ICIMOD participants in WOCAN’s Gender-Integrated Planning Course
1 Capacity building for gender-integrated planning provided to 60 organizations in Asia. Within the 3rd year of the framework agreement with the Swedish International Development Agency, we delivered our Gender-Integrated Planning course to 170 women and men of 60 organizations in Asia, including staff of numerous national and sub-national government departments, NGOs, small and medium enterprises and regional networks of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Nepal, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. All participants prepared Gender Action Plans for their organizations, that are currently under implementation. The organizations ranged from ministries of agriculture, forestry and women’s affairs, universities, indigenous people’s NGOs, women NGOs, media organizations and businesses.
2 United Nation’s Recognition of WOCAN’s leadership. We were invited to speak on why and how to address gender issues in climate actions at a High Level Event of the UN SDG Summit in New York, at the CDM Executive Board of the UNFCCC in Bonn, and at panel of the GCF Independent Evaluation Unit at COP 25.We were also invited to speak on the dire need for climate actions within key gender events of the UN Committee on the Status of Women and the Beijing +25 Review for Europe/Central Asia.
3 Innovation for gender and climate finance. In partnership with UNDP’s Programme of Governance of Climate Change Finance to Enhance Gender Equality, we have provided inputs to understanding costing methodologies to measure gender equality outcomes in climate change action, and field-tested a methodology for consultations with community groups and sub-national level officials in Nepal to produce a Guideline to Incorporate Gender- responsiveness in Climate Change-sensitised Project Planning and Budget Formulation Processes, coming out in early 2020.
4 Verra and WOCAN developed a streamlined process for joint certification to assess carbon benefits and women’s empowerment aspects of projects. Projects that meet both standards’ requirements have been able to generate ‘W+ Labeled VCUs’, which has just become easier with the release of a combined application process. By advancing women’s empowerment, offset purchases from these projects will simultaneously contribute to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 13 (Climate Action) and 5 (Gender Equality).
5 Gender Assessment and Capacity Building for the Green Climate Fund Accreditation. We conducted a gender assessment, prepared a manual for gender policies and strengthened the internal capacities of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to support its GCF accreditation, with funding from the GCF Readiness Programme. Based on this experience and WOCAN’s expertise, we have developed a package of Gender Services for Climate Solutions to assist entities prepare for GCF/GEF and other climate financing requirements.
6 Rising demand for knowledge about the W+ Standard. We organized a webinar in partnership with Dalberg to present a range of tools for social impact measurement in the agriculture sector (W+ Standard, gender tool of IDH, ACUMEN’s 60 Decibels toolkit), attended by over 200 people. We also prepared a research paper on the measurement of women’s empowerment through the W+ Standard presented to the TRADEMARK East Africa Symposium in Nairobi.
7 Two new projects in Sri Lanka and South Africa are applying the W+ to measure their impact on women’s lives. The Biomass Group is a woman-owned company based in Sri Lanka that engages more than 50,000 smallholder farmer suppliers, 90% of whom are women, to develop biomass energy resources.It is the first project that intends to be jointly labeled under both W+ and VCS standards. In South Africa, a CSR project of the Acwapower company benefits women through support for income-generating activities and improved access to water supplies, education, health and solar energy.
8 Future 500 Leadership Circle to Empower Social Enterprises. In partnership with the Impact Investment Exchange Pte Ltd (IIX), WOCAN facilitated this event of the Equity@Scale Initiative in Indonesia. The workshop connected 11 enterprises with 11 mentors (some of whom are WOCAN members), through discussions that will support them to integrate social and environmental impacts as well as women’s empowerment into the core of their businesses.
2 Strengthen the market demand for W+ units. Units from a biogas project in Nepal and a livelihoods project in Morocco are now selling to individuals, companies and international organizations. A W+ unit is a quantified improvement in a woman’s life, as measured by theW+ Standard.Whenyou buy a W+ unit,at least 20 % ofyour donation goes to women’sgroups from the project, to use as they see best fit for their own empowerment.
3 Design and deliver a training course for project developers on the application of the W+ Standard and develop a W+ App to facilitate measurement of a project’s impacts on women’s lives. We also intend to pilot the application of the W+ Standard to at least one value chain that results in a consumer-facing label.
4 Integrate the W+ Standard into the SD VISta Program and other measurement and certification frameworks. Several standards/certification frameworks have expressed interest in collaborating with the W+ Standard to add gender-related items into their own measurement frameworks. This addresses WOCAN’s goal to upscale the quality and quantity of activities for women’s empowerment and gender equality across diverse sectors and industries.
5 Launch the ‘Guidelines for Gender-responsive Climate Cost-benefit Analysis‘ in collaboration with the UNDP and deliver training in Cambodia, Indonesia, and at the Asia Venture Philanthropy Network Annual Conference in Singapore.
6 Engage with funders – both from the climate and gender ‘communities’ – to build a global ecosystem to increase effectiveness and levels of private and public funding for gender and climate investments.