As climate change continues to worsen, the representation of women at the Conference of the Parties (COP), the annual global climate summit, has stalled at about a third of participants.
At the head of delegation level, which is often a ministerial role, the representation of women falls to about one-fifth, according to analysis by the Gender Action Tracker campaign group.
Back in January, when this year’s COP29 committee was being appointed, Azerbaijan placed 28 men and zero women to a key group tasked with organising the climate summit.
Backlash and criticism was immediate, with the country quickly adding 12 women and two men to the committee without giving comment to address the change.
Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate chief when the historic Paris agreement was delivered in 2015, had called the all-male panel “shocking and unacceptable”.
Azerbaijan’s committee group has since grown to 55 members, according to the Financial Times, but has not reached gender parity. However, the COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev’s six person team is now evenly split.
The COP29’s failure to initially appoint any women to the committee prompted the launch of the Women Leading on Climate initiative, where 75 female leaders from business, civil society and academia, signed a letter to Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, calling for more gender diverse representation.
“Many of the key successes of the COP process, including the Paris Agreement, were delivered by women leaders, working closely with their male colleagues,” the letter reads.
“In the private sector, many of the leading voices for transformational action on climate are coming from women executives. Around the world, in every sector and industry new climate related jobs are being created and many are being filled with exceptionally talented women at every level.”
Has the annual global climate summit ever been gender diverse?
Gender diverse representation within global climate talks has historically been poor. At the COP28 climate summit, only 15 out of the 140 speakers were women, with the annual “family photo” showing the stark omission among a sea of men in suits.
The year before, at COP27, the climate summit included even less gender diversity, with women making up only 7 out of 111 speakers (roughly 6 per cent).
High-profile women who’ve been represented in the past include Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottely; Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen; President of Honduras Iris Xiomara Castro Sarmiento and Prime Minister of Iceland, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, as well as President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who will be absent from this year’s conference.
This year’s summit is taking place from 11-22 November in the city of Baku, a controversial location for the global meeting considering Azerbaijan’s status as a fossil fuel-dependent economy with a human rights record that’s routinely been rated one of the worst in the world.
Climate activists such as Greta Thunberg have condemned the climate summit as a “greenwashing conference”.
“Cop meetings have proven to be greenwashing conferences that legitimise countries’ failures to ensure a livable world and future and have also allowed authoritarian regimes like Azerbaijan and the two previous hosts – the United Arab Emirates and Egypt – to continue violating human rights,” writes Thunberg for The Guardian.
COP is an annual gathering of global leaders, businesses, non-governmental organisations and climate activists coming together to negotiate on priority agenda items set forth in the Paris Agreement on climate action.
Hanging over this year’s summit is the US presidential election result, as president-elect Donald Trump has indicated plans to withdraw the country from the 2015 Paris Agreement on the day of his inauguration. Trump had already done this in 2019, before his successor Joe Biden brought the US back into the agreement in 2021. The US is the largest global producer of oil and gas and one of the major global emitters of CO2.
For Australia, there’s a likely announcement that the country will host COP31 in 2026, in partnership with Pacific Island neighbours. This would be met with significant expectations that Australia lead the way towards more ambitious climate action – starting with COP29.
What needs to happen at COP29?
COP29 has been dubbed the “finance COP”, as the central focus is around creating much bigger targets for climate finance– a mechanism where wealthy countries provide funding to help poorer countries with their clean energy transition and to strengthen their climate resilience.
This year’s climate summit also represents an opportunity to engage the private sector in playing a bigger role towards investment into the renewable energy transition.
The Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) has released a policy analysis on the growing concerns of Net Zero pledges and promises by governments, businesses and financial institutions during COP29.
WECAN says it’s imperative for governments to aim for real zero targets, rather than simply net zero commitments, in order to keep our climate below the necessary 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Net Zero commitments, as they stand now, continue to perpetuate false solutions and do not cut emissions at the source. By supporting Real Zero approaches, governments, businesses, and financial institutions can achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and keep global warming below the 1.5C guardrail,” says WECAN.
The network’s policy analysis details the need for a Real Zero approach to climate solutions, and provides a framework to effectively reduce emissions and mitigate pollution at the source.
Examples of this include a just and rapid phaseout of fossil fuels, a fair and democratic renewable energy transition, a shift to agroecology and small-scale farmers, Indigenous and community-led reforestation and forest protection, an end to all fossil fuel subsidies, policies that halt fossil fuel expansion, and prioritisation of women’s leadership.