At WEDO, we know that feminist voices don't just belong in these conversations — they are essential to getting them right. That conviction has sent our team across regions over the past few weeks, to advocate in the spaces where the just transition is being defined and ensure gender justice is part of every discussion.

Here is what we've been doing, and why it matters.

Building a feminist just transition from the start

If equity, inclusion, and gender justice are not built into the architecture of the energy transition from the beginning, they will be retrofitted later — or abandoned entirely.

In Bonn, six WEDO team members are on the ground through June 18, 2026, at the 64th Sessions of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies (SB64), the crucial midpoint between COP30 in Belém and COP31 in Antalya. Across negotiating tracks, we are working to ensure the Belém Gender Action Plan translates into concrete action, that the newly established Just Transition mechanism is equitable and inclusive from the start, and that climate finance reaches frontline communities.

In early June, to prepare delegates, particularly those from Least Developed Countries and the Global South who remain underrepresented in national delegations and face persistent structural barriers to participation, WEDO hosted the Women Delegates Fund Night School in Bonn. 27 participants focused on a hands-on simulation centered on the Just Transition mechanism, a key agenda item at these talks. For many delegates, Night School is a transformative entry point into the UNFCCC process.

At the Global Renewables Alliance Future Dialogue in Lisbon from May 27–28, 2026, we brought feminist analysis into conversations about the geopolitics of the energy transition, raising rights-based approaches to critical-minerals extraction, the intersection of energy justice and demilitarization, and the gendered politics of fossil-fuel economies. We showcased recent Critical Conversations on “petromasculinity” and critical minerals. We shared many exciting examples of gender just climate solutions, where women and feminists are leading the way in building democratized, decentralized energy systems.

Reorienting foreign policy for climate justice

On June 3, 2026, WEDO participated in the Civil Society Forum of the Fifth Ministerial Conference on Feminist Foreign Policy, joining policymakers and advocates for the session: “From Extraction to Care: Financing Climate Justice.” The conversation surfaced a challenge that cuts across every space we work in: a foreign policy architecture built on national competition, fossil-fuel dependency, and militarized security cannot simply add climate justice to its agenda. It must fundamentally reorient itself.

The session made clear that accountability cannot end with a climate pledge. Governments must be held to a broader standard: whether their energy, trade, finance, and military policies are consistent with their duties to prevent harm and protect human rights.

Resourcing gender commitments

Over the past decade, feminist advocates have pushed the UNFCCC, CBD, and UNCCD to adopt increasingly ambitious gender commitments. What has not kept pace is the money and political will to implement them.

In Vilm, Germany, from June 2–5, 2026, we participated in a technical exchange convened by the CBD Secretariat on cooperation and policy coherence across the three Rio Conventions. Our role was to surface the gender thread running through all three, and to make the case that their respective Gender Action Plans need to be implemented coherently, not in isolation.

That argument was reflected in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from May 30–June 6, 2026, where we joined the GEF Women Caucus at the GEF-9 Assembly. As the financial mechanism for all three conventions, the GEF is uniquely positioned to fund gender commitments coherently and at scale - bridging global commitments and coordinated country-level action. The challenge is not to create new commitments, but to resource the ones that already exist.

Connecting food, health, and climate as one fight, not three

In Nairobi, from May 25–28, 2026, the "Feeding a Hotter World" Project Dandelion Dialogue brought together practitioners, advocates, and funders working across food systems, health systems, and climate change. WEDO came with a clear position: food sovereignty, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and climate justice are interconnected. We drew on our work in climate policymaking to identify where feminist health and climate justice advocacy and programming can be more powerfully woven together. And we elevated gender-just solutions that promote food sovereignty and sexual and reproductive health and rights as forms of climate resilience, including through our work with the SRHR and Climate Justice Coalition.

Calling for data as an accountability infrastructure

Also in Nairobi, from June 2–5, 2026, we represented the GEDA Secretariat at the Global Data Festival, co-organizing a session on how small-scale feminist funding and targeted capacity building can expand the inclusive data ecosystem. One of our Small Grants recipients presented their work directly, showcasing how GEDA catalyzes and scales the collection, analysis, and use of gender-environment data for gender-just climate action.

From negotiating rooms in Bonn to dialogues in Lisbon, Vilm, Samarkand, and Nairobi, one thing is clear: feminist presence in global governance is not a nice-to-have. It is the difference between a just transition that exists on paper and one that actually reaches the people who need it most. The architecture of climate governance is being written right now. We intend to help write it.