Attempts to write gender equality out of global climate agreements are “crazy” and “cruel”, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson has said.
Mrs Robinson said the move was part of a “global backlash against the rights of women and girls” and must be rejected.
Mrs Robinson was speaking at the Cop30 climate summit in Brazil, where countries are trying to devise a new Gender Action Plan.
Crises caused by the changing climate and extreme weather events affect the marginalised and disadvantaged most. In many countries, that means women, girls, and people who don’t conform to traditional ideas around gender.
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The Gender Action Plan is intended to ensure all have equal access to climate protections, can take part fully in decision-making on climate action at local and national level and can avail of the finance, training and opportunities that may come with green jobs.
“Gender equality is a precondition for effective climate action,” Mrs Robinson said. “It is not an add-on to climate policy. It’s a measure of its effectiveness.
“When women and gender diverse people are at the table, climate policies are more ambitious, more inclusive and more durable.”
She said documents in circulation at the negotiations in Brazil had placed the word gender in square brackets, indicating there was no consensus around what the word meant, when previously there had been no issue with the word.
“How crazy can you be? This is just not acceptable,” she said.
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“We have always had fights on the Gender Action Plan – with Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Vatican to a certain extent – but this is different.
“This is trying to push women back by having this binary definition which has nothing to do with the gender impacts of climate shocks. It’s so cruel, it’s actually unbelievable.”
Bridget Burns of the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO) said the move to bracket gender could cause chaos in talks on other issues by allowing countries to insist on their own definitions for items that were previously agreed.
“We have had to fight to maintain agreed language around gender equality in every negotiation,” she said. “But this is a more co-ordinated pushback that has been emboldened by elections around the world that have shifted countries to the right.”
The United States was among them, she said.
WEDO is concerned that backtracking on women’s rights could also weaken protections for other groups in society marginalised on the basis of race, class, indigeneity and disability.
The European Union is among a number of negotiating parties at Cop30 pushing for an ambitious Gender Action Plan.
Setting out its support, it said: “The EU will continue to champion an inclusive, gender-transformative approach to climate action, ensuring that the transition to a clean, fair and resilient future leaves no one behind.”
