The Young Women Christian Association (YWCA) has today organized a workshop that brought together Kenyan Youth, Women and Marginalized Communities that will advance their participatory role in the post Paris Climate Dialogue Process.
The workshop aimed at unpacking the outcomes of the 26th Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) while highlighting the relevance and meaning to Kenyan youth, women and marginalized communities.
Speaking at the workshop, the YWCA Programme Officer-Gender Climate Inclusion, Mr. Isaac Oindo, was deeply concerned by the continued push by the global north for scientific attribution and quantification of loss and damage.
“We are also intensely concerned by the increasing challenges in accessibility, quality, predictability and non-responsiveness of various climate finance instruments including Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund, Green Environment Facility among others to the needs of the Youth, Women and Marginalized Communities,” added Oindo.
Oindo was further perturbed about the consistent omission of the youth, women and marginalized communities’ responsive actions from such teams and the time needed to translate this to action given the increasing need for enhanced adaptation in Africa.
He however, welcomed the establishment of the comprehensive two-year Glasgow-Sharm el-Sheik work programme on the global goal on adaptation (2022-2023).
“We strongly call on parties to settle on the definition of Climate Finance not later than COP 27 besides addressing the issue of accessibility of Climate finance by local and grassroots communities from the global south,” Oindo said, highlighting some of the demands on Climate Finance.
He also demanded strongly for predictable and verifiable new Climate and Finance support in addition to emphasizing the pivotal and leadership role that African governments should play in consolidating an African voice and experiences on loss and damage.
For the latter, Oindo demanded commitment from parties in following the direction already set by the Scottish government at COP 27 in financing loss and damage.
Further, he urged parties that the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture should address the vulnerabilities of agriculture to climate change, reduce food insecurity and eradicate poverty amongst communities whose living depends on agriculture while reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions that will not stress the trade on technology.
He called on parties to accelerate their commitments and honour their pledge on adaptation finance and this emphasis and demand of the Global Goal on adaptation should carry with it the aspirations of the youth, women and marginalized communities.
On Gender, Human Rights and Marginalized communities’ rights, he demanded the allocation of adequate financial and human resources to build the needed capacity on gender dimensions of climate policy and action at national level and to comply with the requirements on gender under ‘The Paris Agreement’ implementation guidelines.
“We stress that technology development and transfer should be accompanied with capacity building to facilitate both adoption of the technologies and knowledge for their usage at respective local areas,” he reiterated, adding that technology needs assessment should be linked with on-ground implementation and not end at identification level.
By Isaac K’Obonyo and Edna Okoth
