Main Events / Project External Events

In the afternoon of the 10th of March 2008, the Gender Units of FAO and IFAD co-hosted at FAO headquarters a seminar on “Climate change: challenges and opportunities for men and women farmers”, a special event marking International Women’s Day and sponsored by Iceland’s Ministry for the Environment.
The main objective of the seminar was to create awareness at national, international and individual level on the need of including the gender dimension in the climate change issue. This entails taking into account the diverse roles and skills of both men and women, their different adaptation strategies, as well as the different impact of climate change on their livelihoods due to pre-existing inequalities.
The seminar opened with an introduction from the chair, Ms Tana de Zulueta, Member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, and with a series of significant speeches from representatives of both FAO and IFAD, Iceland’s Minister for the Environment, Ms Thorunn Sveinbjarnardóttir, and Ms Irene Dankelman, Professor at the University of Nijmegen, Netherlands. Moreover, the event was actively attended by many young students from 3 international schools of Rome.
The second part of the seminar was particularly interactive since it was dedicated to school statements and open discussion. Some students asked interesting and useful questions to the panelists above all about what kind of measures should be taken to curb the effects of climate change on gender equality and particularly on poor rural women, given their crucial role in food production in many areas.
An award was also granted by the Icelandic Minister for the best poster made and presented at the seminar by the 3 schools.
The seminar was closed by Ms Marcela Villarreal, FAO Director of the Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division, who summarized the main recommendations made by the panelists, particularly stressing on the importance of translating questions into policies, adopting a gender approach and feeding lessons learned into new project designs, strengthening capacity building in climate change as well as the role of women in climate change initiatives, and on the major role that both Science and Technology and poor rural people play in mitigating climate change .