Gulabi Zameen Team had the privilege of attending the 9th Asia-Pacific Climate Change Adaptation (APAN) Forum, preceded by two powerful spaces: The Feminist Forum, and Multi-stakeholder Dialogue supported by Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women (ARROW), ICIMOD, UN Women & UNEP.
At the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC), Bangkok, Thailand, we presented our work at the marketplace. We displayed the intro to our toolkit and our work with community consultations on impacts of Climate Change on Mental Health and wellbeing of Trans* and queer persons in India. We als0 got to engage with several like-minded youth, policy advocates, and feminists working on issues that we align with.
At the Feminist Forum, feminists across the region reminded that climate resilience isn't about infrastructure or finance it's about dismantling power imbalances, valuing care work, intergenerational conversations, and ensuring that women, girls, and gender-diverse communities are at the forefront of solutions.
The Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue was a reminder of the importance and the complexity of collaboration across institutions, government, civil society, and communities.
And then came the APAN Forum. Here are our key takeaways from the event:
* We MUST change our approach and question who are we talking about 'de-risking' ?
* Feminist principles can and SHOULD shape climate policy and practice. Gender, CASTE, class and several other intersections are yet to be addressed in these spaces intentionally.
* Youth and diverse communities cannot remain as tokenistic participants here. There must be meaningful and mandatory presence of more powerful voices here.
* Finance must be accessible and designed to reach the frontline communities, even if unorganized and informal.
We look forward to such future engagements where we can push for our values at regional and global levels.
A sneak peek into our engagement here.