Background
Brazil is a critical player in climate adaptation and mitigation efforts globally. The country is home to the world's largest tropical rainforest, the Amazon, which acts as a significant carbon sink, absorbing billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. However, Brazil is also responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions, primarily due to deforestation, agriculture, and energy production. To address this, Brazil has set ambitious targets to reduce its emissions by 43% by 2030, as part of its commitment to the Paris Agreement.
In the past, CIFs has invested in Brazil through the Forest Investment Program (FIP) - 81.14M USD; and the Clean Technology Fund (CFT), with 19.17% (19.24M USD). The Investment Plan for Brazil under CIF’s new Renewable Energy Integration Program will be reviewed later this week. Climate investments to Brazil are expected to intensify in the coming year in light of new commitment directed to the Amazon conservation, the energy transition, and sustainable agriculture. Yet, without explicit focus on gender, these new funding streams risk perpetuating gender inequalities that exist in the country.
Globally, women’s involvement in decision-making and governance processes and structures across climate sectors tends to be well below parity at all levels, with women also being less likely to be in senior or leadership positions, have significant influence over processes, or even participate in meetings. National, international, and institutional policy frameworks for gender equality can help advance women’s climate leadership in decision-making spaces by guiding, setting targets and priorities, and establishing actions to address discriminatory gender barriers. In Brazil, women comprise only 11% of the private sector workforce and 9% of ministerial positions in the energy sector, while also ranking 129th of 186 countries regarding female representation in Congress (UN Women, 2023).
CIF places gender equality at the center of efforts to support transformational change and climate-smart development for both women and men. To achieve this, normative and structural barriers to full engagement of women at all levels of climate action both in public and private sectors need to be addressed.
This event would discuss the application of the Women Climate Leadership framework, developed by the CIF, to the context of Brazil, facilitating high level dialogue with representatives of the government, the private sector and the civil society to identify transformative approaches to advancing women climate leadership in the country.
Moderator