WOMEN’S FORUM & CLIMATESEED: THE TRAJECTORY TOWARD NET-ZERO EMISSIONS
The Women’s Forum and ClimateSeed joined forces to achieve meaningful climate action on the occasion of our 2020 Women’s Forum Global Meeting. This action is based on the recognition of the fundamental role of women in the fight against climate change . From global leadership to small communities in developing countries, women must be empowered and involved in protecting our planet if humanity wants to succeed in tackling the most important challenge of our time.
The first step to achieve net-zero emissions for an event is to measure its carbon footprint. ClimateSeed has carried out the GHG assessment following the GHG Protocol for the 2020 Women’s Forum Global Meeting. The measurement of emissions resulted in a total of 59 tCO₂e for a 3 days virtual event with thousands of participants, composed of minimal physical emissions and some digital emissions.
The Women’s Forum significantly reduced its emissions for the 2020 Women’s Forum Global Meeting due to the digital format adopted. Compared to last year’s physical event, this year’s emissions were approximately 30 times lower. This is because travel emissions are a significant source of emissions for international events.
The Women’s Forum collaborated with ClimateSeed to measure the carbon footprint of its virtual Global Meeting, and pre-selected high-quality carbon reduction projects that contribute to the achievement of SDG 5 (gender equality) as they promote employment and empowerment of women in local communities. The winning project was: Cook stoves Project in Peru.
The project supports households that are considered some of the poorest families in Peru. The objective of the project is to provide families with clean cook stoves that require less wood. These new efficient stoves reduce wood consumption and therefore CO2 emissions, for a total of 1 745 491 tCO2e avoided by the project to this day. The decrease in wood consumption (by 655 878 tonnes to the day), contributes to combat deforestation and forest degradation, but also translates into money and timesavings for families. Moreover, as the stoves are provided with a chimney, smoke is naturally drawn out the house, thus improving the family’s health conditions.
Read the one page report on our Global Meeting carbon emissions here.