At last year’s UN Climate Change Conference in Doha, The Rockefeller Foundation and the UN Framework for the Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) launched Momentum for Change: Women for Results, an initiative to showcase the active and important role women play in addressing climate change. At COP 19 in Warsaw, UNFCCC will present the first set of lighthouse activities, an impressive array of innovative models demonstrating measurable impact on the ground and the potential for scalability around the world.
Six lighthouse projects were selected by the Momentum for Change Advisory Panel from among dozens of submissions. Each project uniquely demonstrates how women are agents of change in mitigating the effects of climate change, and adapting to the changes it is bringing across continents. In Bangladesh, a women-centered collaborative called the Climate The Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction Disaster Risk Reduction initiative brings together groups of women who lead vulnerability assessments of climate risks and then formulate and implement action plans. The Alliance for International Reforestation: Women Farmers in Guatemala has planted 150,000 trees in the area of Itzapa alone as part of an effort to sequester carbon and improve farming techniques. The Bamboo Bikes Initiative in Ghana, tackling climate change by building high-quality bamboo bicycles, is focused on reducing emissions not only from the transportation sector but also from the bicycle production process.
The Rockefeller Foundation is proud to fund the Momentum for Change: Women for Results process, which is seeking out innovative and meaningful projects that incorporate women’s insights, experiences and talents, and make women indispensable allies and innovators in tackling climate change. Unless we take into account the unique ways that women are impacted—and the unique ways women can have an impact on the problem of climate change—we will never produce fully workable, equitable solutions to this most pressing of problems.
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