With gender-responsiveness a work in progress, current climate funds are hardly accessible for women-led community based organizations. While these groups lack access to finance and decision-making, they already lead bold holistic gender-just climate solutions and initiatives worth funding support.
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This February women environmental defenders from around the world met each other in Indonesia. All these defenders face structural violence. GAGGA, the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action, supports these women. This meeting in Indonesia provided a unique space for women, trans-, intersex and non-binary people who are often the subject of conversation but rarely have the opportunity to engage with each other and meet other defenders from around the world. For they are all amazingly knowledgeable, strong and resilient women whom we should take seriously.
During the Political Café on the integration of the right to water and sanitation (RTWS) in European development policies, organised by Both ENDS on the 17th of December 2008, Southern NGO representatives from Umzabalaso We Jubilee (South Africa) and FANCA (Costa Rica) exposed the importance of a rights-based approach in the water and sanitation sector in the South.
How can companies be stimulated to use cleaner production methods and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases? In Europe the answer was thought to be found in a system called the ‘EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS)’, implemented in 2005. Within this system, European companies get a fixed maximum number of ‘emission rights’ which they may either use themselves or sell to other companies – for example in case they emit less than they’re permitted to. Unfortunately the system has only had contrary effects, which is the reason why many organisations including Both ENDS, want it to stop immediately.
The official Dutch export credit agency Atradius DSB in November 2010 announced to consider support for the expansion of the Panama canal. According to the local Gatún Lake Defense Committee the project in its current shape will not only be uneconomic, but also very harmful to the environment. Recently Both ENDS informed Atradius DSB of these concerns. The ECA is currently assessing the significance of these concerns for its eventual decision to issue an insurance policy.
The parliamentary elections in the Netherlands are over, and the dust has somewhat settled. No matter what government emerges from the process, one thing is clear: in the Netherlands the main focus is on the Netherlands. Foreign affairs were hardly mentioned during the elections and the same applies to the process of forming a new coalition. More alarmingly, some of the winners in the elections want to cut themselves off even further from the world around us.
Together with our colleague organisations BankTrack; OxfamNovib; Tax Justice Nederland; Milieudefensie and the Vereniging van Beleggers voor Duurzame-Ontwikkeling Both ENDS wrote an open letter to Dutch Minister Bos. The daily newspaper `de Volkskrant', published a summary of this letter on December 19th (in Dutch):
At this year's UN Climate Conference COP27, Bhavya George, Climate Change coordinator of our partner organisation Keystone Foundation won one of the Gender Just Climate Solutions awards. Her project "Women Barefoot Ecologists", which also is supported by the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA), won in the category "Transformational Solutions".