This 8th of March, International Women’s Day, Public Services International calls for transformational systemic change for climate justice, as a preamble to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW) which for the first time will focus on “Achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies, and programmes” as its priority theme.

In addition, the Commission will review the theme of “Women’s economic empowerment in the changing world of work”, making this UNCSW a unique opportunity for Member States to demonstrate political will and put women and the planet before profit.

 The current economic system, driven by patriarchal, neo-colonial, and neoliberal globalisation is at the root of the climate crisis. The climate crisis is gendered.  A 'greener’ version of neoliberalism won’t address the structural causes of either climate change or gender inequality.

 Women, especially those in the Global South, suffering multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, those in rural areas and those who are part of indigenous communities, disproportionately bear the brunt of the impact of climate disasters, climate displacement and climate migration. These same women play key roles ensuring social and environmental sustainability. Women often endure energy poverty, care burdens and climate-related loss and damage.

 The common approach to a just transition focuses on transitioning predominantly male workers in the fossil fuel industries to other jobs, including in renewable energy manufacturing and generation. Although critical, this is insufficient and the concept of just transition must have broader applications, including changing the sexual division of labour and re-valuing women’s work and feminised sectors, such as care.

 Health and social care work is low carbon. While certain jobs have been affected by technological transformation, demand for health and care workers continues to increase. These jobs are critical for mitigation and adaptation policies and programmes. Likewise, public emergency service workers are the face of climate action and ensuring gender-equality inclusion in this sector must be part of just transition measures.

 Transitioning away from fossil fuels is imperative. The greatest barriers for achieving it are: 

• Militarisation and military spending, huge impediments to both a low carbon future and a peaceful, solidarity-based economies and societies. Just ten percent of global military spending could cover the estimated costs of climate adaptation in developing countries and transition toward a just economy. In addition, military emissions make up a large, although hidden, percentage of emissions causing death and regression on international humanitarian laws.

• Climate policies increasingly influenced by corporate power leading to a too-slow transition to privatised renewable energies.

• Proliferation of preferential trade agreements that set economic rules in favour of corporations. In the recent past, the largest number of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) cases brought against governments have been through the Energy Charter Treaty and many others attempt to block government policies, regulations and projects designed to protect the environment.

We must shape a new order. Public Services International, the global union representing workers who deliver public services, including those essential for climate action and for fostering caring societies, urges the international community and all levels of government to support a transformational, feminist, just, and equitable transition. 

PSI envisions a transition that: 

• Addresses the intersecting crises of the pandemic, the climate and growing and entrenched inequalities, based on the right to a healthy environment as proclaimed by the UN Human Rights Council and features the human right to care.

• Rapidly decarbonises societies while also rebuilding the social organisation of care and increasing quality and gender-transformative public services required to reduce gender and social inequalities. 

• Provides opportunities to change the current sexual division of labour, promoting decent work, including unionisation rights, for women of the world.

• Ensures that the production, transmission, distribution, and control of energy is publicly owned. Taking in principles of energy democracy, where women have full political capacity and representation to make decisions over the energy affecting their lives and communities. 

• Ensures all levels of government have adequate and predictable gender-responsive financing to meet the needs of people and the planet, funded by reforms of international and national tax regulations and establishing sovereign debt arrangements

This year we commemorate International Women’s Day while we hold our breath for the risk of a global war. Bombs and weapons are not green! Wars are human-made disasters that impact on the environment as well as on society. The environmental damage of the attack on Ukraine will be counted for years, as that of all the other conflicts around the world. Once again women pay the highest toll. An effective commitment to disarmament is the only response to ensure the peace and all the conditions for a sustainable social, environmental, economic and gender focused development. The time to call for a global reduction of military expenses and more investment on social services is now! 

Whether the transition is feminist, just and equitable depends on our power. Women of the world, unite!