ecbi arranged mentorships for nine “new” women negotiators at the 2019 Climate Conference in Madrid, Spain. Five ecbi bursary holders and four young women supported by the Women Delegates Fund of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) were paired with senior women negotiators from developing and developed countries. The senior women negotiators provided support, advice, and encouragement to their mentees over the two weeks of the Conference. This new ecbi initiative was endorsed by the COP25 Presidency at an event attended by Meilín León (in the photo), Ministry of Environment, Chile on 4 December 2019, at the Conference venue.
ecbi and WEDO provide training to women negotiators from developing countries who are new to the process in addition to providing support for their participation, to increase the percentage of women representing countries in the climate talks. According to the latest Gender Composition Report, only 38% of the members of party delegations were women at the Katowice Conference in 2018, and only 27% of the Heads of national delegations were women.
A new formal network of senior women negotiators was also launched at the event by Dr Annela Anger-Kraavi, SBSTA Vice-Chair, and Stella Gama, SBSTA Rapporteur and ecbi Gender Advisor. “I am immensely proud of launching the peer-to-peer network for female negotiators in Madrid, and the Oxford gender meeting in March [2019] was instrumental for getting this off ground,” Dr Anger-Kraavi told ecbi.
