One Year On Uganda Climate Progress Must Reach Women and Girls
A progress reflection on the Young Eco Feminists Manifesto 2025 to 2030
By Sharon Biira | Advocacy Lead | Girls for Climate Action
Uganda has strengthened parts of its climate-finance and policy architecture over the past year. The test now is whether those reforms change the daily realities of women and girls on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
In 2025, more than 500 young women and girls from across Uganda contributed to the Young Eco-Feminists Manifesto 2025–2030. They spoke from lived experience: farming through unreliable seasons, walking farther for water, absorbing additional care work during climate shocks, and leading local solutions with limited resources or decision-making power.
The manifesto carried a clear demand. Climate action must not merely be designed for women and girls; it must be shaped with them, resource their leadership and produce changes that can be measured in their lives.
One year later, there are encouraging signs of movement. There are also major gaps between stronger systems on paper and direct benefits in communities. This is not a final scorecard. It is an early accountability check: what has changed, who is benefiting and what must happen next?
Climate finance systems are growing
Uganda has taken important steps to strengthen the way climate finance is mobilised, classified and tracked. The Government launched the National Climate Finance Strategy 2025–2030, approved a National Climate Finance Vehicle and expanded climate-change budget tagging from 13 reporting entities in the 2024/25 financial year to 84 in 2025/26.
These reforms matter because public institutions cannot direct or account for climate finance if they cannot identify it in plans and budgets. Better systems can make the flow of resources more transparent and improve coordination across government.
But stronger architecture is only the beginning. The question from women and girls remains: can we follow the money from commitment, to budget, to release, to community, and finally to measurable change?
Climate finance is not transformative simply because it has been mobilised. It becomes transformative when it reaches the people facing the greatest risks and enables them to shape the solutions.
Direct national access must become grassroots access
Uganda’s growing ability to mobilise and manage climate finance nationally is welcome. Yet “direct access” means little to a young woman leading adaptation work in a rural district if her organisation cannot meet complex application requirements, wait through long approval periods or absorb rigid reporting costs.
The manifesto called for a dedicated Women and Youth Adaptation Direct Access Window and proposed that at least 30 percent of adaptation finance reach women- and girl-led groups, especially grassroots, rural and Indigenous organisations. It also called for grants of UGX 50 million to UGX 500 million, simpler applications, decisions within 60 days and reporting proportionate to the size and realities of community organisations.
Moving climate finance closer to Uganda is progress. Moving it closer to communities is transformation.
Gender is more visible but influence must be real
At the global level, Parties at COP30 adopted the Belém Gender Action Plan for 2026–2034. The plan places gender-responsive implementation, participation, knowledge, monitoring and finance within the formal climate agenda.
That recognition matters. It reflects issues that young eco-feminists have raised for years, including women’s participation, unpaid care work, health, safety, access to finance and accountability.
Still, consultation is not the same as power. Young women should not be invited only to speak at the end of a process. They should help design policies, set priorities, make decisions, monitor implementation and assess results. Being in the room matters; being able to influence what happens in the room matters more.
Better data must show who benefits
Uganda is improving the tracking of climate-related allocations and expenditure. The next step is to make that data useful for gender accountability.
We should be able to answer basic questions: How much climate finance reaches women and young women? How much reaches women with disabilities and grassroots women-led organisations? How much is provided as grants rather than loans? What changes for the women and communities that receive it?
Spending totals alone cannot answer whether climate action is fair or effective. Gender-responsive data must show who benefited, who was excluded and whether people’s resilience, income, safety, health or time use improved. If women are invisible in the data, they can remain invisible in budgets and decisions.
Care work belongs in climate budgets
For women and girls, climate change is also a crisis of time. Drought, unreliable rainfall and pressure on household resources can mean longer journeys for water, more time securing food and fuel, and greater responsibility for caring for children, older people and family members who are ill.
Uganda Bureau of Statistics data for 2024/25 reports that only 2.1 percent of households used clean cooking fuels and technologies. This is not only an energy statistic. It points to the time, health and environmental burdens still carried largely within households.
The manifesto called for at least 10 percent of adaptation spending to support time-saving social infrastructure, including safe water, clean cooking and childcare. That demand recognises a simple truth: a girl missing school because household care responsibilities increase during a climate shock is experiencing climate injustice. Care work must be visible in climate planning and budgets.
Water access must be measured in time and distance
National household access to improved water sources increased from 70.2 percent in 2021/22 to 78.4 percent in 2024/25, according to Uganda Bureau of Statistics. This is meaningful progress.
However, the manifesto called for safe water within 500 metres of households because the existence of a water source does not tell us how long it takes to reach, whether the route is safe or who carries the water home.
Future reporting should show the distance and time women and girls spend collecting water, particularly in climate-vulnerable communities. Access should be measured from the perspective of the person carrying the jerrycan.
Land inclusion must become ownership and control
Land rights remain central to climate resilience. For women farmers, secure rights affect whether they can invest in the land, access finance, choose crops and technologies, and recover after climate shocks.
The manifesto called for joint spousal titling to become the default in government-supported land registration, with married women included as co-owners on at least 40 percent of new titles by 2030. Progress should therefore be reported not only through women’s participation in land programmes, but through documented ownership, control and decision-making power.
Early movement but not yet transformation
One year into the manifesto’s five-year period, we can see institutional movement: a national climate-finance strategy, a climate-finance vehicle, wider budget tagging, a new global gender action plan and improvements in household access to water.
What we cannot yet see clearly enough is whether these shifts are changing power and resources at community level. Are young women represented in climate bodies? Can grassroots organisations access funding? Are women spending less time on unpaid care? Are early-warning systems reaching women and girls equitably? Are projects measuring changes in women’s safety, livelihoods and decision-making power?
These are the same questions young women and girls placed on the table in 2025. They remain the right questions because they connect national commitments to everyday experience.
The targets remain on the table
The manifesto provides concrete benchmarks for accountability:
- 40 percent women in climate adaptation planning, budgeting and oversight bodies
- 20 percent young women and 5 percent women with disabilities in those bodies
- 30 percent of adaptation finance directed to women- and girl-led groups
- 70 percent of publicly backed adaptation finance provided as grants
- 90 percent village coverage for accessible early-warning systems
- 10 percent of adaptation spending directed to time-saving social infrastructure
- 40 percent women in land and agriculture decision-making bodies
These numbers turn broad commitments into questions that government, funders and civil-society organisations can track. They give young women a basis for asking not only whether action was promised, but whether resources, representation and results followed.
From recognition to results
The Young Eco-Feminists Manifesto was never intended to sit on a shelf. It was created by young women and girls who are already organising, farming, innovating, caring, advocating and building solutions in their communities.
We recognise progress where it is happening. We will also continue to ask where the money goes, who makes the decisions and what changes in women’s lives. That is not opposition to progress; it is how progress becomes accountable.
For the next year of implementation, the priority is clear: publish gender-disaggregated climate-finance results, create practical routes for grassroots groups to access funds, formalise young women’s participation in decision-making, and measure the effects of climate action on time, income, safety, health and ownership.
Uganda now has stronger climate systems. The next measure of success is whether women and girls can see, access and shape the benefits.
Sources
Uganda Bureau of Statistics Uganda Harmonised Integrated Survey 2021 22 to 2024 25 presentation
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