A Greener World

| For the first time, the Women’s Forum is issuing a call to all actors, to include women in the fight against climate change. Because this is an emergency:

 

• Women are 14 times more likely to die then men during climate-related disasters ;
• 80% of climate-refugees now women;
• Women should not only be seen as victims; they have the capacity to offer innovative solutions as well as hands-on projects to fight against global warming.

That is why the Women’s Forum launched a Charter of 5 Strong Commitments at the Women’s Forum – A Call to G20 in Kyoto, attended by some 50 leaders and experts, and signed by the companies that are facilitating the “Daring Circle Women & Climate” working group, BNP Paribas and L’Oréal as well as Engie,. This Charter was drafted with the expertise of KPMG in association with Eco-Act.

Women must become real agents of change and contribute to a greener and more sustainable economy, says Chiara Corazza, Managing Director of the Women’s Forum.

EcoAct is proud to be working alongside the Women’s Forum to push for gender-inclusive climate policies and actions. 22 years after the signature of the Kyoto Protocol, there are only 30 years left to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 and to limit global warming to 1.5°C. In order to accelerate and scale-up climate action, we must make sure that women and men have equal access to the means of action, including access to leadership positions, access to green jobs, access to essential resources in all forms… Only inclusive climate policies will enable us to meet the challenge of our century. We hope many public authorities, companies and individuals will join us in that journey, explains Thierry Fornas, President of EcoAct.

To support this Charter, the Women’s Forum has selected some more than 20 tangible projects addressing women and climate that have proven successful and can be scaled up for greater impact.

In India, BNP Paribas is funding the installation of biodigesters for farming families, enabling them to recover the effluents from their animal farms and turn them into gas for cooking food and into natural fertilizers for their fields. These biodigesters are the property of women in the family, and result in a 4-fold reduction in wood harvesting, which took women an average of 1 to 3 hours per day to accomplish and which contributed to deforestation and air pollution. Every one of the 13,000 biodigesters financed by BNP Paribas reduces emissions by 7tCO2e per year, resulting in the Bank becoming carbon neutral for its own operations, explains Laurence Pessez, Head of CSR for BNP Paribas.

In order to be more effective and truly inclusive, actions to combat climate change must urgently involve the gender issue, and therefore women, who are particularly impacted by the consequences of climate disruption – we see this particularly at L’Oréal in the sustainable sourcing programs that we develop to support women who produce our natural ingredients. But they also bring innovative solutions, says Alexandra Palt, Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer at L’Oréal and Executive Vice President of the L’Oréal Foundation.

About the Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society:
An international platform that brings women’s vision and voice to gender issues as well as to the issues that affect all of humanity, economic and societal. The Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society expresses its commitment through its two key initiatives, CEO Champions and Rising Talents, as well as in creating the Daring Circle working groups on artificial intelligence, STEM, climate, health and “supplier chain diversity”. Based in Paris, France, the Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society is a company of the Publicis Group.

We are seeing more and more structured initiatives that can be easily tracked and scaled up by our clients, regardless of the size of the Groups – the key is to understand that these issues are inseparable from the expectations of the stakeholders that ensure the future business model of these Groups, says Marie Guillemot, Head of the Telecoms, Media and Technologies sector and a member of KPMG’s Executive Committee in France.

Together, governments, institutions, individuals, organizations, private and public sector companies, let us act now.

Full Charter attached here, and if you want to sign the Charter online, please follow this link.

Image©BénédicteTilloy