Climate change, and its significance, is one of the greatest challenges of our time. As far back as twenty years ago, the Platform for Action called for the active participation of women in environmental decision-making as well as the inclusion of gender perspectives. One reason: women and men are affected differently by the effects of climate change. Women often need to overcome greater problems that arise in the course of climate change: they are more deeply afflicted by poverty, for example, and are denied access to land, property and education in many countries. The struggle to implement the strategic objectives of the Platform for Action in this area:

• Involve women actively in environmental decision-making at all levels
• Integrate gender concerns and perspectives in policies and programmes for sustainable development
• Strengthen or establish mechanisms at the national, regional, and international levels to assess the impact of development and environmental policies on women

continues.

The UN’s 2012 Doha Climate Change Conference produced a first institutional success. Gender must now be included on every Conference of the Parties agenda. Regrettably, an explicit feminist perspective is missing from the negotiating texts for the UN climate protection processes. As a result, climate protection activists are left to continue their struggle to see the strategic objectives of the Platform for Action included and implemented. Their motto: “System Change, not Climate Change”.