New Project: Building awareness for a Gender Equal and Inclusive Just Transition
Building awareness for a Gender Equal and Inclusive Just Transition in eMalahleni Local Municipality: what the transition means for women from grassroots communities
Background
INSPIRE has the great pleasure to announce a new project partnership with Tournesol, WWF South Africa, Vukani Environmental Movement (VEM) and Womxandla. Funded by the World Bank and led by Tournesol’s Director, Peta Wolpe, the project’s main objective is to enhance gender and social inclusivity in local decision-making processes related to the Just Transition by building capacity and awareness, and empowering women to participate effectively. The project seeks to align with national and local initiatives, ensuring coherence and impactful gender equity and inclusivity in just transition processes.
The project is a short exploration of 5 months into what needs to be focussed on in future work and investments towards a low carbon, climate resilient transition, to ensure gender justice is adequately considered.
Objectives
The project will focus on the following key objectives:
Rapid Mapping and Deep Dive into Challenges, Constraints and Priorities of Organisations
The purpose of the mapping exercise is to understand what is happening in the climate change and just transition space from a gender justice perspective and to identify gaps and themes. In addition, the project will try to determine the position of women in these organisations in terms of decision making and local leadership.
Develop climate and gender sensitive awareness material
The kickoff meeting and the notes taken from the meeting with 40 women emphasises the need for clear awareness and educational materials on climate change and the just transition. In addition, there is a need to focus on how a just transition intersects with gender justice. The team will draw on the current tools and awareness materials that have already been developed and based on these and discussions with women in the municipality we will develop new education materials that are accessible to the communities and are concise and simple to follow.
Convene dialogues with women associations and key stakeholders to create awareness on a Gender Justice Just Transition, validate priorities and provide pointers towards further work including building a local level Gender inclusive Just Transition Coalition Platform.
The purpose of the dialogue meetings will be to build awareness in developing a gendered lens into a complex area of work – the just transition. This is complex because not everyone understands or wants to have a coal phase and all the ramifications of this change in the region particularly for women. What is a priority for many is not climate change or lowering emissions but food and decent livelihoods and yet the two are interconnected? Added to this is the issue of gender justice. Working collaboratively and building awareness can assist in managing these complexities.
Partners
