The 31st UN Climate Change Conference, COP31, will open in Antalya, Türkiye, on 9 November 2026 and run until 20 November. Türkiye will host the conference and hold the COP31 Presidency. Australia will work in close partnership with Türkiye and lead the negotiations as President of Negotiations, under the arrangement agreed at COP30 in Belém. The Pre-COP ministerial meeting is scheduled in Fiji in October.
For RFLD, the central question in Antalya is who leads the response to the climate crisis. Across Africa, women carry a heavy share of its weight. In many rural areas they grow much of the family’s food and fetch its water. Yet they rarely sit where climate decisions and budgets are made.
RFLD’s Climate Action Platform starts from a different picture. It aims to shift the narrative from women as climate victims to women as environmental leaders. Below, we look at the evidence and at RFLD’s work on the ground before setting out our asks to the negotiators in Antalya.
A crisis Africa did not cause
Sub-Saharan Africa has contributed about 1.9% of the world’s cumulative fossil carbon dioxide emissions since 1750, according to an analysis of Global Carbon Project data by the Energy for Growth Hub. South Africa accounts for most of that share. The other 48 countries of the region together account for about 0.6%.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reached a similar conclusion in its Sixth Assessment Report. Its chapter on Africa finds with high confidence that Africa is one of the lowest contributors to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. The same chapter documents the damage already done:
- Agricultural productivity growth in Africa has been reduced by 34% since 1961 because of climate change, more than in any other region.
- One estimate cited by the IPCC finds that GDP per person in Africa was about 13.6% lower over 1991 to 2010 than it would have been without climate change.
- Above 1.5°C of global warming, heat-related deaths are projected to rise sharply, with at least 15 additional deaths per 100,000 people each year across large parts of the continent.
- Only 46% of adaptation finance committed for Africa between 2014 and 2018 was actually disbursed.
The IPCC also finds that gender-sensitive and equity-based adaptation reduces vulnerability for marginalised groups. That finding matters for every decision taken in Antalya.
Women hold up Africa’s food systems
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published The status of women in agrifood systems in 2023. Its figures show how closely climate risk and women’s livelihoods are tied in Africa.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 66% of women’s employment is in agrifood systems, compared with 60% of men’s. FAO also finds a 24% productivity gap between women and men farmers working plots of the same size. Women in agricultural wage jobs earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by men.
FAO links these gaps to unequal access to land, credit, inputs and extension services. It estimates that closing the farm productivity gap and the wage gap would raise global GDP by nearly US$1 trillion. It would reduce the number of food-insecure people by 45 million.
Land comes first
Secure land tenure sits at the centre of RFLD’s climate work. A woman who does not own or control her land has little reason to invest in soil, trees or water harvesting. She also has little to offer as collateral for a loan. FAO reports that men have greater ownership or secure tenure rights over agricultural land than women in 40 of the 46 countries that report on SDG indicator 5.a.1.
The Climate Action Platform pushes for two reforms. The first is joint titling, with the names of both spouses on land certificates. The second is inheritance reform, so that customary rules can no longer strip widows and daughters of their land. RFLD pairs this advocacy with legal literacy training, so that women can use land registries and local courts.
In Guinea-Bissau, an RFLD Advocacy Grant helped a women’s collective secure a local agreement to respect national inheritance law. As a result, women in the collective obtained land titles. This is the kind of change RFLD wants to see written into national adaptation plans.
Finance that reaches women
Climate finance rarely reaches the women who adapt first. OECD data show how small the share is.
In 2018 and 2019, climate-related official development assistance (ODA) with gender equality as its principal objective stood at only US$778 million a year. That was 2.4% of all climate-related ODA, according to the OECD paper Development Finance for Gender-Responsive Climate Action. More climate ODA counts gender as a significant objective, which means gender is one goal among several.
Direct funding for women’s organisations is smaller still. The OECD DAC Network on Gender Equality reports that bilateral ODA to women’s rights organisations and movements, excluding government institutions, was US$453 million a year in 2021 and 2022. That is less than 1% of total ODA.
RFLD works on both ends of this problem. On the ground, it supports Village Savings and Loan Associations, where women pool their savings and lend to each other inside their own communities. In policy, the platform calls for gender-responsive credit that accepts movable collateral, such as livestock or solar equipment, in place of land titles many women do not hold.
Loss and Damage: a fund still filling up
The Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) was created at COP27 and made operational at COP28. The World Bank serves as its trustee and hosts its secretariat. The Philippines is its host country.
The Fund has opened its first call for country-led projects under the Barbados Implementation Modalities, with a start-up allocation of US$250 million. Demand already far exceeds that sum. In July 2026, Eco-Business reported a gap of about US$2.8 billion between the Fund’s current resources and the funding requests it had received.
For RFLD, the test of the Fund is simple. Can a women’s group in a flooded village in West Africa reach its money, in a form and on a timeline that helps? Today the answer is not yet clear. The Climate Action Platform calls for direct access to Loss and Damage funds for grassroots women’s groups.
The Belém Gender Action Plan
Gender has a formal place in the UN climate talks. Parties set up the first Lima work programme on gender at COP20 in 2014. They enhanced it at COP25 and, at COP29 in Baku, decided to extend it for ten years.
At COP30 in Belém, Parties adopted the Belém Gender Action Plan, a nine-year framework for 2026 to 2034, with a mid-term review in 2029. According to the UNFCCC secretariat, its priorities include mainstreaming gender across the Convention’s work, including the Global Stocktake and just transition. The plan also calls for evidence on how climate change links to care work, health and violence against women and girls. It promotes gender-responsive climate finance and stronger monitoring and reporting by Parties.
COP31 will be the first conference held under the new plan. Antalya is the place to show that the plan comes with money. The link to violence against women and girls is especially important for RFLD’s members, who support survivors when disasters and displacement increase the risks they face.
Adaptation and energy led by communities
The Climate Action Platform backs practical solutions that women already run. They include SMS-based early-warning systems that alert farmers before extreme weather, and the distribution of drought-tolerant sorghum and pearl millet. Women manage community seed banks and lead mangrove planting along the coast. The IPCC finds with high confidence that early warning systems based on targeted climate services can be effective for disaster risk reduction.
On energy, RFLD supports clean cookstoves and biogas digesters that replace charcoal and firewood. It trains rural women and young people as solar engineers. It favours community-owned mini-grids, so that rural households are not left waiting for national grids that may never arrive.
A just transition also means facing the extractive industries. RFLD helps women negotiate binding Community Development Agreements with mining companies, in place of voluntary pledges that cannot be enforced.
From village to global stage
RFLD links community action to continental and global policy. The Maputo Protocol, Africa’s treaty on the rights of women, has been ratified by 46 of the 55 member states of the African Union. Its provisions on food security, land and a healthy environment give women a legal basis for climate claims at home.
RFLD holds Observer Status N°553 with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. It co-chairs the Programme Advisory Council of the SEA-T programme, funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by GIZ. These positions let RFLD carry evidence from its members into the rooms where policy is written.
What we ask of COP31
- Put women’s land rights in adaptation plans. National adaptation plans and nationally determined contributions should include joint titling and equal inheritance as adaptation measures.
- Open climate finance to women-led organisations. Parties and funds should set targets for direct, flexible funding to women-led and community organisations, and report against them using the OECD gender marker.
- Make Loss and Damage reach the grassroots. The FRLD should create a small-grants window that local women’s groups can access directly, with simple applications in the languages women actually speak.
- Fund the Belém Gender Action Plan. Its activities on care work and violence against women and girls need budgets and national focal points with real authority.
- Count unpaid care work. Climate impact assessments should measure time poverty and unpaid care work, and national statistics should recognise their value.
- Back community-owned energy. Public finance for energy access should support decentralised mini-grids owned by communities, with women in their governance.
Women already lead
Women in Africa already lead climate solutions in their villages. They save, plant, protect water sources and rebuild after disasters, often with no outside funding at all. COP31 should give them a seat where decisions are made and the money to act on them.
RFLD was founded in 2013. It brings together 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 African countries, including organisations that work with Vulnerable Groups. Explore the Climate Action Platform or support our work.
References
- UNFCCC, The Road to Antalya: https://unfccc.int/cop31/the-road-to-antalya
- Australian Government, Australia will be President of Negotiations for COP31: https://unfccc-cop.dcceew.gov.au/cop31
- Energy for Growth Hub, Sub-Saharan Africa emits a tiny fraction of the world’s CO2 (Global Carbon Project data): https://energyforgrowth.org/article/sub-saharan-africa-emits-a-tiny-fraction-of-the-worlds-co2/
- IPCC, AR6 Working Group II, Chapter 9: Africa: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/chapter/chapter-9/
- IPCC, AR6 WGII Regional Fact Sheet: Africa: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/outreach/IPCC_AR6_WGII_FactSheet_Africa.pdf
- FAO, Women’s equality in agrifood systems could boost the global economy by $1 trillion (2023): https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/women-s-equality-in-agrifood-systems-could-boost-the-global-economy-by-1-trillion-reduce-food-insecurity-by-45-million-new-fao-report/en
- FAO, The status of women in agrifood systems, Chapter 2: https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/317db554-c763-4654-a0d3-24a8488bbc3a/content/status-women-agrifood-systems-2023/gender-work-agrifood-systems.html
- OECD, Development Finance for Gender-Responsive Climate Action (2022): https://t4.oecd.org/dac/development-finance-gender-climate-action.pdf
- OECD DAC Network on Gender Equality, Latest data on ODA for gender equality and women’s empowerment, DCD/DAC/GEN(2024)1: https://one.oecd.org/document/DCD/DAC/GEN(2024)1/en/pdf
- UNFCCC, Fund for responding to Loss and Damage: https://unfccc.int/fund-for-responding-to-loss-and-damage
- Eco-Business, Loss and damage fund faces US$2.8bn gap as first projects move ahead (July 2026): https://www.eco-business.com/news/loss-and-damage-fund-faces-us28bn-gap-as-first-projects-move-ahead/
- UNFCCC, The Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender: https://unfccc.int/node/210315
- UNFCCC, The Belém Gender Action Plan (December 2025): https://unfccc.int/news/the-belem-gender-action-plan-a-launchpad-accelerating-ambitious-effective-and-inclusive-climate
- RFLD, Climate Action Platform: https://rflgd.org/rfld-climate-action/
