Grants and Grantees / Close-Ups / Women's Environment and Development Organization WEDO

The United States is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the only developed nation that has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding international pact requiring cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.  According to the Women's Environment & Development Organization (WEDO), U.S. intransigence not only has devastating consequences for the environment but also for women, who make up the majority of the world's poor and thus suffer most from the effects of climate change-from natural disasters and disease to the resulting migrations and international conflicts.

While women disproportionately bear the negative consequences of global warming, WEDO also believes they have an important role to play in finding climate change solutions.  Founded in 1991, WEDO is an international organization that advocates for women's equality in global policy.  To help bring in this perspective to U.S. climate change policymaking, WEDO launched Women Demand U.S. Action on Climate Change (WDACC), a U.S.-based campaign focusing on the gendered impact of climate change and its links to women's economic vulnerability in March 2008. "It was tangential...the way [other environmental organizations] approached women and climate change," explained WEDO's U.S. Climate Change Campaign Coordinator Rachel Harris.  "The impacts on women, although they're clearer abroad, they're also happening in the U.S."

With the new incoming U.S. administration, WEDO sees an important opportunity for women to help bring about a change in course.  "We think the next administration has to be an active advocate of science-based and rights-based climate change policy," said Harris.  "[It] needs to take an active, global role in addressing climate change."  By partnering with women's, environmental, and social justice organizations, the WDACC campaign aims to mobilize these groups to bring women's voices and issues to the table during the next phase of international talks at the 2009 Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.   As part of this effort, WEDO is collaborating with organizations like RBF grantees 1Sky and West Harlem Environmental Action, the Sierra Club, OXFAM America, and Sister Song to produce fact sheets and an advocacy toolkit for grassroots organizing on women and climate change.  In addition, the campaign works in partnership with international organizations to link American women with women throughout the world and is conducting a global advocacy project with partners in countries like Ghana, Senegal, and Tobago.

In the coming years, WEDO seeks to continue its push for equitable, effective climate change policy at the local, state, national, and international levels. "We want to continue to mobilize our base," said Harris.  "We want all our networks to work together to advocate for a comprehensive policy."  While the victims of climate change all too often have a woman's face, through the efforts of WEDO, so will the solution.