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Climate Justice for Women and Girls: A Rule of Law Approach to Feminist Climate Action

Date of Publication: 
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
About This Publication: 

Women and girls have the right to effectively participate in and lead efforts to achieve climate justice. An explicitly feminist approach to climate change, based on the rule of law, is needed to ensure women’s inclusion in decision-making processes related to climate governance, equal access to justice, resolution of conflict over natural resources, and the enactment of inclusive and effective climate laws and policies.

IDLO’s Policy Brief Climate Justice for Women and Girls: A Rule of Law Approach to Feminist Climate Action highlights three key elements of a feminist approach to delivering climate justice:

  1. Empowering women and girls to claim their environmental rights and actively participate in decision-making processes
  2. Strengthening regulatory frameworks and institutional capacity for feminist climate action
  3. Enhancing women’s rights to land and other natural resources

Drawing on these insights, the policy paper issues a call to action in the form of recommendations for policymakers and practitioners:

  1. Recognise and promote women’s active leadership and participation in climate decision-making and governance at all levels, including in the justice sector
  2. Empower women and girls to realize their environmental rights, especially climate-vulnerable women such as indigenous women and women affected by climate migration
  3. Support climate action by women- and youth-led organizations, and increase financial support for frontline women environmental human rights defenders
  4. Reform laws, policies and justice institutions to make them more responsive to the climate needs of women and girls, in line with international human rights standards and national development plans
  5. Strengthen women’s rights to land and natural resources, including through better tenure security, elimination of discriminatory laws, and greater gender-responsiveness of customary and informal justice institutions
  6. Foster an approach to climate finance that promotes more equitable funding for women-led climate change adaptation and mitigation initiatives
  7. Mobilize global multi-stakeholder coalitions to accelerate feminist action for climate justice. 
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