Climate finance, conflict and gender—Benchmarking women’s empowerment and sustaining peace

Abstract

The intersection of knowledge and practice in climate finance, peace, and women’s empowerment remains understudied even though the aspirations of climate and peacebuilding finance on gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment are actually well aligned. They have in common, an emphasis on the undervalued role of women, the importance of women assuming leadership roles, the elevated agency that finance would afford in, respectively, climate action and sustaining peace, and the full participation of women. At a fundamental level, there is a strong inherent understanding of women’s role in natural resource governance and stewardship that cuts across both the normative framings of climate and peacebuilding finance. Climate financing mechanisms such as the “vertical funds” have over the years introduced sophisticated performance metrics for gender and women’s empowerment, but none to address conflict or fragility. The key gap as highlighted by UNDP is the understanding of the peace co-benefits of climate finance, which means that women in conflict settings may be left behind. This article examines progress on gender and climate finance; the gaps in access by conflict and fragility-affected regions; the benchmarking of climate finance and peace mainstreaming; and a comparative approach for greater cross-fertilization.