CSW 68th Session Regional Consultation

SESSION 3
‘New development strategies: Towards Caring, Green Economies’
delivered by Doris Tuilau 

 

Your Excellencies, distinguished speakers, honourable members and delegates, colleagues and sisters. 

 

It is a privilege to deliver the statement on behalf of the Asia Pacific CSO Forum represented by 65 participants representing national and regional level organisations from 22 countries.

 

The climate crisis is the greatest, urgent and immediate threat to all including Pacific Island communities, disproportionately impacting women and girls in all their diversity, including between urban, rural and maritime areas, and undermines long-term resilience and economic justice. 

 

This is a crisis driven by the greed of an exploitative fossil fuel industry and its enablers. Eradicating poverty for Pacific women and girls requires financing from multiple sources aimed at enhancing women’s economic empowerment through decent work, accessible public services, social protection and sustainable infrastructure. Climate financing attributable to developed countries is currently provided in the form of loans. The burden of loan repayment shifts the responsibility for climate finance onto developing countries, despite the fact that they have contributed least to the climate crisis. It’s time for high income countries to bear responsibility for contributing to climate finance.

We call for an urgent move to social, economic, ecological and climate systems that place gender just human rights, care, wellbeing, health, social provisioning, peace and human security at the center of our lives and societies.

 

We recommend  

  • Advancing feminist-informed climate policies and actions that acknowledge unpaid care work, redistribute resources and acknowledge systemic gender and power inequalities
  • Advocate for and prioritise climate financing decision making and implementation spaces at national, regional and global levels that are accessible and responsive to the needs of all women and girls and their communities; free of red-tape and bureaucracy to increase accessibility and equity for women, girls, activists and human right
  • Climate solutions, interventions, social benefits and mitigation measures are gender transformative to ensure that all our efforts to address climate do not further exacerbate and widen inequalities for women and girls in all their diversity
  • We call for stronger multilateral cooperation, and greater financial commitments, including Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) for the Pacific region, as we face geopolitical tensions, economic disparities, and intersecting crises. 
  • Ensuring that all women and girls have more opportunities to engage with work toward low emissions and energy democracy, and safe, climate resilient transitions within their Pacific Island countries and that their needs are centered in this transition; 
  • We call for full inclusion of women and girls in the development of the Loss and Damage funds and ensure there are gender responsive indicators and targets included to measure impact.