“Access to climate finance for non-state actors” SB48 side event
On Monday, 7th May 2018, together with Climate Chance and ICLEI, we hosted a side event on access to climate finance for non-state actors at the UNFCCC SB48 in Bonn, highlighting the need for inclusive and gender-responsive climate finance at the local and regional level.
The President of the Climate Chance Association, Ronan Dantec, opened the side event, and introduced together with our Anne Barre the “13 priority actions to increase access to climate finance for non-state actors”, particularly for small-scale projects and particularly affected local communities, including women. Although the UNFCCC has acknowledged the relevance of gender equality & effective participation for all climate actions, our Anne Barre emphasises that climate finance is not gender-neutral. With only 0,01% of total climate finance integrating gender-equality, climate policies run the risk to exacerbate existing gender inequalities. Yet, women, given the “care” role they have been assigned in society and with their diverse traditional knowledge, are key agents of climate resilience, making gender-responsive climate funds essential.
Considering that only 10% of available climate finance reaches the local level, our Katharina Habersbrunner presents the potential of energy cooperatives to enhance local access to finance for decentralised renewable energy, as well as to empower women through gender-just mechanisms. This allows local people, particularly women in rural areas, to participate throughout the value chain, become energy managers and have control over energy production, maintenance and consumption. A gender-just energy cooperative from Georgia was demonstrated by Nino Margvelashvili, Director of the energy umbrella cooperative HeliOTech, which supports 4 Georgian energy cooperatives with expertise, high quality of technologies and access to finance.
In order to further engage local and regional governments in climate action and boost policy dialogues across scales, the participation of local and regional governments in the implementation of national climate policies is important to deliver on the goal of the Paris Agreement. Jisun Hwang, Senior Climate Advocacy and Policy Officer ICLEI, gave an update on the challenges and opportunities emerged in relation to the access to climate finance through the Cities and Regions Talanoa Dialogues process.