COP29, or the 29th Conference of the parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
Girls For Climate Action Stand at the COP29!
COP29, or the 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), took place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 18th to 22nd, 2024. This major global event brought together leaders, activists, and negotiators to discuss and tackle the urgent climate crisis. Girls For Climate Action (G4CA), a committed party subscriber to the UNFCCC, attended the conference to ensure that the voices of young women were strongly represented in the climate discussions.
In 2024, G4CA was represented by a team of passionate leaders: the strategist lead, advocacy lead, and a climate corps fellow. Each member focused on specific themes such as gender, climate finance, adaptation, and mitigation, ensuring the movement’s core priorities were heard in the negotiations.
At COP29, G4CA made their presence felt through engagements like the Climate Mobility Pavilion, where they emphasized the gendered impacts of climate displacement, and a climate education panel at the Children and Youth Pavilion. On Gender Day, they stood in solidarity with the global gender movement, distributing their Eco-Feminist Manifesto to women’s organizations and activists, advocating for gender-responsive climate policies.
Girls For Climate Action, a subscribed party of UNFCCC represents advocacy tool kits, positions papers and advocacy document at the COP 29 every year and this year it carried her eco-feminist manifesto. G4CA through her eco-feminist manifesto represented the demands from many young women voices that collaborated to develop the document. Her demands were under reference from the Kyoto protocol, Paris agreement and the different COP statements that many negotiators were focusing on.
Our demand was on gender, adaptation, loss and damage, climate finance, just transition, mitigation, agriculture, climate change and health, carbon markets, global stake. Scan QR code to find the manifesto or tap on this link👉https://g4ca.org/eco-feminist-manifesto/
The G4CA Representing team
Every year, Girls For Climate Action sends her representatives to the conference of parties who presents the stand and voices of many young eco-feminists of Girls For Climate Action movement. This year 2024, Girls For Climate Action was represented by her strategist’s lead, advocacy lead and a climate corps fellow. These strictly followed 3 topics including gender, climate finance, adaptation and mitigation.
Our engagement spaces as panelist
Climate Mobility Pavillion; This event spotlighted eco-feminist from the Global South that shared their experiences, emphasizing the need for gender-inclusive climate solutions. Through this space, this aimed to highlight gaps in disaster response and climate mobility, raise awareness of displaced women’s and their leadership in climate action, and build partnerships to protect their rights and promote sustainable change.
Children and Youth Pavillion. Together with we are Tomorrow Global partner hosted a climate education panel at the Children and Youth Pavillion on the 18th of November 2024.
Our engagements as participants and observers
Women and gender discussion
We participated in a couple of side events and discussions around women and gender and also spear heading feminist climate justice. At the gender hub side event, we managed to
18th November 2024 the gender day at COP, Girls for Climate Action stood in solidarity with the global gender movement at the Women and Gender Constituency. We distributed copies of our manifesto to various women’s organizations and activists. This was an opportunity to amplify our voice and call for gender-responsive climate actions
The good news from COP 29 🌻
Parties adopted a 10-year work program for countries (those that already adopted & those not yet developed) to review a new GAP starting next year at COP30 (the people’s COP). Kudos to WGC and all her members/allies for holding the line for this great milestone- https://bit.ly/GenderOutcomeCOP29
While setting the stage for kickstarting UN-approved carbon markets, the Conference failed to deliver on the main goal: a New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance (NCQG). Amidst opposition and protests, a deal was agreed upon early Sunday to “aim to mobilize” $1.3 trillion a year by 2035, with developed countries agreeing to “lead efforts” to pool in $300 billion a year as a base figure.
Climate finance, adaptation and mitigation negotiations and side events;
Girls For Climate Action demands included demand for trillions that was to go straight to communities in Africa and a specific on green climate fund. The 24th November brough amazing news responding to our demand from our negotiations. Despite major headwinds, negotiators in Baku sealed out a deal that at least triples climate finance flowing to developing countries which are mostly in the global south. The $300 billion goal is not enough, but is an important downpayment toward a safer, more equitable future.
According to leading economists, $300 billion by 2035 does not meet the scale of what developing countries need to pursue a low-carbon economy and protect their citizens from mounting droughts, floods, and wildfires.
Now the race is on to raise much more climate finance from a range of public and private sources, putting the whole financial system to work behind developing countries’ transitions.
The hard work now begins to show a route to scaling up all sources of finance to deliver the $1.3 trillion developing countries need by 2035, through the Baku to Belem Roadmap. Greater confidence that investments are coming will unlock more ambitious national climate commitments. This in turn sends a clear signal to investors to back the action we need.
Adaptation and resilience are critical to manage climate risks, including extreme weather, floods, and drought, along with indirect exposures such as disruptions to supply chains and vulnerabilities in infrastructure. Today, many parts of the world have a resilience deficit, and a changing climate is increasing the frequency and intensity of climate conditions across the world.
Adaptation isn’t just about technology it also involves a range of behavioral changes. One expert discussed an example from farming: in response to changing climate conditions, farmers may need to adjust their planting seasons, select more climate-resilient crops, or adopt new irrigation practices to cope with water scarcity.
We highlighted the critical role of young women in adopting and scaling clean energy solutions and called for government incentives to support these efforts as per the Eco-Feminist Manifesto Demand under Adaptation and Mitigation
Outcome of G4CA participation at COP29
We are very sure that many voices of young women and girls were represented and amplified. Amplified local voices in global spaces, we utilized the eco-feminist manifesto that has voices of young women to be our demand document
Strategic partnerships, at the end of the event we strategically positionG4CA with focal persons and partners that we hope will build our activities
Network. We built strong networks that will yield both collaborations and resourceful to our movement.