Results of the “Gender & Energy / Climate Change” survey
A joint survey by WECF and Life e.V.
21.02.2006
Background and participation
In the beginning of June 2005 we, WECF and the coordinator of the working group energy & climate change, send out a questionnaire to get a more in-depth impression on which WECF member organisations are working in the areas of energy and climate change and what the members want the working group to focus on.
Till now 17 organisations participated in the poll. They are from Azerbaijan, Czech Republic, Denmark, Georgia (2), Greece, Ireland, Kyrgyztan, Lithuania, Moldova, Netherlands (3), Russia (2), Sweden and USA/Japan.
Conclusion
The most noticeable result of the evaluation is the lack of information and knowledge regarding gender issues in energy and climate change, as well as the need for more information in most of the fields of action – also the level of knowledge is not bad. We were surprised about the high percentage of WECF member organisations dealing with energy (63%) and/or climate change (53%) issues. Admittedly we have to state that probably those organisations dealing with these issues were more motivated to answer the questionnaire than the others, this might distort the results.
Anyway, regarding our future work in the working group we should put a higher effort on information. Already in the end of 2005 we will start with an workshop on how to do a gender analysis – exemplified by the MAMA-86-project “Green Choice of Ukraine: Economic, Efficient and Safe Building”, in which energy saving will be addressed. Experiences of the training and implementation of the gender analysis shall result in a manual “How to implement gender analysis in energy projects”.
Another workshop we are fundraising for at the moment is one on gender and climate change: participation and capacity building of women’s organisations and researchers in EECCA countries. The aim is to inform about the state of the integration of gender issues in international climate change negotiations (UNFCCC and COP14/15) as well as to integrate women’s perspectives from these countries into positions and recommendations.
Despite our planning we want to encourage you to contact us if you need information or want to take part in our activities. We hope our network on ‘gender in energy and climate change’ will become stronger and will become an important voice in energy and climate change policy – on local, regional, national and international level, in ministries and official commissions as well as in NGOs.
Last but not least we want to thank all those persons and organisations who contributed to the survey by filling in the questionnaire. Those who haven’t done it yet are called to do so now. We will update the results every now and then.
