Gender, climate finance and inclusive low-carbon transitions

Undertaking an inclusive and just low-carbon transition requires vast flows of finance into activities that support mitigation and adaptation. Developed countries have already fallen short of their aims to support climate actions in low- and middle-income countries, providing only US$83.3 billion in 2020. How much finance flows, the sectors it flows into and the channels it flows through affect the distributional impact of climate finance, including how different genders are impacted. Addressing gender equality alongside a low-carbon, climate-resilient transition requires greater knowledge of those impacts and evidence to support how finance can best address these high-priority global goals.

This paper is part of an initiative to develop an actionable research agenda, led by Environment for Development (EfD), a global network of research centres that seek to solve the world’s most pressing environmental and development challenges. This paper builds on the work undertaken in the EfD initiative. It seeks to unpack the current state of evidence on climate finance for low-carbon transitions and gender and identifies key research gaps in each area (which are summarised in Section 7).