Renewable, clean energy and gender equality are preconditions for sustainable development and for tackling climate change, as envisioned by the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. Women’s knowledge, empowerment and collective action are central to finding and building more environmentally sustainable pathways to manage our environment; adapt to climate change; and secure access to sustainable energy.
The experiences documented in this paper provide an overview of lessons learned which can help address bottlenecks and inform the way forward for gender-responsive climate, energy and environment policies and programmes. These can be summarised as follows:
- women need to be involved in decision making and play a leadership role in promoting decentralized renewable energy access; they also need to benefit from renewable energy for economic empowerment
- apply a cross-sectoral approach to gender, climate and energy policy and programming
- promote women’s productive use of renewable energy, and reduce women’s time dedicated to unpaid care and domestic work
- target policy processes and build capacity to mainstream gender, climate and energy in an integrated manner
- remove investment barriers and create equal opportunities for women’s entrepreneurship and decent employment and access to technologies
- influence budget processes to fund the implementation of gender-sensitive energy and climate solutions