Foundation University recently welcomed representatives from Girls Congress, a local feminist leadership and mentoring group, along with an official from the UN Women’s office, Mr. Jonas Gregory Perez, in order to discuss a potential collaboration with FU for the Visayas Young Feminist Agenda Consultation.
This is a directive partnered by Girls Congress and the Negrosanon Young Leaders Institute, with implementing bodies from different island groups in Visayas — and made possible by the strong support of the United Nations Entity for Gender and the Empowerment of Women.
The delegation is an eclectic mix of youth leaders, gender rights activists and UN operatives who are committed to developing a framework for gender-transformative responses to climate change, and in mobilizing actionable policies that push for inclusive development.
In collaborating with the UN Environment Programme and the UN Women’s office, the Visayas Young Feminist Agenda Consultation hopes to develop a system that will meaningfully respond to the ways climate change, environmental decline, and disasters affect women and marginalized communities in the Asia-Pacific region. As stated in the agenda board: these groups often bear the brunt of crises, yet their needs are rarely prioritized in policy-making decisions.
In an attempt to include youth voices in the fray of climate responsiveness and convert their sentiments into actionable programs, The Visayas Young Feminist Agenda will set the terms in launching calls to action, pushing the local government, private financiers, and the UN system in adopting policies that are fundamentally restructured to address climate justice from a gender-sensitive lens.
The initiative will outline specific commitments for each island collective — coordinating fundraising efforts, forming cross-sector alliances, and building a body of evidence that will hopefully turn local advocacies into leverages for regional policy implementations.
According to a UN Women statement, “Women and girls face disproportionate impacts from climate change.” yet “They are also driving climate solutions at all levels - as farmers, workers, consumers, household managers, activists, leaders, and entrepreneurs.” [1]
Rural women are forced into expanding cycles of labor, but are hardly heard in legislative and other regulatory panels. Their voices are systematically cut off from decision-making policies and are underrepresented in climate change, energy transition and disaster risk reduction related discussions.
For many low and lower-middle-income countries, agriculture remains the primary source of employment for women. But in seasons of unpredictable rainfall, they take on an even greater burden — having to work longer hours, stretching limited resources, and finding ways to sustain their families despite worsening conditions.
In typhoon prone regions such as the Philippines’, which is especially salient in the eastern seaboards, flood and extreme weather events stretch their days into brutal endurance tests.
“Climate change is a ‘threat multiplier’,” according to a UN procurement, “... it escalates social, political and economic tensions in fragile and conflict-affected settings.” [2]
The world’s oldest inequalities are sharpened under the pressure of climate change, turning scarcity into reasons for exploitation. With these struggles come the ugly corollary of increased exposure to gender-based violence.
The UN Women & UN Environment Programme has three tangible outcomes that they hope to achieve in the 5-year run of their mission:
For Asia-Pacific actors to increase action on gender-responsive climate change adaptation and mitigation.
For women in all their diversity and other marginalized groups to be represented as key environmental actors in climate and disaster-risk reduction (DRR decision-making).
For women and other marginalized groups in the Asia-Pacific region to engage in climate-resilient livelihoods.
The consultation hopes to establish youth spaces for mapping out fractures and blind spots in the existing policy framework, and open discussions that will press on the fault lines of women-empowerment and climate justice initiatives. The Visayas Young Feminist Agenda has set their vision to “...a world founded on social, environmental, and economic justice, rooted in interdependence, solidarity and mutual respect.”