International climate justice, conflict and gender: scoping study

Annex 3: Examples of development programmes that link women's empowerment and climate action

Kenya: Financially empowering women who live in slums through sustainable gardening^[153]

The Association of Women in Agriculture in Kenya (AWAK) is responding to the specific gendered impacts of the COVID pandemic, which left many women in urban slums without a job but with increased household responsibilities. AWAK trained 700 urban women in slums to convert former domestic dumping sites into vegetable gardens, using organic compost to enrich the soil and biomass waste to produce biochar. This provides the women with sustainable sources of livelihood, including from selling vegetables, briquettes and soap, and promotes table funding as well as access to formal banking. Women gain technical and business skills and transfer knowledge to other women, at the same time promoting women's leadership in the community

Nepal: De-risking business loans for climate micro-entrepreneurs with a gender lens^[154]

A loan insight software company, Aeloi Technologies, has helped fifty women access affordable financing through an innovative digital token loan system. As a pilot project, Aeloi software tracks impact sector funds, with the goal of bridging the financing gap for 700,000 climate entrepreneurs. They have successfully lowered per unit costs and de-risked loans in the safa tempo (electric minibus) industry of Kathmandu and now target the agriculture sector. Because financial technology (fintech) is male dominated, Aeloi Technologies supports women entrepreneurs to increase their business assets and income, get rid of toxic interest rates, gain decision making power and social freedom. The project increases women's access to formal financial systems, taking steps to reach unschooled women who are financially excluded.

Nigeria: Building women's capacity to shape gender responsive climate finance^[155]

A two-year project by Nigerian NGO Centre for 21st Century Issues has built the capacities of local women's groups to advocate for gender responsive climate finance and actively engage in the Green Climate Fund's evaluation processes. By training 165 women on the fundamentals of climate finance and the Green Climate Fund mechanism, the project facilitates women's groups' collaboration with Nigeria's National Designated Authority, Direct Access Entities, and Green Climate Fund Readiness Support programs. Women CSOs have been recognized as observers in the Green Climate Fund's funding mechanism. The project has contributed to the development of "No objection" procedures for endorsing projects presented on behalf of Nigeria by international accredited entities and opened up opportunities for local women to benefit from climate finance.

Turkey: Empowering refugee women through solar engineering^[156]

Since 2018, the Solar Age project supports Syrian women refugees in Turkey. 200 female refugees have benefited from the Solar Engineering Course, a10-day theoretical and practical training in solar energy. Among them, 20 have also been trained to build EFE (Energy for Everyone) solar batteries, which are sold on the local market to generate revenues, providing financial autonomy for women. The EFE batteries are specifically designed to provide for the needs of refugees. They integrate a flashlight for SOS signals and serve as an autonomous source of energy for mobile phones to facilitate communication. The program additionally offers educational and language courses to child refugees, reducing women's burden of care and enabling their attendance to the training.