Written by Allen Drew, Dorren Irungu, Lydia Perris
Today was Gender Day at COP27. The day was filled with panels and side sessions focused on how the climate crisis is impacting, and is impacted by, women and girls. Our team visited three panel discussions in which we were presented with two core realities:
First, women and girls are disproportionately and negatively impacted by the climate crisis. Women globally earn 50% less than men, and are much more likely to feel the impacts when extreme weather strains livelihoods. For every $10 of climate relief aid given out, women receive $1. When drought strikes, women and girls are forced to walk farther and farther to find water - and in this space of abject desperation and vulnerability are exposed to increasing sexual violence.
Yet while women and girls tend to suffer more from the growing challenges of our changing world, empowering them can be one of our most powerful solutions. When given resources, women use them to strengthen their children and their communities at a rate ten times that of men. Women make up 60-80% of low income farmers and are at the very heart of food production, even though they lack many of the tools and resources of men. They also carry Indigenous knowledge about sustainable care of the land. Jay Collin wrote in his book, Draw Down, that gender equality is the 6th most impactful of all solutions when it comes to reducing global emissions.
And so the message was presented with strength and clarity: Empowering women drives the economy forward. Empowering women heals the land. Empowering women strengthens communities. Women are not merely victims of the climate crisis - they are also key agents of change.
Our panels ended with a hopeful message - a rallying cry for gender equality as a core element of our climate work. Yet this was not the whole story.
The reality is that the struggle continues for women and girls, Indigenous people, the poor, and all who have been marginalized and pressed down by those in power and unjust systems. Women are not at the table nearly as much as men. This COP, despite being the “African COP,” has raised many financial and other barriers to African leaders and civil society attending. Our own Doreen and Anthony’s Kenya has many delegates present, but no pavilion. And Indigenous voices continue to be marginalized, even though their climate solutions are some of our world’s most impactful.
We would like to invite you to look at yourself, your home, your church, and your community. If you are someone who is in power, who might you invite to your table to share their wisdom with you? If you are marginalized, be reminded that Jesus came to earth so that you might have a voice at the table - what table might you, encouraged by him, seek a place at? As you ponder these questions, we affirm the discomfort of stepping into them. Aluta continua - the struggle continues. And it is through this struggle that the Kingdom of God breaks into the world.
PRAYERS:
1. For the week 2 team: for our spiritual eyes to be opened to what God is leading us into, and for deep fellowship and friendship. For the week 1 team: refreshment and energy, time and space to process and glean deeper insights into this week, passion and enthusiasm for their work back home.
2. Women across the world who are (not mutually exclusively):
Victims and survivors: of sexual abuse, domestic violence, loss and damage caused by climate change, lack of opportunities, systemic injustices, of droughts. For protection, community, healing and confidence in speaking out and standing up.
Leaders: especially young women, to know their influence, to steward it well and use their position for God’s glory, for fresh anointing and stirring of what God is calling them to!
3. Unity and solidarity, especially between men and women, to create a just and fair future that honors, protects and builds up women.
4. For somehow the disconnect between ‘high level’ negotiations and local, lived experiences to be bridged, and for those experiences to be at the fore of national and international policies, especially around gender equality.