Care and Climate: How Care Systems Shape Access to Justice in a Just Transition (CSW70 Side Event)

Welcome.

Welcome everyone and thank you so much for being here for our event. CARE and How Care Systems Shape Access to Justice in a Just Transition this event is organized by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, the International Development Research Center, Fundacion Avina, the Climate and CARE Initiative and Women's Environment and Development Organization with the support of the Global alliance for care, unquote sponsored by the governments of Mexico, the Philippines, Finland and Canada. My name is Ana Moreno, I'm the Technical Secretary of the Global alliance for CARE and it's a pleasure for me to be here moderating this event and to welcome the panelists and obviously all of you. This is great to have such a full room today. Some of the speakers are members of the Alliance, a few are not.

So more than welcome to join if you want to join. For us, this event is a part of a larger conversation that we have been having over the past couple of days within the alliance with our strategic partners such as idrc, unris, oxfam, ABENA in a Climate and CARE Initiative and we are really pushing for the last two years on that intersection for us in our strategic priorities. Obviously this intersection is a fundamental one and last year at COP 30 in Belem, I'm here we have Giorgia Nicolaou from Prokomum who was with us in Belem hosting the first CARE Pavilion and hopefully we will have time at the end of the session to also give the floor to her.

From the perspective of the Global alliance for Care and the transformative vision that we support, climate justice is CARE Justice. Justice fundamentally involves recognizing, reducing and redistributing the work done by those who sustain our societies, our economies and our lived environment. It implies properly rewarding and representing those who carry out who care out, which all around the world mainly consists of women. As you know, the invisibilized, undervalued work of CARE protects our natural resources, maintains our food systems and tends to communities affected by climate disasters. However, it is precisely rural, indigenous and Afro descendant women and women in marginalized communities who bear the bulk of CARE work and who are most affected by climate change.

Understanding the CARE climate nexus and exploring the policies and grassroots action at the intersection of these two agendas will be a major step forward in addressing these joint development challenges. To this effect, this event will spotlight the CARE climate Justice nexus, drawing on evidence from the IDRC supported Climate and CARE initiative. Showcasing innovative approaches and amplifying Global south voices, it will explore strategies for a global just transition that ensure women and marginalized people access to justice in the transition away from fossil fuels. It will also present cutting edge research on mobilizing climate finance for care, positioning care as central to climate adaptation and labor agendas, and leading up to COP31 and CSW72 that that, as you know, will focus on care. After our opening remarks, we will hear from government representatives who will share their progress in advancing care policies, followed by grantees of the Care and Climate Initiative who provide care for people and for the planet.

And then we will have also a photo showcase illustrating some of the work of the Climate and Care Initiative grantees. I'm so sorry that most probably we will be short on time, but hopefully we will be able to hear a few strategic reflections. Thank you again. I will give the floor now to Mariano Nestrada Noni, Senior Project Manager of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, unrist, who will provide some opening remarks. Please, Noni, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Yeah. Okay. Hello. Good evening everyone and thank you for joining us today. On behalf of anris, the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, it is a pleasure to welcome all of you to this conversation on care, climate change and just transitions.

I would also like to acknowledge our partners who made this possible, that is the International Development Research Center, Fundacion Avina, the Climate and CARE Initiative and widow, the Global alliance for CARE, and the Government of Mexico, the Philippines, Finland and Canada. This session is conceived as a space to explore the often overlooked connections between care and climate change. As Ana was saying, understanding this nexus is essential not only for strengthening climate resilience, but also for addressing the justice implications of the climate crisis. Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time. It threatens lives and livelihoods while deepening existing gender, economic and geographic inequalities.

Increasing access to justice for women and girls in the context of climate change means transitioning away from fossil fuels in ways that strengthen care systems and value care work. Yet despite its central role in sustaining household communities and ecosystems, care work remains largely absent for climate and just transition policies. Most strategies focus on expanding renewable energy and reskilling workers in sectors such as energy, manufacturing and transport. These, of course, are important priorities, but they often overlook the system and form of labors that sustain life and build resilience. So today's conversation invites us to reconsider the role that care can and should play in climate action and just transition strategies.

And this discussion, as Anna was also saying, is very timely. Following the outcome of the Just Transition work program at COP 30, which delivered an agreement to develop a just transition mechanism, the institutional architecture guiding climate transition is evolving. This mechanism may not be a judicial institution in the traditional sense, but it will shape the way justice is understood and embedded in the policy frameworks guiding transition strategies. In that sense, discussions on climate and just transition mechanism are highly relevant to the agenda of this year's csw, since these frameworks also shape women's access to justice. So let me briefly highlight three reasons why taking care seriously in climate and just transition policy is both necessary and urgent.

First, any efforts to advance social justice is incomplete without integrating a care lens. Care work has historically been taken for granted, undervalued, and treated as a peripheral to the so called real economy. Yet it is essential to the functioning of our societies and economies, attending to human and ecological needs for health, well being and protection over time. At the same time, the burden of care work is deeply uneven. We know that women disproportionately ensure that care needs are met and much paid care work remains precarious and poorly compensated, often relying on global care chains.

If just transition strategies aim to take the justice dimension seriously, there is simply no way around care. Second, to remain relevant to the majority of the global workforce, care must be part of the transition strategy. Just Transition Strategies when we talk about just transitions, the discussion often focuses on workers moving away from fossil fuel industries, which I already said is important. But if we define the transition too narrowly around formal energy sector jobs, we risk making just transition policies irrelevant for much of the world's population. Many workers affected by decarbonization are not employed in the formal energy sector, and many work in informal economies, particularly in the global South.

Care, however, is something almost everyone navigates in their daily lives. Giving and receiving care is a universal reality, making care system a crucial entry point for ensuring that just transition policies reflect the realities of the majority of the global population. Third, moments of structural transition also offers opportunities to rethink how care is organized. As scholars of care and social reproduction have shown, every system of production has a corresponding system of care that sustains it. Today, the growing attention to just transition reflects the recognition that structural shift in productions are underway as economies begin to decarbonize.

So this moment therefore offers an opportunity to rethink care dynamics and organize them in more socially just ways. If we ignore this opportunity, care relations will still change as part of the transition, but the risk is that they will be restructured in ways that reproduce existing inequalities. At the same time, climate change itself is increasing the pressure on care systems. Strengthening care capacities is therefore not only a matter of social justice but also a way of increasing climate resilience. To further explore these connections between CARE and climate, Today's session brings together voices from government, civil society and research to reflect how policies are performing and what pathways forward might look like.

Our hope then is that this exchange will help us recognize CARE as a climate infrastructure and as a strategic pillar for resilience and justice, and highlight the importance of just transition policies for advancing gender and climate justice. Thank you and I very much look forward to this discussion.

Thank you so much Noni. Really appreciate it. First, the effort to put together this event with other partners of the Climate and Care initiative, but also to all the work. And we were supposed to broadcast a video from Carolina Robino, Senior Program Officer at the idrc, but because of some technical problems we will not be able to hear her. But she's sending a lot of regards to all of you.

So I would like now to invite Her Excellency Ermelita Valdiavilla, Chair of the Philippine Commission on Women, to do the opening from the government representatives. The Philippines has been from the beginning a supporter of the Global alliance for Care. So it's our pressure that chair is with us. So please, your floor is yours. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you to all the organizers of this discussion, Excellencies, representatives, delegates from all countries who are present here, Mabuhay to all of you, and let's applaud the organizers of this conference, please.

What do you think will happen

if everyone who delivers care declares a moratorium for two years?

What do you think would be the scenario? Care is the bedrock of a full and satisfying life. Today's topic stands at the vortex of two interlocking challenges to humanity climate change and the crisis of unpaid care.

Care systems cannot shape access to justice because they are framed around injustice. They are the original, most intractable, self reproducing architects of patriarchy from which all gender injustices emanate. Women and girls first experience injustice within the care systems when they see the daily exercise of power, privilege and authority of males at the cost of women's servitude and exhaustion. How can care system shape access to justice? First, let us dismantle the patriarchal architecture of unpaid care and and redesign it from a just transition perspective.

Deconstruct the feminization of unpaid care work and redistribute it among household members and communities. Ask governments to build revolutionary care systems based on collective duty, economic viability, optimized technology and adaptability to disasters. Let us adhere to the four principles of just transition that no one is left behind, that the voices of people are considered in decision making, that its foundation is rights based and that the differentiated impacts to people are addressed. Second, during the COVID 19 pandemic, women's unpaid care work stood as a powerful pillar of human survival in a crisis of global magnitude. Thus, governments must recognize that the unpaid and invisible care system run by women serves as the community's emergency care economy that we rely on for the care vulnerable population.

Yet this women led emergency care economy remains invisible, unrecognized, unfunded and excluded from climate disaster frameworks globally. Third, laws must stop dichotomizing climate and care. In today's just transition, care gaps have become justice gaps. The seven hours women spend daily for unpaid care increase to 13 hours and more during disasters resulting in women's time poverty. Women lost the time to participate in the governance of just transition and access services, including justice, among others.

Climate laws must recognize care as an essential emergency infrastructure to ensure funding, staff, facilities, transportation, accountability and legal protection. Care laws, on the other hand, must also recognize the existential need for emergency care during disasters. In the Philippines, there is general disconnect between loss on climate and loss on care, which we will address, of course. And for your information, I have brought with me three of the most distinguished lawmakers, female lawmakers in the Philippines. We will address this, but there are exemptions such as the following.

We have disaster laws that establish women and child friendly spaces. We have social protection programs that produces unpaid care, especially during climate emergencies. We have an evolving care economy framework. It's not yet finished, but we are going to get there. Which integrates care into social protection systems, labor policies, economic planning budgets and climate emergencies, among others.

And lastly, we have a magna Carta of women, which is the domestication of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms Against Women, which guarantees women's right to services and security in times of calamities. When it comes to financing,

this is a bit of trouble. The People's Survival and Green Climate Funds both have strong gender provisions. Gender provisions, but nothing specifically on care. So this is an unfinished job that we will have to take up.

And the care ordinances, you know, in the Philippines, because we know that lawmaking takes a lot of time, maybe five years or more. So we have ventured on assisting local government units to adopt laws under their own ordinance making system. So we have 34 local government, local government units that have care ordinances and these ordinances are being implemented, but they are uneven. The ordinances are uneven in their articulation of climate care. So this is another thing that we will have to focus on.

So let me end this presentation by way of five call to action.

First, recognize that women's time poverty is a climate vulnerability. Climate disasters increase care burdens. Care burdens intensify time poverty. Time poverty reduces adaptive capacity and reduced adaptive capacity makes women and families more vulnerable to the next climate emergency.

Second, invest in public care infrastructures, social protection of women and adaptive social systems. Third, ensure equal representation and leadership leadership of women in the governance of just transition. Fourth, harness women's intergenerational ecological knowledge to inform just transition. And finally, conduct a convergence and harmonization audit. Convergence and harmonization audit of laws, policies and financing platforms for care and climate Excellencies Colleagues, the most functional climate infrastructure is already in place.

It is the invisible emergency care economy run by women. But we need to open the eyes of decision makers, planners and faculty wonders and fight for its recognition and support. Women's labor is valuable and it is neither free nor inexhaustible. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Chair Erme, always for your vision, but also your pragmatical approach on how to move forward. So thank you so much. And now it's my pleasure to give the floor to Geraldine Gachut Martinez, Director of International Women's Affairs, Secretary of Foreign affairs of the Government of Mexico. Please, Geraldine, go ahead.

Hello. Yeah, thank you so much for everyone and in particular from all the organizing parties and co sponsors, institutions and countries of this event. Particularly, we thank the Global alliance of Kerr for the invitation and for convening us to this transforming dialogue. It's an honor for me to be here on behalf of the Government of Mexico with a lot of friends today. It's very difficult to speak after my colleague of Philippines.

Your intervention was awesome and thanks for that. Thanks for inspiring us to move forward. For Mexico, climate change is not only a scientific challenge, it's also a matter of human rights women face. Well, we all know that women face greater risk in the context of extreme climate events. And these events also increase the disproportionate care burdens for them.

Integrating a gender perspective and a human rights approach in climate action is crucial for us. Mexico firmly believes that we must speak of care as a right. In the Americas, the the Inter American Court of Human rights in its 2025 adversary opinion, recognized care as an autonomous right in its three dimensions, caring, being cared and self care. Regarding care, the Government of Mexico has undertaken the following actions to promote a national care system. First, an inter Institutional care working group aimed at design, implementing and strengthening the system of care TRA dialogue not only with governments, with local governments, but also with academia, non governmental organizations, collectivities, unions and families.

Second, the inclusion of carrying our National Development Plan and the Program for Women, the National Program for Women. These documents acknowledge the disproportionate, the disproportional burden of care carried out by women the establishment of a budget which identifies and quantifies public resources in order to redirect public spending of care and finally, a care information system which records the supply, demand and coverage of public health services. This is why for Mexico it's crucial to incorporate a care perspective in relation to climate change. Last year we hosted the Regional conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean where the vision of a society of care was central. These visions, as you all know, not only recognize the care that occurs among people, but also highlights the environmental dimension of care and caring for the planet.

The conference has as a result the Tlatelolco commitment which establishes a decade of action for gender equality and care and for our region, this commitment is very important on the margins of our feminist foreign policy. At multilateral level, Mexico has been a strong advocate for gender equality and human rights. In the Conference of the Parties to the unfccc, we recognize that the new Belem Gender Action Plan includes care considerations and of course we know it's not enough. That's we are here to make alliances to keep moving forward. In November 2025, Mexico presented its NDC 3.0 which acknowledges that women, adolescents and girls perform most of the care work which limits their rights.

Therefore, the NDC includes a cross cutting gender perspective and it establishes the following actions. First, the NDC promotes measures to the transition to a society of care. Second, ensuring inter institutional collaboration between gender issues and climate issues in Mexico. Recognize the CARE work as employment that contributes to the ecosystem. Strengthen care system through the reinforcement of public services and in particular in the mitigation components.

The NDC highlights that care system are are a central element for inclusive transition. Of course, in Mexico we are fully aware that the challenges persist in particular to the implementation of NDC and the construction of national system of care. We are moving forward to that, but we would like to underscore that for us care is a public good, a strategic investment and a collective responsibility. And thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Geraldine. Also for the leadership of the government of Mexico. Obviously, as co convener of the Global alliance for care. You are also as Philippines from the beginning, but also for showing the way to others with the NDC 3.0 in the last cop. I think that's a really useful way to tell governments how to incorporate care in some of the climate policy and climate follow up of Paris agreement.

So I think it's really, really interesting. And now we move to the civil society representatives and grantees of the Climate and Care initiative, this initiative later we will hear from our colleagues from Abena, but it seeks to support grassroots organizations and actors working on the care and climate nexus in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. And I would like to invite Citabele Dewa, Regional Director of Women's Academy for Leadership and Political Excellence in Africa who is based in Zimbabwe and we would like to hear also from their experience experience also through the Canada supported Scaling Care Innovations in Africa research. So please Sitabele, the floor is yours. Thank you.

Good day to you all. I will start my presentation by highlighting a case of Gloria Konde, 53 year old woman who was killed on 5th November 202025 in Zimbabwe in few view of her three children by an elephant in a province called Mashona Land west in Zimbabwe in Kariba there's another similar incident which happened on 9-10-2024 where a woman again was killed by an elephant while doing care services. I'm highlighting this as one of the challenges that is being brought about by issues of climate change where we are experiencing experiencing high cases of human wildlife conflicts in Zimbabwe and Africa in general. Are the care systems working to protect women and girls from further exacerbating care work? If Gloria's children were in a day school, she wouldn't have gone to look for fuel with her children.

If the justice energy transition was being prioritized in Zimbabwe, she would have been at home cooking using clean energy without being exposed to danger. This is one of the many challenges that women in Africa are facing when it comes to the intersectionality of care, climate, justice and gbv. I move further to the available social safety nets. Most of these social safety nets have been pushed to be a responsibility of women who already are carrying the burden. The hospitals already are not functioning, the clinics are not functioning, the public transport system is not functioning, the health system is not functioning.

Children, the sick are being taken care of it's household ladies level by women with little technology and little expertise on how do you treat women and the elderly who are sick. So in terms of investment we have seen that of late, just two months ago there were serious floods in Southern Africa. Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, they were all affected. But the response of these governments were totally different. We saw development partners in some of the worst cases moving with buckets as a response system.

We cannot still be talking about the bucket system as a response to floods where you want to give women just the basic dignity. But you see some countries which are progressive, like South Africa, having strong safety mates for those affected. We could see people being ferried by helicopters. But in instances like in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, women were stuck for days in risky areas because of the floods. Because the system is not responding to the emerging challenges that women are facing.

What needs to be done? The policies that are currently available in Africa or being developed, they need to speak to each other. In Zimbabwe we are currently developing a CARE policy, a bill on unpaid care and domestic work. There is another bill that is being developed by government on environment and climate justice. But these bills are not speaking to each other.

There are bills around protection of women on gbv. It's not speaking to the effects of climate justice, it's not speaking to the effect of care. So what is needed is the harmonization of the law so that they speak to each other. What is needed is proper investments. I highlighted this week at another platform that it's quite said that when you see a national budget, 50% of that budget goes to the security forces in a country that is not in war.

So how do we convince our government to reprioritize their focus to things that matter to women and girls? And how do we create agency and voice amongst our women in societies to be able to speak for themselves? We are really proud of a project that we are running with support from IDRC and the Global alliance of Care, which is looking at the intersectionality of these issues beyond just looking at one issue. How do we bring the affected on the table? How do we bring the different stakeholders to speak around issues of law reform but at the same time seek justice?

Providing alternative and also making sure that there's harmonization of laws and transforming social norms which are also key to the change of behaviors around climate justice and care. So I'll stop here for now. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Citabele, Always great to hear from your experience and what is happening in your country and in the region. Now we will listen to Xiomara Cevedo from Barranquilla plus 20 and Malika John from Southeast Alama, both of whom are grantees of the Climate and Care Initiative. Xiomara and Malika, your work focuses on visibilizing and addressing how climate change affects CARE work. So I would like to hear from Each of you, starting with Xiomara, please go ahead.

The floor is yours.

Well, hi everyone, my name is Yomara. I'm the founder and director of Barranquilla +20 is a women led Colombian organization, feminist organization working since 2012. So it's been also a journey when we were young. Now, seeing that this has grown into a, you know, more diverse feminist movement, I wanted to start with a phrase of one of our women leaders of our initiative, that is women caregivers of life and climate justice. Her name is Stephanie from Puno, Peru.

So she say, I understood after the program that caring is not a natural responsibility of women, but a historical imposition sustained by a patriarchal, colonial and capitalist system that needs our free labor to function. A system that demands we sustain everything while telling us we do nothing. So this is not a testimony, this is, you know, theory, theory made for the ground. Our initiative, Women Cares Givers of Life and Climate justice. That is the one, one that we are doing with the support of the climate.

Well, the Climate and Care initiative has brought 130 women leaders from the whole Latin America, from Mexico to Patagonia. So also they have worked with different ages, from 18 years old to 57 years old. So it's also a very diverse feminist waving movement. Together we build something concrete. Technical advocacy materials that are positioning the care and climate necessities in local, national and international agendas.

We also strengthen our capacities because we often say that to understand and navigate these spaces, we also need to learn the languages, learn the ways, and then also try to communicate position, our demands and our territorial knowledge. So through this program we also supported and sent a delegation to COP 30 in Berlin to amplify the caregivers voices in global decision making scenarios. We contributed to the new NFCCC Gender Action Plan, which also finally is including CARE and also environmental defenders for the first time after descendants, women and girls and et cetera. So happy to say that we also mobilized, you know, a lot of the support and necessary demand for that, because we understand and also the data confirms that care must be understood not merely as a domestic or private work, but as a political, collective and transformative practice. Another of our women say caring for life is a political, spiritual and collective act.

Protecting the land also means protecting ourselves. So this is also, you know, how we envision body territory. This is not like a methodology. This is how we see, you know, the realities in our daily lives. Colombia has a national care system and it also has an NDC that has a commitment of reducing the emissions in a 51% however, there is no single specific measure linking CARE burdens to climate adaptation.

So the legal framework exists. The CARE policy assists women doing the work. Of course we are here doing our work. But what is not still done is the architecture that connects climate change care because it has been treated as isolated issues. So for us indeed this is inseparable dimensions of the same crisis.

At the center of that crisis is also the feasibility of care, which is very, very worrying for many of us. Because the dominant climate agenda is mobilizing and really reinforcing the idea of a tunnel, the carbon tunnel vision that is also impacting the attention that CARE is also a climate solution. Because the world is often trying to think that technological or this economic changes are going to happen. Isolated, without women, that's not going to be possible. So capitalism reproduces itself through domestic community and subsistence care labor.

Labor made invisible and systematically cheap. Especially in the racialized indigenous pizza and Afro descent that migrant displaced territories of the global South. But we know that when climate hits happen is women right that are at front in. In the. In the front lines of the responses for the climate crisis.

So we also came here not only with this amazing technical advocacy document that has the recommendations from local, national, regional level to really, you know, like reinforce and implement the climate and care netus, but we also have some demands. One is to name the CARE climate nexus in the agreed conclusions here in the commission of the status of of women as an structural barrier to justice for women and girls. Because there won't be any justice if we don't have this recognition. Redistribution of care also as a cross cutting obligation for adaptation plans for NDCs for climate financing framework which also has been mentioned before. This is very critical because genetic language about gender and climate is no longer enough for us.

It has to be really deepened because. Because the issues are critical. Second, integrate CARE with verifiable disaggregated indicators. In all national climate plans measuring unpaid care labor is increased during climate events and the specific burdens border by rural indigenous, Afro descendants, migrant disabled women etc. Women in all its diversity and intersectionality direct non non condition accessible climate finance.

Because this is also very critical, we are going to continue demanding this because women in the front lines are the ones adapting other ones bringing resilience in the communities. And you know, the recognition is not enough and it's still not there for many of us. And four false solutions, four false climate solutions that deepen structure is in colonialism. This is all also very important that we mention that carbon markets large scale Mineral extraction, mega energy for infrastructure. This stuff happening without prior free informed consent must face gender and care impact assessment as a binding condition, not after the disaster the conflict have made.

So the architecture for this just transition and for position in the climate and care Netflix at SEAS is in the territories. It's in the body of all of us. It's in the knowledge of the women who are the first responders of the crisis that has sustained this for many centuries. What we need and what we are demanding is that this knowledge enter the policies has the influence to enter the policies. Because we have been saying this for many years and yeah, it's lovely, but it's love, but it's the time to really shift the power, right?

Also the finance framework, the NDCs, this really needs to be articulated because it's not like climate and care in this and in the other policy. No, this is an issue that has to be cross cut but with, you know, verifiable indicators. We really need roots for this. So we say there is no climate justice without gender justice. But of course there is no gender justice without care justice without territorial justice.

And there won't be any just transition without women in all its diversity. You know, be there, be fully recognized, invest in women solutions. We're going to continue to do this. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. We would like to hear from Malika. Please go. Go ahead. Malika, the floor is yours and I think you want to project something.

Yes. Oh, now it's working fine. Yes, I'm sorry. No problem. I can share.

I can share with you.

Yes. Okay. Good evening. My name is Malkia John. I am the executive director of Sauti Salama, which is a youth and survivor led organization that works in Kenya.

Our work especially in the climate and Care initiative is addressing one key question, which is how does climate stress reshape care, safety and access to justice for girls and young women and women. So in climate affected communities, which are two counties in Kenya, survival happens through care. So as even her Excellency was speaking, when we talk about during climate crisis or climate stress, we have seen during drought, illness, displacement or economic shocks, we've seen how that affects women. We have seen how that shows up every day in life as longer work days for women, heavier care, responsibility within the household and increased vulnerability. So our project is titled.

I thought it had come. Yeah, it's all right.

All right. So we have seen how then climate shocks immediately transform our daily care work. We've seen how drought then increases the time women required to secure water and fuel during drought. Also, girls and women are walking longer distances to go fetch water or find water at the nearest further boreholes. We've also seen them walk long distances to go fetch firewood.

We've seen also climate related illness, increasing caregiving inside household itself and displacement fracturing our community support systems. Now, across these pressures, as we see primarily all the burdens fall on women and girls. So research in these two counties, preliminary research has shown that unpaid care work in these communities increases by 40%, shrinking the time that women are supposed to be involving themselves in education. Girls are dropping out of school. It's also affecting their income, mobility and safety.

Now, Sauti Salama already for the past two years has been running a digital platform in Kenya for survivors of gender based violence to report and access help. Yay. We can move to second slide.

Yeah. Okay, so this is what I was talking about. So care burdens increasing the risk of violence. So we see women walking longer distances to go fetch water. We've seen how girls are dropping out of school and their education disrupted because of the increased risk, the increased care burden.

We've seen how then household tensions also are contributing to violence itself. And in this very fragile community context, then service is disrupted. So during drought, during floods, we're seeing service to, you know, survival service, that is psychosocial support clinics. We're seeing mental health support for these same women is disrupted next.

So we are working across four domains in this initiative and those domains are all interconnected. So the first domain is the community care networks. The second is clean household energy. The third is digital referral system, and the fourth is health and legal partnerships. We can move and go into community care networks.

Yes. So over the last, so we, we've unfortunately been working in the project since January. And so for the last months, we have trained 40 community captains across Isiolo and Kitui counties. Now these community captains do this thing, things. They have been trained on the care and the climate nexus because it's still a foreign concept to most of the people.

And they are also trying to identify violence or they are the focal point persons in their communities for violence to be reported to and they facilitate access to justice in this community context for the survivors. So yes, the second one is the clean energy solution. So we have, we are training women to assemble solar lanterns and we are hoping that this, you know, from this training that they are able to replicate this as an entrepreneurial activity for them so they can be able to make their own solar lanterns and sell, but it's also giving them Safety which is now reducing violence. So since also women are in this community context again are walking in darkness or if they're walking longer distances, they have safety lighting solutions.

We are also distributed solar lanterns to them which will help also the community, their families and households to reduce even non renewable energy solutions.

Pillar 4, which is. Which is our greatest pillar, its connection to access to service. So care systems then must connect people to real support. So Saudi Salama's digital platform that's already operating works on healthcare services, psychosocial support, legal assistance and emerging response emergency response networks. We have seen this disruption of service during climate crisis and using technology as one of the and the greatest solution in this fragile context has been seen to increase service uptake among community.

So WAICA is central to climate infrastructure, especially in Kenya is because climate resilience depends on functioning care system systems. So communities adapt when care networks operate collectively and when households are now accessing safe energy and when health and justice services remain reachable. We have also contributed to climate policy in which we have contributed to the county fiscal strategy paper which as she was talking, I was thinking because we. The fiscal strategy paper in Kenya is what amount of money or budget allocation goes into services in a county. So we have contributed to that and hoping that our care and climate nexus budget suggestions are implemented.

So we are looking at supporting care systems, strengthening resilience, safety and dignity for women and girls. And we know collectively that care belongs at the center of climate justice. Thank you.

Thank you so much Malka. And apologies for pronouncing wrongly your name. I think my eye is not the best one right now. And we would like to continue understanding the Care and Climate initiative with a photo showcased by titled what Climate and Care Mean to Us. And I would like to invite Aga Racziska from the Abena foundation to present the photo showcase.

Please Aga, the floor is yours.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon and thank you for being here today. My name is Agnieszka Raczinska from Fundacion Avina and it is an honor to speak on behalf of the Climate and Care Initiative of which Avina is a member. Our initiative brings together organizations across Latin America and Africa to highlight something fundamental. Care systems and climate actions are deeply interconnected and recognizing this link is essential for building resilience and inclusive societies.

This initiative was created to learn from creative community driven solutions emerging across the global south through collaboration and shared learning. We aim to show that Cary's critical social infrastructure care sustains life, supports recovery, strengthens resilience and enables Adaptation in the Face of Climate Change Today the Initiative Fund brings together 23 organizations working daily at this intersection. Today you heard from two of them, Parraquilla Masvainte from Colombia and Sauti Salama from Kenya, whose work demonstrates how women's leadership, community knowledge and care centered practices shape climate resilience. Since not all of our partners could join us today, we asked them to share a short reflection on what do climate care means to us. The visuals you are seeing on screen come directly from their territories and and everyday work.

From these lived experiences we know that climate change is not gender neutral. Climate impacts increase unpaid care burdens, reduces livelihoods and deepen inequalities, especially for women and marginalized communities in the Global South. When water becomes scarce, when food systems are disrupted or when health risks rise, it is often women who take on additional labor to sustain families and communities. At the same time, care systems, whether formal services or community based practices, are vital for climate resilience. They enable recovery after disaster, support environmental ste stewardship and uphold food and water system.

Yet care remains largely invisible in climate policy and climate finances. The testimonies we share today remind us that care workers, organizers and community leaders are already responding to climate impacts. Their contributions must be valued, protected and integrated into climate strategies. As at every level, these practices show that care is not only our response to climate impacts, but also a pathway to adaptation grounded in local knowledge and collective action. As you watch this presentation, I invite you to view these images as part of a larger narrative.

Caring for people and caring for the planet are inseparable. These organizations are modeling what the feminist communities, community led, care centered climate transition can look like. These testimonies also remind us that the connection between climate and care is lived every day. As climate impacts intensify, the work required to sustain life grows, often without recognition or support. But these stories also show us the path forward.

Care practices are essential components of clinical climate resilience. They are powerful, they are effective and rooted in the wisdom of these communities. As being said before, a just climate transition must place care system at its center. It must value the work that sustains people, communities and ecosystem and ensure that the voices of caregivers and community leaders shape the decisions that affect their futures. I invite you to explore more about the climate and care initiative and thank you very much.

Thank you so much. And we were planning to pass the floor to Mara for some strategic reflections. But if you don't mind Mara, I would like to perhaps ask two more speakers to join to say to join us. First of all, Giorgia Nicolaou from Prokomom in Belem in Brazil. She was key in the last cop and I would like her perhaps to approach one of the mics and in two minutes.

Apologies, we are improvising, but I think, you know, it's such a rich room that I think we should take advantage of when we are in person to give the floor to those that are also doing other things in the territories. Please Georgia, Can you hear me now?

Yeah. Hello everybody. Thank you.

Was such a great session. My name is Georgia, so I come from Brazil. And yeah, last COP 30 we were the co host of the first care pavilion at a COP and we made it in peripheric neighborhood called and in the house Eco Amazonias, which is a house also of a black feminist collective called Negritar. And it was a great experience to be connecting high level conversations, public policy conversation together with grassroots communities, conversations with. We also held a CARE tent there which is a methodology of Prokomun.

So there was healers, psychologists, there was collective care, there was childcare as well. We were also running research there about like what is care and climate for you? And it was a living space and through participatory space which I think Global alliance for Care has and together with the Climate and Care initiative and all the partners involved have been really making an effort to bring along to these big events where we can meet together and discuss, but also feel each other. Because I feel that these agendas and I think especially the examples we had from the ground, but also now Agnes, call to action, but also listening to these great women that are working now at the government but are also caregivers themselves probably it's an agenda that needs everybody, right? And that needs action and that more than just negotiations.

What we are bringing here is another vision for an economy and a politics that's centering care. When I think that brings Cosmo visions together along. So I think Procomo has been part of it by creating spaces of shared governance. But not only governance, also like really hands on approaches. So how do we put everybody on the ground so that we can develop together solutions that come from the ground to the multilateral and governmental spaces and then back to the ground.

So like to go back and forth with rights and with the future we want to see. So thank you for being here and thank you for creating the space for these conversations to go on.

Thank you, thank you so much. And now, yes, I will ask, I will invite back Mara. We really appreciate her presence.

She's an advocate for gender Equality in Climate Action and leader of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Women and Gender Constituency one month new member of the Global alliance for Care. So welcome and it will be our pleasure to hear from you. Please Mara, go ahead.

Thank you so much. A tough seat to fill, metaphorically and literally.

Hello all. I'm honored to be here on behalf of wedo, the Women's Environment and Development Organization. We're a feminist global advocacy organization that works in deep collective strategy to advance a gender just transition in policy and in practice, generating knowledge and advocacy tools that can help shape global and national climate policies and resource the already existing gender just climate solutions that we know are leading the way. So we have heard from such an incredible panel that has described the root causes of capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, white supremacy that lead us to this intersecting care and climate and gender justice crisis. We have also heard about a vision that prioritizes an ethic of care, honoring care in all of its forms as life giving, life sustaining work.

I hope it's fair to say that we know we cannot transition from a fossil fuel based economy built on the backs of women and their unpaid care work to another economy of renewable energy still built on the backs of women and their unpaid care work. Within this tapestry of feminist care centered futures that are being woven every day that we've gotten the chance to hear about, we're advocating to see international climate governance actually align into supportive structures, especially within the UN Conference of Parties, which we've heard about several times now. I remember so clearly only a few months ago at COP30 in Brazil, feminists, indigenous peoples, trade unions, environmental movements, youth were holding the line to see if the climate negotiations would finally deliver something that would make a just transition a tangible reality for communities on the ground. Civil society fought fiercely for the creation of the Just Transition Work Mechanism, a powerful civil society envisioned and proposed tool that maintained really strong human rights and equity centered language despite efforts to erode and weaken it. Called the Belem Action Mechanism, the BAM represents a proposed new institutional arrangement, a body under the UNFCCC with both operational and implementation mandates designed to both address some of these key gaps in global just transition efforts.

It would translate principles into practice by serving as a global hub for practitioners, facilitating dialogue, sharing best practices and generating knowledge to inform policy. And in a moment of real celebration, language of care was included. Something that honestly was not even on the table when just transition first came into the conversation at COP years ago. If built correctly, the mechanism stands to advance a gender transformative just transition in a really tangible way. The text currently includes CARE work, informal labor sectors, gender responsive approaches and social protection systems as fundamental elements that must be integrated into just transition policies, plans and strategies.

These are all critical intervention points for us as civil society to help shape. These are doors that we can open wide for CARE movements to inform. If done well, the mechanism should support countries as a connector of knowledge, resources and actors, providing the kind of infrastructure like best practices, emerging research, finding the right funders for projects, or locating the most useful case study. This is a crucial place where collaborations like this come in. With spaces like the Climate and CARE Regional hub supported by idrc, the Climate and Care Initiative, avena, all of the folks that we have mentioned today, and so many others places of partnership that are generating context specific research and recommendations, we can mobilize these resources to inform ongoing just transition planning.

We're working within this rich dynamic ecosystem that has been doing this work for many years and continue to build it out with more resources, deeper partnerships. This way, when policymakers, excuse me, ask for a related case study, they're at the ready. When countries are working to integrate CARE into their climate agendas, we will have the list of best practices ready to go. These climate and care hubs and everyone working at this intersection of climate and care are doing the work to ensure that when parties ask us for a book, we actually have a whole library to share. We're looking forward to supporting supporting the release of almost a dozen new resources with the hubs over the next year or so, offering issue specific, sector specific and region specific learnings for all of us to use in our advocacy.

I see a standing at a really significant emerging opening. Parties are beginning to conceptualize what is this mechanism, what does its operationalization look like and what does future work around just transition at COP31 and beyond look like? The inclusion of specific language around the need to consider CARE work and informal work in just transition plans and policies has immense potential. It has the potential to change how CARE work is recognized, redistributed and valued, as well as providing a concrete framework that feminists can use to advance a CARE agenda in climate plans at the national and local level. We will continue to fight alongside allied movements and partners for for a global climate governance that is accountable to frontline communities, that embeds CARE in any conversation, that actually bridges ambition and action and can deliver on the promise of a gender just transition for the women and gender diverse people, for the workers and for the communities who need it most.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. And still improvising. I would like at least a couple of hands, you know, we. Yes, we have one there and another one. Second one.

So please go ahead.

Good afternoon. My name is Gail Davis, and so I do a lot here. So I'll just put it like that. I'm a CSO like you guys, and we all do a lot here. But one of the things I want to say here is the solutions are sitting right in our faces.

So let's look at a country like Fiji, okay? They understand the waters. They understand how to take care of the mangroves. They understand how women go. The women fishermen go to the bottom of the sea and get sea grapes and bring them up.

Then you have the women who are over in Africa who are along the lakes who are doing the fishing. So they know when is the right time to do the fishing and not. And they have to also like women in Fiji. They come back up on a daily basis and go care for their elders, okay? After just coming from the bottom of the sea in their boats to go fishing for the sea grapes, then go to the market to sell it a few days a week.

So that's one area that you can go to to find out how to work with the women in Fiji and how they do it and how they can uplift their section from, let's say, someone in Mexico and how they do it in Mexico, because climate, climate optimism and climate care relate to each other. The second solution I'd like to give out is I work with artists, and it's important we work with artists at any country level. Not only compensate them, but NGOs get together, get out there and work with artists who are local in your community. They can put out their music, their art, their recyclable art, their pictures, their whatever, and support you in the country, while. While also you're bringing in beneficiary money for your programs and they're bringing in the money for their work.

So that's just the two things I wanted to put out there. Thank you.

Thank you so much for those two contributions. Please,

Now.

Hello, can I make a question?

Sure.

Okay. Hello.

My name is Nayatu Pinambai. I'm a young indigenous woman from the Atlantic Folk. And for your contest, each of the 10 cities that lead Brazil's rankings for climate allies and disasters allocated in my biome. When we talk about connections between care and climate change, especially in the south, global, and especially in the International Year of Women Farmers, we must also talk

about access to land, colonial land policies, environmental racism. My question is, how can the international community influence governments to strengthen commitments to indigenous land demarcation and protection, including territories like that of my people, which still remain undemarcated. Recognizing indigenous territorial rights as an international determinant, contributions to protecting indigenous women and girls and also ensure financial support for the care and stewardship work carried out by indigenous women. That's my question.

Thank you so much. We keep that question. And we have perhaps one more question. ELA from Argentina Management Committee. You want to say something?

If not. Yes, please. Natalia Gherardi from Ella Argentina, also a member of the Global alliance for care. Please go ahead. And then we have another one.

Good afternoon. My name is Natalia Gherardi. I'm from Argentina and feminist NGO called ela. We work on gender and justice. I found this session most illuminating in this intersection of care and climate change and the impact of climate disasters on women.

And as I was hearing some of the interventions, especially the one referred to Africa, I was thinking of the, the huge forest, the forest fires in the Patagonia in Argentina, which have been happening for, I mean, seasonally every year for a number of years now. And as I spent some time there, I know from firsthand the way in

which communities organize themselves. The care infrastructure is absolutely burned to the ground. Families are dismantled, they lose all their ways of living and it's the community that builds up back from the ground again. And I think there's a lot to be learned from the experiences elsewhere and

something that we as a feminist organization can help maybe bridge with the Climate Rights Defenders and the community based organizations down there in the Patagonia. Of course, a lot more is happening in Argentina and elsewhere in terms of

droughts and a lot of things. But I was just thinking about that and how these conversations can help us imagine possible futures and ways of collaborating. So I really appreciate having been here. Thanks. Thank you so much.

And then the colleague there, if you can approach one of the mics. Thank you. Just because then we can hear you better, please.

Nelly Bisram. I am an NGO representative to the UN. I just came in about 20 minutes ago and so I'm having a couple thoughts and they're not questions, they're comments. I engage in the COP process and I like to say that we're advocates for unpaneling and we do a lot of work on bringing. We have some participants here who are in a retreat that we did this past weekend.

It's the very first contemplative CSW retreat that was held on the sidelines of csw and the title was Inner Transformation and Care as A pathway for peace, regeneration and well being. And what we did at that retreat is we. Well, a few things that we would like to see more in this type of, in this kind of dialogue and effort towards bringing climate and care together and kind of removing the silos is recognizing that the very structures that we use to achieve results have to change. And that's why we held a retreat. And what we did for one day is we spent.

And there's some folks here who were in that retreat. We spent a whole day in silence to listen to ourselves and the voice of nature and they weren't allowed to speak to each other. And if you've been to retreats, you know, this is the kind of thing that we do, but we did it in a particular way. And then we connected the Inner Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals. And what emerged from that was an understanding that care is quite natural to human beings, but only when we understand our relationality to each other and to nature.

And so I wonder, as we move into an opportunity to unpanel in Santa Marta, I don't know how many of you are going to Santa Marta, that we have an opportunity where we don't have the restriction of the UNFCCC process. And I would like to know if there's anybody here who would like to UN panel with us and can we explore together in parallel. I'm not saying we need to dismantle this, but can we explore together what it might look like to lift up the feminine in this way and to have a different, perhaps less hierarchical, less patriarchal structure for the very dialogue about care and climate. So I'll be here in the room and I'm also interested to hear how others feel about this. And I don't believe we're the only ones doing this.

This is also if you were involved in a global ethical stocktake which we were involved with, with Mary Robinson and Project Dandelion. This is also. It's for the same reason that we had a global ethical. And it continues. So I'm curious about who else in here is interested in that or doing other things and who would like to join us?

Thank you so much. Now, yes, we start being under pressure. I don't know if Shomar, you want to answer the question about indigenous, the colleague, you want to answer that one or not? I mean, feel free. Yes.

You know, the last comment indeed that mentioned the conference of the fossil fuel because we plan to bring some women, of course there's some noise there in Colombia. The other question, you know, I think the Decision makers will be good to address it because I think it will be important like, you know, to. Yeah. Hear what they say. For me it's just solidarity.

We understand this, as I say, body territory. This is the same for us, it's not different. And yeah, just solidarity. With my friend from Matt Atlantica.

Thank you so much. So we are unable to offer other. I don't know. Shelly, do you want to say something? No.

Sure. From Oxfam also Oxfam Canada is one of the members of the Climate and Care Initiative, a nationalist from Oxfam Latin America. So we would just like to say, to keep working. I think we always try, as Natalia was saying, to try to bridge alliances and movements. I think that's key for us and we will try to keep that.

So welcome all the ideas to reinforce that strategy that we believe collaboration, co creation, cooperation is the one that can bring us this, you know, break the silos that we have. Right now in COP31, we are aiming to have another CARE pavilion as the initiative that we had in Belem. It's a big umbrella, big tent for everyone who wants to be there, who wants to challenge things. Don't worry, we are there for that. So welcome.

And if not, obviously, as the colleague was saying, like, you know, whoever wants to keep forging other alliances, not to compete, but not to duplicate, but to move forward together, we are more than welcome. Raquel, I didn't see you from Young Women. I still have one minute if you want to say something, but if not, don't feel obliged.

Has any thoughts on how also to better integrate climate and just transitions into the CARE normative frameworks? Because we are also pushing the agenda from there and I see much more advanced how we are integrating CARE into the just transitions.

But I think the connection also needs to be better reflected, you know, so we keep on. But if anyone has any reflection on that or on then for other discussion maybe as well. Yes, to keep the conversation on the corridors and to keep fighting. Just to remember that COP31 is obviously this year in November in Antalya, but that we also have in Antalya. Sorry, but we also have CSW 72 on care in 2028.

So thank you again to Mexico, to Philippines, to all the representatives and have a great day, a great evening. Thank you.