Press release: for immediate release
According to the recently released report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we have 12 years left to take radical action to prevent global warming from rising beyond 1.5°C. Radical action is what the Women and Gender Constituency has been demanding for years. And we are proud to showcase impressive, relevant and gender just climate solutions which are already happening on all continents. Look out for this year’s winners of the Gender Just Climate Solutions Awards: they will be announced during the upcoming UN Climate Conference, COP24 in Katowice, in December.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions much faster than we have done so far, while aiming for a transformative, inclusive and sustainable development model requires massive commitments, including much more financial and technological resources for the right solutions: the solutions that put respect of people’s rights and the integrity of the planet first.
In reality, the steps the IPCC experts are calling for, are already being taken. Policy makers often focus on the notion of ‘large-scale’ but there is real power in ‘diversity of scale’ and in particular, the replication of tested, community driven and gender-just small scale solutions.
With the Gender Just Climate Solutions Awards we aim to showcase how successful climate actions can be scaled up to attain a significant impact at global level, that is if world leaders decide to invest properly in them.
With previous winning projects tackling sustainable alternatives to heavy use of solid fuel by building clean cookstoves in rural Cameroon, the conservation and reproduction of local seeds by learning agro-ecological techniques in India or bridging traditional harvesting practices with sustainable livelihood in the endangered forests of Laos, we are certain the solutions we need are out there. They simply need a platform that can spread the world’s best climate practices globally to achieve our common 1.5 target.
The Gender Just Climate Solutions Awards at COP24 will honour the fundamental contribution of women in the fight against climate change and demonstrate the relevance of integrating gender equality in all climate policies, giving substance to the 2017 adopted Gender Action Plan. It will inspire political decision makers and funders to develop more effective and fairer climate strategies.
The Gender Just Climate Solutions winners will be awarded in three categories:
technical solutions (e.g. in area of renewables, water-saving adaptation technologies etc.) non-technical solutions (e.g. in area of efficiency, consumption changes etc.) transformational solutions (e.g. addressing governance, institutional change, development models etc.) The winners will receive a grant of 2000€ and benefit from a 1-year-mentoring programme of the Women and Gender Constituency, to build their capacity towards scaling-up, access to climate technologies and climate finance.
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Last year’s winners