On November 5th, WEDO, in partnership with the UNFCCC Secretariat and UN Women, hosted a webinar for National Gender and Climate Change Focal Points (NGCCFPs).

The webinar was an opportunity to bring the NGCCFPs together and begin to build a shared understanding of this role and its opportunities as well as challenges. This role is new; Parties were first invited to appoint NGCCFPs in 2016, but only 38 of the 197 Parties to the UNFCCC have done so, and nearly half of those were appointed in the past six months. This webinar followed a survey effort to identify the capacity-building needs of the focal points and will be succeeded by in-person capacity building sessions at the upcoming Conference of the Parties in Katowice. WEDO is glad to bring its particular expertise on leadership development and gender to bear as a partner in this ongoing programme to institutionalize and strengthen the operationalization of the UNFCCC’s Gender Action Plan (see our WEDO webinar here for more) and the corresponding country-level implementation of gender-responsive policies and programs.

To see the list of countries that have appointed a National Gender and Climate Change Focal Point, simply visit https://unfccc.int/topics/gender/resources/list-of-gender-focal-points-under-the-unfccc, and feel free to encourage your National Focal Point to appoint someone to this position if they have not already!