Mary Robinson
The physical world faces potential catastrophe because of climate change and we are running out of time to take the necessary steps. We need to rapidly and equitably make the transition to a carbon-neutral world. This is the only way to avoid the consequences of a world that would be three to four degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels.
The consequences include more extreme weather, rising food insecurity, the spread of disease, higher levels of poverty and instability, and the displacement of possibly 200 million people by 2050. We need to change our economic systems – how we produce energy, how we use our land and other natural resources, how we transport people and goods, and how we live, eat and work – if we are to survive.
We simply cannot have a peaceful and prosperous future unless we act on climate change.
Climate action is an area where women across all sectors of society are leading the way in efforts to build resilience and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Women like Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Co-operation. Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who calls me ‘Mama Mary’, presided over the 2011 UN Climate Change Conference, COP17, in Durban. She worked extraordinarily hard and stayed with the debate right to the end, which, after a marathon session of negotiations, led to a deal being reached, ‘the Durban Platform’.
This Durban Platform brings us to Paris next year where world leaders have undertaken to agree terms to a legally binding treaty to address climate change. The deal came out of a progressive alliance of small island states, less developed countries, African states, and the EU, with South Africa coming in and bringing with it the other Brics economies so that finally China and the US had no choice but to participate.
By a happy coincidence three women chaired successive COPs in Copenhagen, Cancun and Durban, and those three women – Connie Hedegaard, Patricia Espinosa and Maite Nkoana-Mashabane – agreed to lead a Troika of Women Leaders on Gender and Climate Change, mainly women ministers of environment and energy, and we included some supportive men. My foundation organises the Troika of Women Leaders, and we had a side event at the COP in Durban, where we plotted to bring gender balance into all future COPs, and to have gender as a standing item on the agenda. The Doha COP in 2012 was chaired by a man, but we had organised so effectively that he was willing to put the issue for negotiation.
I will never forget the emotion in the hall when the decision was adopted to have gender balance in all delegations to the COP, and in bodies such as the Green Climate Fund, and to work for gender-sensitive climate policy. Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, called it the Doha Miracle as we clapped and cheered and hugged each other.
Two weeks ago, on the eve of the New York Climate Summit, building towards Paris 2015, my foundation together with UN Women co-hosted a Women’s Leadership Forum: “Raising Ambition for Climate Action.” Current and former women heads of state and government, ministers, leaders from grass-roots, youth and indigenous organisations, civil society, the private sector, the scientific community, and the UN system, came together to demonstrate women’s leadership on climate action and highlight gender-responsive actions at all levels.
We discussed climate actions that benefit the climate while also benefiting people and protecting their rights. Responding to climate change means doing things differently, and doing things differently means it is possible to break away from old norms. So climate action can be gender-sensitive and can protect rights. It can be designed to reduce inequalities and to contribute to poverty reduction.
Approaching climate change as an issue of inter-generational justice, as a development and human rights issue, is what climate justice is all about. Climate justice provides us with principles to inform effective and transformative actions, including participation, gender equality, the protection of human rights including the right to development, and the need for fairness in sharing both the burdens and the benefits of climate action.
By amplifying the voices of the women leaders participating in the forum, we sought to inject an increased sense of urgency into government efforts to develop innovative, sustainable and inclusive responses to the climate change challenge. Christiana Figueres had a practical recommendation. She said that women in positions of authority, like her, when they come into a room dominated by men, should ask, “What’s wrong with this room?” She has started to do that, and it is having an effect.
Leadership in a women’s way does not just involve political leaders, heads of state, ministers, business leaders and heads of agencies. It encompasses community leadership, indigenous leadership, grass-roots and youth leadership. What distinguishes leadership in a women’s way is the insight of women, and the willingness to encourage and mentor young women. Having now come into more opportunities for leadership, we still lead with a consciousness of how to do it, a critique of how we’re doing it, a determination we’ll do it better and a reaching out to all of those who exercise leadership.
Women are more comfortable linking with their counterparts because we all profoundly understand that the issues are more important than the individual. We need to work further to ensure that we have a leadership that connects the various ways in which we come together, communicating and collaborating, sharing experiences, sharing knowledge to make a difference.
There was a very special moment during the opening ceremony of the Climate Summit in New York on September 23, when a woman from the Marshall Islands, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, spoke, and then read her poem. I had met this 26-year-old on the climate march, and she is an exceptional young leader. What I liked was that she spoke to us as a leader and a mother, telling her baby, “I take this moment to apologise to you, we are drawing the line here because, baby, we are going to fight.”
At the concluding ceremony of the Climate Summit another great woman leader spoke, and she spoke on behalf of the Elders. Graça Machel judged well the message she wanted to convey. There was a self-congratulatory mood in the hall, and she reminded the heads of state and delegates gathered about “courage, leadership and obligation” and told them bluntly: “I have the impression that there is a huge mismatch between the magnitude of the challenge and the response that we heard here today.” She told them they needed to go back to the drawing board and ask hard questions, and to step up ambition. That was real leadership.
In conclusion, let me borrow again a phrase that I heard Arch use when we were on a panel together a few years ago. Arch was speaking with animation and enthusiasm, and a woman journalist accosted him with a question: “Archbishop Tutu, why are you such an optimist?” He looked at her, shook his head, and said, “No, dear, I am not an optimist, I am a prisoner of hope.”
That is a good way to remain hopeful in the face of such terrible outrages and human rights violations in our world today. But I am particularly hopeful that women will take their rightful place in the 21st century, and that this will make all the difference.
l Robinson was the first woman president of Ireland. She is the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; founder of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice; and member of The Elders. This is an edited version of her Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture, an annual event presented by the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, in partnership with the University of the Western Cape, on Tuesday. The lecture series was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama (connected by satellite from India) in 2011. Subsequent lectures have been delivered by Graça Machel (2012) and Kofi Annan (2013).