What stood out most to me at London Climate Action Week?
Over the course of London Climate Action Week, I had the privilege of representing WOCAN alongside Sheena Patel and WOCAN Board Member Nisha Singh. We participated in and hosted several discussions focused on 2 themes: gender in carbon markets and gender-responsive climate finance.
After a week of conversations with project developers, intermediaries, investors, standards bodies, buyers, and financial institutions, one message became increasingly clear:
Gender is no longer a peripheral issue, or even considered as a ‘co-benefit’—it is becoming a marker of quality, integrity, and long-term project success that reduces risks of both unsustainable projects and reputations of project developers and credit buyers.
Here are a few reflections that I will be taking home.
1. Gender is moving from a “nice-to-have”to a signal of project integrity.
There is growing recognition across the voluntary carbon market that meaningful gender outcomes should be embedded in project design—not simply reported as co-benefits through labels. It was encouraging to hear organizations such as the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) discussing how they intend to raise the bar for gender inclusion in defining high-integrity carbon credits.
2. We need to better articulate the investment case.
Research and practical experience continue to show that projects which intentionally engage women and measure gender outcomes—such as those verified under the W+ Standard or aligned with SDG 5—often demonstrate stronger governance, deeper community ownership, and greater resilience.
For investors and buyers, this should be viewed as a quality signal. Projects that meaningfully include women are often less exposed to implementation risks, community conflict, and reputational challenges.
Yet one important question remains: Have we fully considered the risks of not involving women?
3. The market cannot reward what it cannot measure.
One statistic was impossible to ignore: only a very small percentage of carbon projects—and even fewer nature-based projects—currently demonstrate measurable positive outcomes for women.
As Jennica Gordon from NCSA aptly observed: “The market does not react to what it cannot see.”
This identifies the need for projects that demonstrate what a gender-responsive project looks like. But this is not simply a supply issue. Buyers also have a responsibility to signal demand for credits with verified gender outcomes. Strong market signals will encourage more project developers to invest in generating and measuring these outcomes.
4. Trusted intermediaries matter.
Rating agencies, marketplaces, advisors, and standards organizations all have an important role in helping buyers understand why gender outcomes are indicators of stronger, more resilient projects. They must be aware of standards like the W+, and carbon projects that intentionally support and measure gender and women’s empowerment outcomes to present these to buyers.
5. There is real momentum.
One of my favorite moments of the week was participating in the Women in Carbon gathering hosted by Abatable. The energy in the room was remarkable. It reminded me how important it is to create spaces where women across a male-dominated industry like that of the carbon ecosystem can connect, collaborate, and help shape the future of these markets.
Climate finance is evolving too.
Several themes consistently emerged throughout discussions on climate finance:
- We need more intentional and standardized metrics for measuring gender outcomes.
- Climate finance and gender finance are still too often treated as separate conversations when they should be integrated.
- Better incentives are needed to support data collection, although many practitioners agreed that measuring gender outcomes represents only a small proportion of overall project costs—particularly when those outcomes unlock additional value.
- Outcome-based finance is gaining traction as an innovative way to reward measurable impact.
- Blended finance remains essential—not only to de-risk investments but also to provide the technical assistance many institutions need to integrate gender effectively. It was often said that carbon and climate project developers are without the expertise needed to measure gender outcomes.
Perhaps most encouragingly, we heard how experiences from projects achieving W+ certification are inspiring and informing institutions such as the Green Climate Fund, which is exploring broader adoption of outcome-based measurement across its portfolio.
My biggest takeaway
For many years, we have described gender as a co-benefit and struggled to find actors in the carbon market ecosystem who understood the opportunities afforded to those that valued the engagement of women and gender inclusion in carbon projects. Similarly, we have struggled to convince the gender lens investors of the value in engaging with the Voluntary Carbon Market as a way to unlock new sources of revenue for women and their organizations to fund their climate adaptation.
I believe we are entering a new chapter, with the support of a whole new set of actors.
Gender inclusion and women’s empowerment should be recognized as core to climate projects’ quality, resilience, and long-term impact.
That shift will not happen through standards like the W+ alone. It will require buyers to send stronger market signals, investors to recognize the value of gender-responsive projects, and project developers to intentionally design for measurable outcomes.
The conversations at London Climate Action Week gave me confidence that this transition has begun.
Now we need to accelerate it.