Media Alert: Global Conference on Gender and Environment Data will be held on 28-29th of November in Dubai, prior to COP28

Media Contact: Lindsay Bigda, WEDO Senior Communications Manager: lindsay@wedo.org | +1 207-385-7924

WHAT: UN Climate Change, COP28 Presidency, UN Women, and UN Climate Change High-Level Champions – together with IUCN and WEDO (co-convenors of the Gender and Environment Data Alliance – GEDA) – invite all media representatives to participate remotely or in person in the Global Conference on Gender and Environment Data that will take place on 28-29^th of November in Dubai, ahead of COP28.

Through a series of dialogues, the Conference will seek to present the current landscape of the gender and environment data gap, including barriers and opportunities to fill it, and identify steps to transform data into action. The conference will result in a Global Call to Action on Gender and Environment Data that will aim to collectively raise the profile of gender-environment data.

WHEN: 28-29 November.

WHERE: Expo City, Dubai, United Arab Emirates – and online. If you are interested in attending the Conference, click here and select whether you will be attending in person or online. (Please note that if you are attending in person, you are responsible for your own arrangements and costs associated with travel, accommodation, visas, and any other expenses incurred to attend the conference.)

WHO: The Conference will bring together government officials and policy makers; representatives from international and civil society organizations, private foundations, and academia; and youth, Indigenous and local community leaders. A full schedule and list of speakers is here (and will be updated as speakers are confirmed).

Featured Speakers:

• Razan Al Mubarak, IUCN President and COP28 UN Climate Change High-Level Champion
• H.E. Sonia Guajajara, Minister, Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, Brazil
• Kathryn Tobin, WEDO Senior Program Manager & co-coordinator of Gender and Environment Data Alliance
• Ayshka Najib, Climate Justice Activist, Fridays for Future MAPA

About Gender and Environment Data

The impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, while universal, have different effects on people of different genders. Gender-environment data*, when available, helps identify and quantify these inequalities. 

Despite the growing body of evidence highlighting the gender-differentiated impacts of and reactions to environmental degradation, there is a significant data gap. This gap hampers intersectional and multidimensional analyses. Consequently, the lack of nuanced data and analysis poses considerable difficulties for policy makers in tailoring targeted interventions and allocating resources appropriately. 

This lack of data has been widely recognized by Parties in the UN Climate Change Gender Action Plan, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s Gender Plan of Action, and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification’s Gender Policy Framework, all of which encourage Parties to produce  sex-disaggregated data and strengthen the evidence base on the gender-differentiated impacts of environmental degradation – as well as measuring women’s role as agents of change. 

About the Gender and Environment Data Alliance (GEDA)

GEDA helps fill the gender-environment gap by serving as a specific, dedicated entity to compile, curate, and communicate data at this intersection.

GEDA helps connect the dots among the gender-environment data that does exist, and gets this knowledge and information into the hands of decision makers and data users working to advance climate resilience and transformative environmental policy.

This Alliance also seeks to explore the current landscape of data and data methodologies to then expand the scope of available information. This includes elevating traditional and Indigenous knowledge, as well as data collected through feminist participatory action research, and advocating for such data to be included in official statistical systems.

Learn more about GEDA here.

* “Gender-environment data” is data related to the environment that is disaggregated by gender, and reflects gender issues in both its content and its methodologies (quantitative and qualitative).