Women Leading on Equitable and Inclusive Solutions to address the Climate Emergency: Webinar

As part of the Commission on the Status of Women jamboree, the ISC has joined with our UN Major Group for the Scientific and Technological Community partners, the World Federation of Engineering Organizations, to present a panel session on the need for equitable and inclusive solutions to address the climate emergency.

The ISC and the WFEO will be joined by the International Network for Women Engineers and Scientists and the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies to share insights into the current status of the contribution of women scientists and engineers in creating transformational change for societies to live sustainably on planet Earth.

Research shows that women leaders have a positive impact on policies and strategies to address climate change – as leaders in academia, board members of companies and leaders of countries. Yet women do not have an equal voice in the climate change sphere, even at the IPCC, nor in national and international organizations that are addressing the issue.

Working Group Two for the 6^th IPCC Assessment report has given us dire warnings of the impacts of climate change. We need to think and act differently and engage more with a diversity of voices that can contribute to the actions that can be taken – including women, indigenous peoples and communities most affected, for example in the Small Island Developing Sates. We will not get the result we want if we do not ourselves make a step change to listen to the voices of experience and expertise that have so far been left behind.
The event at CSW66 combines the voices of women engineers and scientists from more than 100 nations – we have the expertise, the passion and the energy and we demand to be heard. The dire predictions of the climate emergencies shows that the current approaches to engage the global community have largely failed – we need a paradigm shift in the way diverse voices and the best intellects can be heard to get the outcome that the entire world now so urgently needs.
Marlene Kanga, Former President, WFEO

The panelists will present strategies for increasing the contribution of women in this domain, especially in their roles as leaders in the international scientific community, and will argue that gender equality is essential for business growth, innovation, the knowledge economy, and for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Women have been instrumental in highlighting climate change as the crisis of our time and developing possible solutions, such as the guiding principle of ‘net zero emissions’. Numerous studies and reports all come to the same conclusion that we need more women in science and engineering to identify the issues, develop solutions and lead the essential efforts to address climate change.
Gail Mattson, INWES President 2018-2020

Nidhi Nagabhatla, who will speak on behalf of the ISC, is an expert on water-driven migration, and will discuss the mounting evidence of how water crises affect migration and displacement, especially for women.

Where do we stand 25 years after the Beijing Declaration – Is the water domain gender-sensitive? This discourse will steer the ‘Call for Action’ for Accelerating Gender Equality in water and climate risk assessment and resilience planning.
Nidhi Nagabhatla, UN-CRIS, UN Climate Resilience Initiative