The panel explored the following questions:
All speakers highlighted different types of non-traditional data collection. Unaisi Raileqe and Sofía Gutierrez both remarked on using storytelling as a data collection method, reclaiming it as a way to provide a safe space for uncensored opinions. Dr. Meghna Ranganathan, meanwhile, expanded on the belief that using participatory methods to understand community needs – combining lived experience with big data sets – is the key next step in integrating gender environment data. Dr. Helen Teghtegh remarked on how the lack of gender disaggregated data neglects key needs. Referring to the larger environment gender data nexus framework, Dr. Teghtegh stated that data is the “solution to gender inequality.” Giving voice to a trend seen throughout the panel, Mariam Ibrahim brought to light how understanding the financing data ecosystem because that allows us to adequately invest on gender data.
Natalie Cleveland (Data2X, GEDA Core Partner and member of Interim Steering Committee) then opened the space for a roundtable discussion, where the panel and the audience explored comments regarding intersectional and decolonizing data, feminist interview methods, and data ownership and protection.
Data that is collected should fulfill a purpose both from the community and for the community.
– Sofía Gutierrez, Barranquilla+20
The session raised the following key points:
We can’t invest in changing what we don’t know.
– Jamie Wen-Besson, IUCN (GEDA Co-Convener)
Conversation Circle
Following the official side event, GEDA convened an informal space for networking and conversation around gender and environment data. This “Conversation Circle” served to introduce GEDA to the COP28 audience, especially the Women and Gender Constituency, and to build community among the ecosystem of actors interested in gender-environment data. Close on the heels of GEDA’s membership expansion, this session offered a space for GEDA members (both founding and newer members) to learn about each other’s work, with particular relevance to the UNFCCC policy arena.
The session began with Bridget Burns, WEDO, and Jamie Wen-Besson, IUCN, GEDA’s co-conveners, who provided an overview of GEDA’s founding and purpose, as well as a recap of the Global Conference on Gender and Environment Data held as a COP28 presessional event the preceding week. Participants then exchanged ideas and perspectives on gender-environment data, citing the need for greater inclusion of “non-official” data while also cautioning against playing into the narrative of needing data as “proof” – a message also articulated at the Conference. The discussion emphasized ways that indicators and various data methodologies, including qualitative data grounded in the lived experiences of women, can be used to “triangulate the truth.” This nexus is fundamental to GEDA’s approach, especially as the alliance intends to weave information and narratives to encourage the data points to speak to–or shout to–decision-making spaces.
Additional priorities raised during the conversation included: the need to build up a reference base and enable learning across the gender-environment-data ecosystem; feminist partnership and capacity strengthening; data that tracks outcomes from investments in climate action (not just the differentiated impacts of climate change); attention to long-term impacts of climate change and environmental degradation on women, including in relation to care work; and the need for mechanisms of data collection and feedback that foreground the ownership and needs of communities where data is collected.
GEDA members present at the conversation circle included ARROW, Barranquilla+20, Data2X, IISD, IUCN, Population Council, WEDO, Women Environmental Programme (WEP), and Women Deliver, as well as Ardiana Jaku, a member of GEDA’s new Data Advisory Group.
