In focus: Women’s leadership at the COP 28 climate conference
At this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP 28, UN Women will ensure that women and girls’ rights, abilities, and needs are taken into account in climate debates and incorporated into government policies.
Women and girls have been at the forefront of climate activism and can offer unique knowledge and expertise—including among Indigenous, rural, and young populations—that can support effective climate action.
As extreme weather events increase in intensity and frequency, women and girls around the world are also exposed to disproportionate hardships, including food insecurity and risks of poverty and violence.
UN Women has prepared key knowledge products for the conference, held in Dubai from 30 November to 12 December 2023, which provide analysis and policy recommendations on gender and climate change.
The UN Women delegation to COP 28 is led by UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous. UN will release its Feminist Climate Justice report at a press conference at COP, and will also engage in events calling for gender-responsive policies on 4 December, the conference’s Gender Day.
Key publications
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Feminist climate justice: A framework for action
This paper describes how to achieve feminist climate justice through four interlinked dimensions (recognition, redistribution, representation, and reparation) and the principles of interdependence and intersectionality.
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The climate–care nexus: Addressing the linkages between climate change and women’s and girls’ unpaid care, domestic, and communal work
This paper discusses the ways in which climate change and environmental degradation disrupt the care economy and increase and intensify women’s and girls’ unpaid care, domestic, and communal work.
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A gender-responsive just transition for people and planet
This policy brief discusses robust pathways to overcome the prevailing challenges to just transitions with gender equality. It calls for governments and other stakeholders to make commitments to a gender-responsive just transition and be held accountable for their commitments and actions.
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Spotlight on SDG 6: From commodity to common good: A feminist agenda to tackle the world’s water crisis
This paper aims to review the state of gender equality in Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) and showcases how a gender perspective can inform and strengthen the discourse around SDG 6 acceleration.
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Data-driven insights: The effects of climate change on gender and development
This brief synthesizes research and data analysis from UN Women’s gender and climate data work.
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Gendered analysis of the impact of climate change on poverty, productivity and food insecurity
This report seeks to model the gendered effects of climate change on poverty, productivity, and food insecurity with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region and six priority countries.
Ahead of COP 28, UN Women and partners—including the Offices of the President of COP 28, the UN Climate Change High Level Champion, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat, International Union for Conservation of Nature, and Women's Environment and Development Organization—will convene a conference to highlight the importance of gender-specific environment data and to ensure that leaders at COP 28 forge policies that take women and girls into account.
COP 28 will launch the Global Stocktake to assess progress towards the achievement of the goals of the Paris Agreement, aimed at limiting global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. The stocktake will also be critical in evaluating how existing policies have impacted women and girls, and will provide a foundation for future policy changes.
As countries look to transition their economies away from fossil fuel extraction and other harmful environmental practices, it will be essential to ensure that the benefits of these changes are fairly distributed, ensuring gender-responsive transitions that prioritize the rights of women.
At COP 28 and throughout its programming, UN Women works to integrate gender equality perspectives into the design, funding, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of policies and programmes on climate change mitigation, adaptation, loss, and damage.
Read more about women and the climate
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