Women climate change activists from the global South, their counterparts from the North, young and older, from diverse faiths, faith-based NGOs, as well as secular organizations, together with male allies, came together in Frascati, Italy, for four days. For several among them, this was a journey which began over a year ago, when they were convened in Wilton Park, in the United Kingdom.
Candid, fact-based and rich experiential narratives and discussions around policies, cultures, as well as climate change realities, took place, in an intense working process. The simple goal was to explore how to collaborate more and better, to go further and faster, in attempts to race against time and old vested interest, to achieve the climate goals.
Information provided by participants via a survey undertaken ahead of the meeting confirmed the vast reach of these networks of women and their respective organisations, around the world. They also shared the extent of their ongoing climate actions across all themes of intervention from reforestation to recycling from disaster preparedness to advocacy against fossil fuels.
Participants explored radical collaboration opportunities as well as challenges. They challenged one another to come up with specific, doable and collaborative climate action priorities, including increasing the visibility of women-led climate action through documenting the various stories of cross sectoral collaboration (storytelling); facilitating collaborations around renewable energy and related policies; realising more opportunities for joint collaborations across their various institutions; scaling up existing tree planting efforts; greening houses of worship; and identifying and amplifying actions at key global policy advocacy moments (e.g. at the Conference of Parties/COPs). They spoke of the need for radical forms of collaboration, which recognise the extent, depth, and creativity of women’s myriad forms of leadership in climate change efforts, nationally, regionally and globally. To that end, a Global Network was launched, a number of specific follow ups were agreed to and participants volunteered to populate four Working groups to flesh out Mission, Strategy, Operations and Resourcing.
The entire meeting took a great deal of vision, planning and coordination would not have been possible but for the systematic stewardship and direction of Wilton Park’s Alison Hilliard, with management support from Rachel Jewkes, and overall advisory guidance of Jean Duff. Together they formed part of a Steering Group composed of Husna Ahmad, Shahin Ashraf, Nicole Ashwood, Giulia Cirillo, Lorna Gold, Clare James, and Azza Karam (also serving as Rapporteur).