JAKARTA, 8 March 2021– To celebrate International Women’s Day, the French Embassy to Indonesia, the Institut Français Indonesia and the ASEAN Secretariat jointly organised “Women and the Environment: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals” webinar, in partnership with UN Women and the Embassy of Mexico to Indonesia, today. The event provided space for dialogue on gender-responsive climate solutions that leverages on global and regional partnership.

Experts believe that the planet is experiencing accelerated global warming and biodiversity erosion at a rate that has not been seen in millions of years. Pursuing a more inclusive, sustainable, and gender-responsive path entails integrating women and girls’ concerns, needs and perspectives in policies and programmes. It is also equally important to establish ways to assess the impact of development and environmental policies on women and girls, as pointed out in the Beijing Platform for Action 25 years ago.

“ASEAN continues to intensify its cross-sectoral sectoral work to comprehensively address the environmental and climate challenges while at the same time fully articulating and putting at the center gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls,” said Deputy Secretary-General of ASEAN for Socio-Cultural Community Kung Phoak,  recognising that the responses to these crises, which affect human rights and global public goods, are fundamentally multilateral.

Environmental and climate issues are now increasingly an official framework for regional and national policies of several countries and multilateral organisations, notably since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.  Global awareness on these issues is growing largely due to the mobilisation of civil society organisations and youth movements.

“ASEAN and France are fully committed to stepping up action at multilateral level and to support women’s and girls’ crucial role in fighting climate change,” said Delphine O, Ambassador-at-large, and Secretary General for the Generation Equality Forum (Beijing+25).

ASEAN and France jointly call for an enhanced multilateral agenda on gender and climate issues. Both parties are committed to working together for the success of the Generation Equality Forum, convened by UN Women and co-hosted by France and Mexico. They also support the work of its action coalitions, especially the action coalition on “Feminist Action for Climate Justice” – a critical challenge for the region.