Preface
All countries now face enormous challenges posed by climate change. The consequences
of continued greenhouse gas emissions are dire, particularly for countries in the Global
South that are both more affected and more vulnerable to climate change at the same
time as they have less capacity to adapt (AfDB, 2022). The realization that a lowcarbon transition needs to be implemented also in countries in the Global South is well established and is also reflected in most countries’ ratification of the Paris Agreement and in their Nationally Determined Contributions. In effect, most countries in the Global South are now confronted with the fastest and most dramatic transformation of their economies that they have ever experienced – or at least they would need to be.
The low-carbon transition in the Global South needs to be guided by research since
such a transition is an inherently very knowledge-intensive process. This is why the
Sustainable Inclusive Economies (SIE) Division of the International Development
Research Centre (IDRC) has identified this area as particularly interesting to support.
This report is commissioned by SIE as part of a bigger initiative to develop an actionable research agenda that IDRC can support to achieve a low-carbon transition with gender equity in the Global South.
Gender Equality and Women’s Economic empowerment is part of the Research
Agenda for Low Carbon Transition and Gender Equity in the Global South series of
papers. The consortium that is working on this series of papers is global and consists of
60 researchers from a multitude of universities and institutions. This particular paper has been written by Victoria Plutshack and P.P. Krishnapriya from Duke University,
Maria Del Pilar Lopez Uribe and Johana Castañeda from Universidad de Los Andes,
and Sejal Patel and Tracy Kajumba from IIED.
This paper presents a description of the state of the art in terms of the gendered
impacts of the LCT, how gendered decision- making impacts LCT policy, and the
role of finance in supporting the LCT alongside gender equality. Based on this it then
makes a series of recommendations in terms of research opportunities. We hope to
receive constructive comments on this draft paper from IDRC, our networks and
external scholars and practitioners. We will then revise the paper for validation by
policy makers and senior civil servants in the Global South. Based on the reviews and
validations we plan to prepare final versions of both the paper and the accompanying
High-Level Research Agenda by March 2023. The ambition is that these papers will
be useful both for donors and research institutions in supporting an even greater
contribution by research to a much needed low-carbon transition with gender equity
in the Global South in this crucial Decade of Action.
Gunnar Köhlin
Director, Environment for Development
