With Climate Justice high on Hivos’ agenda, colleagues from the following programs of ours will participate: Voices for Just Climate Action, All Eyes on the Amazon, ENERGIA, Greenworks, and RUAF. They are joining or (co-)hosting the side events listed below in chronological order. Now that you know where to find us, we hope to see you there!

Please reach out to our Climate Justice Strategy & Impact lead Carolina Zambrano-Barragán if you have any questions about Hivos’ work on Climate Justice and/or our activities at COP26.

Side events

Resilient cities in practice: how cities are tackling climate change through inclusive food actions

As part of the broader Recipes for Resilience event organized by Nourish Scotland at the COP26 Food and Climate Zone, RUAF and Rikolto will host a session on November 3 to discuss how cities in different locations and stages in their food systems transformation are following their local food ambitions to tackle the climate crisis while ensuring social inclusion. This session aims to get participants thinking about how they can start local food initiatives to tackle climate change in their own cities.

Cities’ testimonials will be structured around three key questions:

1. What concrete strategies have they put in place?
2. What impact have they achieved?
3. What lessons have they learned?

The session will be split in two: half for short presentations by the speakers and half for discussion with the audience. You can register for this event here

Financing of local solutions as a means to climate justice that leaves no one behind

Local communities consistently deliver equitable results in dealing with climate risks and enabling just transitions. Despite this, they have unequal access to financial opportunities and services. This event will host a lively exchange on solutions and lessons learned on financing local climate actions to achieve Climate Justice. The event brings together voices, perspectives and experiences of local communities, governments, civil society and financing organizations from across the globe.

November 4        13:15—14:30      Official blue zone          Multimedia Studio 1       Register here  & more info here
Organizers: The Government of Ecuador, Helvetas, and the Voices for Just Climate Action alliance members including Hivos.

Movers and shakers of nature-based solutions: amplifying community voices                

This event provides an opportunity for participants to critically analyze and reflect on how nature-based solutions can provide a narrative and an approach to devolve power to Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC). The discussion will also focus on ways to ensure that solutions based on nature and led by IPLC can get access to finance for implementation.

November 4         15:30 – 16:30      WWF Pavilion      View the events livestream here.
Download the events schedule here
Organizers: Voices for Just Climate Action alliance members

All Eyes on the Amazon: building, linking and sharing Amazon-based solutions to foster Climate Justice

This session will share, reflect on, and reshape strategies to place locally-shaped climate solutions in the Amazon on top of the global climate action agenda. It showcases Indigenous and multi-stakeholder initiatives that influence local, regional and international climate policies and Climate Justice in the Amazon.

Front-line Indigenous leaders and defenders, and civil society organizations, will cover the following topics: a) combining technology and ancestral knowledge to collect data and evidence of rights violations, deforestation and degradation in the Amazon biome; b) enabling rights protection and access to justice by Indigenous peoples through campaigning and legal strategies; and c) connecting voices, exchanging experiences, and generating collective learning for protecting the Amazon and the rights of its peoples.

November 5, 13:50-14:50 (60 minutes)          Indigenous Peoples Pavilion/ In Person with Livestream
Organizers: Hivos and All Eyes on the Amazon partners

More information on our Learning Platform

Official launch of the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration                          

RUAF and partners support the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration, a commitment by subnational governments to tackle the climate emergency through integrated food policies and a call on national governments to act. The declaration brings together all types and sizes of local authorities – from small and medium-sized towns to mega-cities, districts and regions, territories, federal states, and provinces. They will speak with one voice to renew their commitments to developing sustainable food policies, promoting mechanisms for joined-up action, and demanding that national governments put food and farming at the heart of the global response to the climate crisis. The official presentation of the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration will take place at the Glasgow City Chambers on the COP26 Nature Day

November 6       09:15 – 12:30

Nature-based solutions for climate adaptation and resilience in rural areas in East and Southern Africa (ESA), and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)

The event will give participants clear and practical examples of how communities and stakeholders can work together to enhance climate change adaptation and resilience. Specifically, through nature-based solutions, sustainable ecosystems management, pursuing governance and sustainability models, capacity building in climate adaptation and resilience, ensuring social inclusion for resilience, and forging public and private partnerships.

The critical role of climate finance in achieving results will be demonstrated with examples of projects that have benefited from global climate finance, as well as those that access climate finance from public private partnerships, governments, and through beneficiary contributions.

November 6   14:30 – 16:00  IFAD pavilion
IFAD (Hivos Climate Justice impact lead Carolina Zambrano-Barragán as a speaker)

Our territory, Our health: Indigenous peoples’ rights and cultures at the center of health systems in the Amazon

This session will share, reflect on and reshape strategies to put the rights and cultures of Indigenous peoples at the core of public health systems in the Amazon. In the midst of both the climate and health crises, and within the context of the One Health approach, this session will address the need to rethink healthcare in the region. We need to move to a system that takes into account Indigenous communities’ cosmovisions, the relation between planetary health, human health, and wellbeing, as well as the role community promoters play as the axis where ancestral knowledge, territory, and Western medicine meet.

Front-line Indigenous leaders, Indigenous health promoters, and civil society organizations will share the experience of the Amazon Indigenous Health Route, a project that promotes structural changes in the public health systems of Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru, through intercultural knowledge dialogues, capacity-building of communities, and facilitating multi-stakeholder processes.

November 6        17:00-18:00 (60 minutes)       WHO Pavilion      Room: 20 pax. In person with Livestream
Organizers: Hivos and Amazon Indigenous Health Route partners

More information on our Learning Platform.

Reshaping climate narratives: putting justice at the center of climate action        

Addressing climate change is a social justice matter. Youth, women, Indigenous and black people, and entrepreneurs from the Global South will showcase rights-based initiatives that redistribute power, address inequality, and put disproportionately affected communities at the center of climate action.

November 8        16:45- 18:00       Official blue zone             Room: Forth Room (44 pax)
Organizers: Hivos, CEPLAES, PUSH, Taking IT Global

Including local voices in decision making to ensure just climate action 

The climate crisis severely threatens vulnerable communities and exacerbates existing inequalities. These communities have taken countless inventive steps to slow it down and address its impacts. Yet their initiatives are overlooked in decision making and financing. This needs to change. The global decision-making process needs to start including and using the voices of communities in the Global South. It is their locally-shaped climate solutions that will ensure an inclusive and just transition.

This session provides an opportunity for local voices and policy makers to reflect on and discuss successes and challenges in strengthening local and inclusive climate governance and solutions.

November 8        18:15-19:30    BENELUX/EIB Pavilion      Register here
Organizers: Voices for Climate Action alliance members and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Multi-stakeholder Gender and Energy Compact

In line with the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on climate change, the UN mobilizes Energy Compacts, to accelerate SDG7 action. ENERGIA, together with Global Women’s Network for the Energy Transition (GWNET) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) developed a Multi-stakeholder Gender and Energy Compact, to promote and accelerate a just, inclusive and gender responsive energy transition.

At the COP, a session will be hosted by the three initiating organizations, to present the Compact, in order to solicit further buy-in from key climate justice stakeholders. The Compact currently commits five Governments, including Sweden/Sida and 45 non-state actors to supporting and accelerating action for the following goals and ambitions:

Goal 1: Women have equal opportunity to lead, participate in and benefit from a just, sustainable and inclusive energy transition

Goal 2: Women have equal access to and control over sustainable energy products and services

November 9    12:30 – 13:30 GMT
SDG 7 Pavilion
To join virtually, please register here.
Organizers: Hivos/ENERGIA, UNIDO, GWNET

Global Fork to Farm Dialogues

During the lead-up to COP26, RUAF partners participated in Local Fork to Farm Dialogues across four continents and with more than 20 communities. The initiative aims to stimulate cooperation between local governments and food producers who have been excluded from decision-making. It culminates in the Global Fork to Farm Dialogues at COP26, which brings together 100 local government representatives with 100 practicing farmers to discuss how to strengthen local food policies and the resilience of local communities.