UAE Ministry Of Climate Change And Environment Convenes Session On Women And Youth At World Government Summit

The UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment hosted a session today entitled “Women and Youth: The Catalyst to Solve Global Challenges”, to explore how women and youth can be leveraged as powerful agents of change. The session was part of the ‘Climate Change Forum – Climate Action Now’ at the World Government Summit (WGS) 2018 in Dubai.

In this discussion, Forest Whitaker, Founder and CEO of Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative (WPDI) and UNESCO Special Envoy for Peace, joined Her Excellency Hessa bint Essa Buhumaid, UAE Minister of Community Development, to address the disproportionate impact of climate change on women and youth. Adnan Amin, Director General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), moderated a session focusing on ways to mitigate climate change impacts and capitalize on solutions that women and youth could offer for the humanitarian-climate nexus.

Opening the dialogue, Amin stated: “We are going to have more – not fewer – climate-linked disasters, and they are going to be more dramatic in their scale. We will, therefore, see a stark increase in the number of women and children whose lives will be lost or stunted.”

Women and youth excessively bear the impact of environmental, economic and social shocks, and are 14 times more likely than men to die during a disaster. While women and youth are often victims, evidence from humanitarian situations collated by agencies and NGO boards unmistakably indicate that women and youth know their own needs, and typically have the best ideas on how they should be met.