COP18 (27/11/12) – Rashmi Mistry, Climate Change Advisor at Oxfam South Africa says that despite living in the 21st century many women, particularly those living in poverty, townships and rural areas across the developing world are still being marginalised and are still not being heard. It is these women, she says, who are bearing the brunt of climate change.

She says on the ground women are not getting the support they need to adapt to climate change or to take an active role in the transition to a low carbon economy. She stresses that while the UN talks are very high-level they are important because they set the frameworks and the precedents that women at the national and local level can refer to.

Mistry says it is important for women to be able to access climate finance, and while she says positive moves have been made – such as having provisions within the Green Climate Fund to take account of gender – it has always been traditionally hard for women to access funding.

She says at a local level in South Africa, that is what women say they need. She adds that some simple things can be done to help make climate finance accessible, such as announcing it in local communities and using the media local people listen to, making sure application forms are simple and making sure they are in a community’s own language.