards.
Lastly, women must be empowered economically to help build resilience for themselves, their families, and the community at large. To do so, it is important to help women build multiple streams of income. The meeting was an opportunity to learn about innovative, women-led solutions such as schemes in Nigeria run by Tengram Energy enabling women to become micro-distributors of LPG by decanting 50kg gas tanks to sell smaller quantities to clients. We also learned about the extraordinary work done by the Mbolo association working with women in rural off-grid communities in Gambia. Mbolo has trained more than 89 women to use and install solar panels creating green jobs in the process. Through the scheme 51 pv solar panels were installed representing 730kwp of total installed power.
To meet the challenge of gender finance, some of Africa’s leading financial institutions have adapted and now offer innovative products to assist women. This includes offering loans backed by cashflow, rather than collaterals which have historically been difficult to obtain by women. Additionally NGO’s play an important role in facilitating access to capital to women , particularly rural women , by providing collaterals and acting as an intermediary to enable women to have access to finance.
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