United Kingdom earmarks £165 million for gender equality in climate action

The United Kingdom is to spend £165 million to tackle climate change and inequalities that make women and girls more vulnerable to global warming.

Globally, the United Nations has found that women are more prone to effects of climate change, because they constitute a large majority of the globe’s poor and often depend on small-scale farming for livelihood.

Indeed, women and children comprise 80 per cent of those displaced by climate-related disasters.

But addressing gender inequality has also been proven to advance efforts to tackle climate change. In 2017, Nigeria adopted the International Gender Action Plan by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and in 2020, the country developed its National Action Plan on Gender and Climate Change.

The main goal of the plan is to ensure that national climate change efforts in Nigeria mainstream gender considerations to guarantee inclusivity of all demographics in the formulation and implementation of climate change initiatives, programmes and policies.

In her remarks, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing CB, said: “Climate change has led to the preventable loss of lives through actions that are insufficient or delayed, rolling back women’s economic gains of past decades. Aligning resources and responses, and taking deliberate action will provide us with an opportunity to improve the livelihoods of women, create a sustainable economic future and better protect the planet.

“Throughout the UK’s COP26 presidency, we are encouraging countries around the world to put gender equality at the heart of climate action. I am pleased that Nigeria is engaged on this agenda and is putting gender considerations at the core of national climate and development plans.”

Through its COP26 presidency, the UK has been urging countries around the world to put gender equality at the heart of climate action and had convened ministers and other actors to discuss new action to tackle gender and climate change. Several nations and stakeholders also announced new bold gender and climate commitments.

The UK jointly launched a toolkit on gender-smart climate finance. Co-led by CDC, the UK’s development finance institution, the toolkit would improve understanding of the opportunities of gender-sensitive climate investment by guiding the finance community on how to deliver climate outcomes, while promoting gender equality and women’s economic opportunities.