Sue Phillips, Chairperson of WOCAN’s Board of Directors attended the Innovate for Climate (I4C) in Bilbao, Spain from May 24th-25th. The theme for the third day of the conference was Making Climate Action Work for All: An Inclusive and Just Transition. It was good to see the key conference hosts – the World Bank Group and Spanish Government and sponsors IETA and UNCC – devoting major attention to the topic. It was the first time that gender was profiled at this leading conference with a panel discussion on EnGendering Climate: Accelerating Gender Innovation through Climate Finance hosted by IFC, the World Bank and Climate Investment Funds (CIF).
Great contributions included Sashi Jayatileke from USAID who spoke about their new Climate Gender Equity Fund with Amazon, Jeroen Blum from Bix Capital on their new Climate Impact Fund which will be stepping up Bix’s investment focus on gender impacts, and Neha Sharma who presented an inspiring example of women climate leadership from South Africa in CIF’s Women-Led Coal Transitions Grant Mechanism.
The event also saw the launch of The World Bank’s Thematic Note: Placing Gender Equality at the Centre of Climate Action which you can check out here https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099718102062367591/pdf/IDU08c737dd00f8580412b0aed90fce874ab09b0.pdf