GEDF is a government-supported private green financing organisation that supports clean energy project development through early project development investments.
Despite the impacts of climate change in Georgia affecting women differentially, there is a lack of national women led climate responses. Georgian women face barriers to accessing finance generally and have lower labour participation rates than Georgian men. Women in Georgia are also less likely to have access to education which provides technical expertise in the areas relating to climate activities, being underrepresented in some STEM subjects including engineering and technology.
Equal access to climate finance for women is crucial to addressing climate change and GEDF wanted to increase support to climate-smart gender investments. The European Commission recently announced €18 billion in investments to Eastern European countries including Georgia, and Georgia is rapidly increasing its national climate solutions.
Working closely with government, private and community stakeholders Abt associates facilitated institutional change through a new Gender Policy and Action Plan with three main objectives:
- Support climate change interventions and innovations through a comprehensive gender approach, applied both within the institution and through its projects.
- Promote projects that advance gender equality through climate change mitigation and adaptation actions; and
- Reducing the gender gap of climate change-exacerbated social, economic, and environmental vulnerabilities and exclusions through GEDF projects.
Capacity building with the GEDF team, and the recruitment of a gender specialist has transformed the way the organisation approaches climate finance and increased its ability to support partners with an explicit gender lens in their investments.
