“The climate crisis cannot wait for men to act, we need women at the top table now”

Women must wait 136 years before we get gender parity.

To highlight this imbalance, and to mark 2022’s International Women’s Day, campaigning organization ‘SHE Changes Climate’ has released a new short film.

The organization hopes to amplify the leading voices that have so far been missing from climate negotiations. They call on world leaders to implement the Gender Action Plan from COP25 and deliver on their commitment to promote gender equality in the UNFCCC process.

At COP26 in 2020, 34% of COP26 committees, and 39% of those leading delegations, were women. At the 2021 G7 Summit, there was only one woman amongst the decision makers.

The film, created by Earth Minutes and Visionary Pictures and sponsored by Clim8 Invest, features eight influential climate change-makers. They tell the world that we have to become even more savvy if we are to ensure our political leaders understand the need for gender equality and act on it.

Atossa Soltani, Director of Sacred Headwaters Initiative continues, “When I look at the forest protection movement, when I look at community organizations, when I look at amazing projects that are helping protect forests, the vast majority are led by women.”

“The climate crisis affects us all, yet the perspectives on, and decisions about how to tackle the crisis have been made mainly by men,” says Bianca Pitt, Co-Founder of SHE Changes Climate. “Women represent more than 50% of the population, and yet we continue to be ‘spoken for’. When you look at the major climate negotiations, you see rows of suits removed from the lived experience of women experiencing the impacts of climate change. Enough is enough. Women must be represented in climate negotiations.”

As well as not being represented, women also disproportionately suffer the impacts of climate change; according to a UNDP report, 80% of people displaced by climate crises are women.

But research has also proven that women, in addition, are the most likely change-makers for climate change. As Joycelyn Longdon, Founder of Climate in Colour describes: “When more women are elected to parliament, stronger environmental bills are passed and they’re enforced more strongly, more strictly.”

As a result, countries with more female parliamentarians have better climate policy and lower recorded emissions, and female investors are almost twice as likely as male counterparts to validate the importance of integrating environmental and social factors into investment policies and decision making.

The film is available to watch here for free on WaterBear, a streaming platform dedicated to the future of our planet, from March 8.

More information can be found at shechangesclimate.org.