Browse by Theme: Climate Change

The UK government has a crucial role to play in supporting women and girls, in all their diversity, to lead on climate change in 2021 as hosts of the G7 and COP26.

On Monday 23rd November 2-3pm GMT, join the Big Tent and CARE International UK, ActionAid UK, Plan International UK, Wen (Women’s Environmental Network) and the Centenary Action Group (CAG) as they explore the importance of women and girls’ leadership in the management of the climate crisis.

This year’s international climate change negotiations (UNFCCC COP26) were scheduled to begin on 9 November 2020, in Glasgow, UK. Five years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, this year’s negotiations were slated to be a moment of reaffirmation and ambition-raising under the global climate policy regime. The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated the postponement of the negotiations to November 2021. As the world grapples with a pandemic that, in a few short months, has provided a glimpse into the systems-level and often permanent disruptions scientists predict to result from climate change, it is critical that climate action not be allowed to come to a standstill.

The UK Government has a crucial opportunity to ensure women and girls are put at the heart of climate action as it hosts COP26 next year, the annual global climate change summit. But their recent decision to appoint an all-male hosting team for their Presidency puts their credibility into question. We are outlining four steps the UK government needs to take to ensure gender justice is central to their COP Presidency, and to drive implementation of bold climate action.

The UK’s integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy should be a real opportunity to reframe our country’s external engagement with the world in light of where we are in 2020. But as the UK government chooses a COP26 team that is all-male I have to ask myself; truly – does this demonstrate a government that really understands where we are in 2020?

Growing up in Uganda I saw directly the effects of climate change. Temperatures have risen and extreme weather events such as heatwaves, floods and droughts have increased in intensity and frequency.

As part of London Climate Action Week 2020, CARE hosted 'Gender-just climate resilience in the COVID-19 response'.

Just as in the UK, trust, speed and scale is needed to meaningfully limit the impact of COVID-19 in communities already living in poverty. Unlike the UK, countries like Chad, Mali and Niger already had 12.8 million people in need of humanitarian assistance due to conflict and climate change. With support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), CARE will be able to reach thousands of people here, but we and our peer NGOs have the capacity to scale this work up significantly, and the experience to make a real impact. The window we have to reach those communities is closing quickly – the international community must accelerate its response before it’s too late.