With the intention of thinking of a specific regional strategy that goes beyond the immediate context, we participated in COP 16 to think about COP30 towards the broader horizon of COP 31 and beyond.
In November 2021, we received the Gender-Just Climate Solutions Award from Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF), a high-level awards ceremony that has been held since 2015 during the annual global climate negotiations of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP).
In addition to the recognition, the organizations that receive the recognition are invited to participate in the Women and Gender Constituent Group (WGC). It is one of the nine stakeholder groups of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that was established in 2009 and is working to ensure that women’s voices and their rights are integrated into all processes and outcomes under the UNFCCC.
Foto: Kit Huayas
Latinas embodied
Within the WGC we promote the Latin Feminist Network for Climate Action to strengthen organizations in South America. In this framework, during the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP 16) we carried out the Juntanza Feminista WGC LAC, together with WGC and WEDO.
This moment was a valuable opportunity to “connect with feminists in the region, develop strategies and commit to shaping the debates and results of COP30 (United Nations Conference on Climate Change in 2025), while building long-term and high-impact collaborations within and outside feminist networks”.
We called on different organizations, not all of which were part of the WGC, but they do share its principles “to join the generation of a regionalization process that can take into account the particularities of each zone/region but above all unite the senses, common feelings”.
Foto: Kit Huayas
COP 29
The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 29) will be held from Monday 11 to Friday 22, 2024, in the city of Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, and Plurales will be participating as part of the Women and Gender Constituent Group.
The main topics of this Conference will be the progress in the new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), planned for 2025 (at COP28 it was clear that the new national climate commitments must be aligned with the goal of keeping the average global temperature below 1.5 °C). Second, financing for countries to adopt strong climate commitments.
This COP will bring together leaders from governments, businesses and civil society to address the climate crisis. Plurales will bring together the experiences of scalable feminist climate initiatives for a sustainable and fair future, where women’s equality and human rights are fundamental to all ongoing debates.
Foto: Kit HuayasFoto: Kit Huayas
*Photos courtesy of Kit Huayas.
https://www.plurales.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/WECF-WGC-mujeres-genero-feministas-COP-16-Red-Latina-04-scaled.jpg14402560plurales1 Fundaciónhttps://www.plurales.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Plurales-logoFullcolor.pngplurales1 Fundación2024-11-04 16:10:002024-12-04 17:03:53We promote the Red Latina Feminista por la Acción Climática
From October 21 to November 1, Santiago de Cali, Colombia, will host the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP 16). Plurales will be participating in the meeting in general and promoting two events and a campaign in particular.
It will be the first COP on biodiversity since the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at COP 15, held in December 2022 in Montreal, Canada. This agreement has the 30×30 objective: to stop and reverse the loss of biodiversity by protecting 30% of the land surface and 30% of the marine environment by 2030.
On the one hand, the documentary “Reflejos” (Colombia, 2024) will be presented by Weisny Yireth Velaides, member of Fundación Mujer, Amazonía y Paz (Funmapaz), from Caquetá. On the other hand, Débora Sajama, from the Coalición Nacional por la Tierra ENI – Argentina and from the Aboriginal Community of Casa Grande, Vizcarra and El Portillo, from El Aguilar, Jujuy, will present “Litio, qué hay detrás de la Reforma” (Argentina, 2023).
When: Tuesday 10/22, 2:00 p.m. (Colombia time)
Where: Banco de Bogotá – Auditorium (CRA 4 #7 – 61, San Pedro, Cali)
On Wednesday 23rd, together with Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN – IUCN SUR – IUCN NL – ORMACC), the Peruvian Society of Environmental Law (SPDA), the CBD Women’s Caucus (CBD WC), ECO Maxei and the Encuentro de Juventudes por Escazú (ENJUVES), we organized the event “Empowering women environmental defenders: territorial strategies with a gender perspective from Latin America relevant to monitoring the Global Biodiversity Framework”.
When: Wednesday 23/10, 18 (Colombia time)
Where: Cano Cristales – CEE – Plaza Uno meeting room – Cali, Colombia and also online live
Interpretation into Spanish and English.
When: Wednesday 23/10, 18 (Colombia time) Where: Cano Cristales – CEE – Plaza Uno meeting room – Cali, Colombia and also online live Interpretation into Spanish and English.
“Women have a central role in the conservation of biodiversity”, with this premise and with the help of UN Women, environmental defenders from Argentina, Guatemala and Ecuador and coordinator of the CBD Women’s Caucus, “we will explore what strategies can be implemented to monitor compliance with the Global Biodiversity Framework from a gender perspective”.
On the 24th we will participate in “Guardians of the Rights of Mother Nature”. Nicolás Avellaneda, member of Plurales, will be with Erick Pajares, Executive Director of CIMA – Cordillera Azul (Peru), Ketty Marcelo, President of ONAMIAP (Peru), Simón Crisóstomo, Citizen Observatory (Chile) and Josefina Tunki, TICCA Network (Chile).
The objective of this activity is “to make known and reflect on the struggle for the recognition of the rights of Mother Nature as a position that allows the integral conservation of ecosystems, cultures and the interdependent relationships between them, through the presentation of cases where this has already occurred and the discussion of its limitations and scope”.
We will also be part of the Women and Gender Constituent (WGC), one of the nine official stakeholder groups of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It was created in 2009 and is currently made up of more than 50 civil society organizations and networks of women and environmentalists.
“The objective of the LAC-WGC will be to amplify the voice, concerns, contexts and demands of women’s organizations and collectives in all their diversity, non-binary people, feminists and activists who come together for gender justice and who are articulated for the region, working at the intersection with climate change. This regional node also aims to strengthen political advocacy, particularly in the multilateral space of the UNFCCC and climate-related processes in Latin America and the Caribbean, to develop, reflect on and promote common positions that are part of the Women and Gender Constituent (WGC)”.
In the context of this event, we want to make visible, raise awareness and influence the process of land dispossession through extractivism, the energy transition and the use of constitutional reform in Jujuy, Argentina.
Thus, through the campaign “Let’s defend Jujuy: no to energy transition without rights” we will be making visible the case of Jujuy with lithium and the unconstitutional reform of the province to increase extraction. We will spread the word about the energy transition and what it means to put it into practice through the increase of violent extractivism in local and indigenous communities and we will position the need for land governance centered on the people who inhabit it and their role in the conservation of biodiversity.
For Plurales, it is important to participate in these types of international events, but fundamentally to promote the participation and influence of organizations from the territories with which we work. These global spaces do not always take the direction we expect. Even so, we believe that opening debates and disputes at these levels of influence is still viable and allows us to make other worlds possible and not just the one that a few try to impose on us.
https://www.plurales.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Cop16-Colombia-Cali-03.jpg6751200plurales1 Fundaciónhttps://www.plurales.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Plurales-logoFullcolor.pngplurales1 Fundación2024-10-21 15:56:002024-12-04 15:57:38Present at COP16
The 2nd Encuentro Latinoamericano de Defensoras Ambientales para la Acción Climática took place from 16 to 18 August in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. Organised by Plurales, Colectivo CASA and Tierra Viva, it brought together more than 40 women from 30 organisations from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico and El Salvador.
This space contributes to strengthening and promoting alliances between organisations of environmental, peasant, indigenous, Afro-descendant and marginalised urban defenders in Latin America, to carry out collective actions in defence of territories, share advocacy strategies, make visible and strengthen the initiatives they carry out for gender and climate justice.
Marisol Angulo, a member of the Red Ecuatoriana de Forestería Análoga (REFA), participated in the meeting and says that “we found it very energizing to share experiences, to listen to colleagues who have the same problem. We may have limits in the territories where we live in each country, but there are no limits in our spaces as women where we work, because the needs are the same, they are identical. Here we have already found the tools to continue the feminist struggle against climate change in our spaces”.
Why the Encuentro?
At present, the structural inequalities suffered by rural, indigenous, Afro-descendant and impoverished urban women are being exacerbated by the climate crisis, the global economic crisis, the adjustment policies of Latin American states, the growing concentration of power of financial capital and the advance of extractivism on natural resources, elements that only continue to sustain, perpetuate and deepen the current capitalist system.
Extractive industries, mining, oil, agribusiness, among others, seriously damage natural resources and have serious consequences for the health, food security, productive activities and permanence in the territories of women, girls and young people. Floods, droughts and the frequency of other natural disasters make the climate crisis a reality today more than ever, with serious and differentiated impacts on the lives of peasant and indigenous communities, but especially on women and girls, who have historically taken on the tasks of care, reproduction and maintenance of life.
Added to this is the imbalance of power in which communities, and women in particular, defend their lands, territories and common goods, putting their own lives at risk, in addition to providing for them on a daily basis. Physical, psychological, political, patrimonial, sexual and environmental violence multiply within this patriarchy with multiple faces: religious, institutional, state, extractive and even humanitarian.
Even in this adverse scenario, rural, indigenous, Afro-descendant and marginalised urban women maintain the will to promote articulations to develop joint actions of advocacy, visibility and communication of the problems and their initiatives to address them. Women in the territories are building horizons of climate justice from the worldview of their people and in accordance with their way of life. In this context, the 2nd Latin American Meeting of Environmental Defenders for Climate Action continues to promote feminist climate agendas for the defence of territories.
As in the 1st EFAC Encuentro, a statement was produced collectively, carrying the voices of all these women and their territories, and will soon be shared publicly. In the meantime, we invite you to see the declaration of the 1st meeting.
Clara Merino Serrano, of the Luna Creciente collective from Ecuador, explains that “it seems to me that this is a step, but we must continue to create units of women from the territories in very serious times, when we are experiencing great setbacks of the capitalist, patriarchal and colonial against our people and especially against us women”.
For the members of the Escuela feminista para la Acción Climática (EFAC), this meeting was an important step in continuing the process of training, strengthening and exchange that began with the creation of the school in 2021.
Mariela Melgar Ibáñez, representative of the Colectivo de Mujeres del Chaco Americano, concludes that “the challenge is great to continue this struggle, this resistance, but accompanied. Together with all the women who have come to this meeting and with all those who could not come”.
*Photos: Angirü Bolivia
https://www.plurales.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Encuentro-EFAC-Bolivia-2024-Cintia-Mamani-Angiru-01.jpg10801920plurales1 Fundaciónhttps://www.plurales.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Plurales-logoFullcolor.pngplurales1 Fundación2024-08-21 22:50:092024-08-21 22:50:09“There are no borders in our women’s spaces”