Dear Ministers, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the pleasure to deliver this statement on behalf of the Nordic delegations to the OSCE, representing Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.
We want to thank Malta for convening this Second Preparatory EEF on the digital innovations contributing to sustainable development and climate adaptation. We commend the Chairpersonship for establishing a clear linkage between the topic and security in the OSCE region.
The world is facing climate crisis. To answer comprehensively to the challenges posed by the crisis, we must understand how climate change affects people and who is being hit the hardest.
The evidence is plenty that the Climate Change and the mitigation measures have different consequences for women and men. The climate crisis therefore includes a clear gender component. This is why all the Nordic countries takes the Climate Security perspectives into account in their updated National Action Plans on Women, Peace and Security.
The OSCE participating States also acknowledged these adverse effects of climate change in the Stockholm Ministerial Council in 2021. We committed ourselves to consider the importance of full, equal and meaningful participation of women in climate policy -and decision-making.
The Nordic countries consider the nexus between climate change and gender as an integral part of the OSCE agenda. To strengthen the implementation of this approach, we organised an event on gender-perspectives in climate action for comprehensive security in the OSCE region on 5 June.
This event, funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers, brought together the OSCE Secretary General, representatives of the Chairpersonship, academia, civil society, and government representatives, from the Nordic countries and Ukraine. The experts provided many perspectives to the integration of gender perspectives into climate and security work, and they underscored the opportunities and challenges pertaining to the topic.
The experts also reminded us that we cannot ignore the fact that Russia’s illegal and illegitimate invasion of Ukraine is accelerating climate change, hindering global climate action, and aggravating gender inequalities.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to take this opportunity to share a few of the recommendations from our event. These recommendations are OSCE specific, and we encourage all the participating States and the OSCE Executive Structures and Field Operations to operationalize them.
- Consider climate, gender and security in a holistic manner. Assess and analyse the context-specific structural and cultural aspects of gender and climate.
- Incorporate an intersectional gender lens into all national policies, strategies, plans and initiatives pertaining to climate change by enhancing data-driven approaches and developing sex-disaggregated statistics.
- Ensure full, equal and meaningful participation of women and girls in all their diversity in climate, peace and security decision-making through promotion of inclusion measures, capacity-building and training.
- Utilise the whole-of-society-approach by strengthening collaboration between authorities, civil society, science and international organisations Provide regional, national and local platforms for the partners and beneficiaries to discuss and strategise. Ensure that local knowledge is translated into concrete actions.
- Promote and protect women environmental human rights defenders. Bridge the gap between women’s rights defenders and women environmental defenders to strengthen the nexus of environment and climate and the women, peace and security agenda.
- Strengthen collaboration among international organisations and academia. Pool resources, knowledge and best practices and map the added value of different actors.
- Mainstream climate perspectives into disaster risk reduction, energy security and transition, natural resource management, and environmental restoration, and ensure that the specific needs of women and marginalized groups are taken into account.
- Collect best practices into a catalogue outlining actionable insights for gender-responsive climate action and climate-sensitive gender equality work.
These recommendations aim to provide concrete steps for advancing the OSCE’s work on Climate, Security and Gender nexus.
To conclude, I want to reiterate the commitment of Nordic countries to actively address the challenges posed by climate change by ways of inclusion, innovation and technological advancements. We are committed to advancing the OSCE’s work on Climate, Security and Gender nexus.