10. Appendix
10.1 Appendix A – Methodology and limitations
The following chapter describes the methods that have been utilized for this assessment. Overall, the assessment is based on desk studies, questionaries, and an online focus group.
10.1.1 Scope and terms
Climate Policy: In the assessment, climate policy is defined broadly as documents formulated by governments or institutions to address the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. Defined by international frameworks like the Paris Agreement, climate policy involves national and global strategies to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, emphasizing reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy adoption, and climate resilience enhancement.
Green Transition: The shift towards low-carbon, sustainable practices, moving away from fossil fuel dependency. This transition is guided by goals set in the Paris Agreement to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of the century, promoting sustainable development and reducing emissions.
Climate work: In this assessment, climate work refers to the planning, formulation, practical application, and monitoring of climate policies, involving efforts across various sectors to mitigate climate impacts and adapt to changes.
Temporal scoping: The UNFCCC GAP adoption period stretches from 2017 to 2023, and we have therefore focused on sources and documents within this time span. However, older documents have been included to the extent they are considered relevant in terms of contributing to the review.
National level: The primary focus is the national level of implementation of the UNFCCC GAP, where we apply a more systematic approach to data collection across the five Nordic countries.
Regional and local levels: The assessment study's design and temporal constraints preclude a comprehensive, detailed examination at the regional and municipal levels across the Nordic countries. Our methodological approach for incorporating regional and local perspectives has largely been informed by the steering group and project team's existing network and knowledge. Consequently, rather than attempting an exhaustive outreach to every region and municipality in every country, we selectively engaged with regions and municipalities. This targeted approach allowed us to gather insights from a sample of localities, acknowledging the limitations imposed by the study's scope and timeframe. For a detailed and systematic review of the gender mainstreaming efforts at regional and local levels, we recommend nationally delimited evaluations in the Nordic countries collecting more data on these levels, moreover, this data will be shared with the other Nordic countries. See recommendations.
Translation: Some quotes from interviews and citations from national policy documents have been translated from the original Nordic language into English by the review team. In these cases, this is disclaimed in the relevant footnote.
10.1.2 Assessment framework
This section details the methodology employed to adapt the UNFCCC GAP into a practical assessment framework for assessing gender mainstreaming efforts in climate work within the Nordic countries.
As mentioned, the absence of standardised evaluation framework and indicators associated with the UNFCCC GAP, adds a layer of complexity to the task of assessing the implementation in the Nordic region.
UNFCCC, SBI (2022), Implementation of the activities contained in the gender action plan, areas for improvement and further work to be undertaken.
Eggebø, H. et. al. (2023). Gaps and Silences: Gender and Climate Policies in the Global North
As also pointed out by Eggebø, Lundberg & Teigen (2023) the UNFCCC GAP furthermore contains many indications of the Global South as the primary context of implementation, leaving the impression that gender mainstreaming climate initiatives are less relevant within the Global North:
“Elaborating on the relationship between gender and climate change, a key argument is that climate change has different impacts on women and men. This is emphasized as being particularly important in developing countries and for local communities and indigenous people. However, most of the proposed activities would occur at the supra-national level. Thus, in this document, gender perspectives in climate policy are represented as relevant in specific places, that is, the Global South, local communities, and indigenous communities, as well as at the supra-national level. The potential relevance of gender perspectives in the Global North’s climate policy is not addressed.”
Eggebø, H. et al. (2023). Gaps and Silences: Gender and Climate Policies in the Global North
These challenges necessitated a significant iterative process of translating the UNFCCC GAP into a methodological design guiding the data collection and reporting. For instance, this review has added a focus on the STEM fields, which are not explicitly a part of the UNFCCC GAP priority areas and activities. However, STEM fields are highly relevant in ensuring a gender-just green transition in the Nordics, firstly because the STEM fields make up the dominating sectors of the new green economy, and secondly because this sector is male-dominated.
Lander Svendsen, N., Weber, K., et al. (2022). How climate policies impact gender and vice versa in the Nordic countries
Drawing on the comprehensive nature of the UNFCCC GAP, we deconstructed its components into overall themes and sub-themes and a long list of operational questions, guiding the inquiries, dialogues, interviews, and focus groups (part of an online workshop) in the data collection process. This process of translating the UNFCCC GAP was also guided by the task descriptions of the tender specifications by the NCM, resources on gender mainstreaming, such as EIGE’s gender mainstreaming platform, the Swedish draft strategy for gender mainstreaming the implementation of the Paris Agreement (2023) as well as inputs from the Steering Group of NKL (NCM).
Rather than directly implementing the specific activities outlined in the UNFCCC GAP’s five priority areas, we opted to use the priority areas as guiding themes and chapters in the report (part 2). Recognizing the overlap of activities across the priority areas, we distilled these into categories that serve as sub-titles/sections within each chapter in part 2 (representing a priority area), ensuring a cohesive and comprehensive analysis. This decision allowed for a more flexible and context-sensitive adaptation of the UNFCCC GAP’s activities into sub-themes.
Based on the challenges and approach described in the above, it is important to note that this review is not a systematic evaluation based on a comprehensive framework of indicators. It is an assessment made on the basis of a more explorative and iterative process of gathering information and experiences concerning gender mainstreaming efforts in the domain of climate policy – and the lack of it – in the five Nordic countries. The findings of this assessment could, however, very well inform the development of a more systematic evaluation framework.
10.1.3 Desk study
Identification of relevant stakeholders, documents, and regional and local case examples
The assessment team, representing all five countries, first identified relevant stakeholders, research, national documents and local case examples relevant to the assessment. The contacts and documents were gathered in specific lists divided into countries. Relevant stakeholders were divided into three categories, namely governmental stakeholders (policymakers, civil servants), non-governmental stakeholders (experts, professionals, and activists within the area of just green transition and/or gender equality), and local and municipal stakeholders (policymakers and civil servants within local governments).
Literary review
The assessment study included a brief literary review based on existing research, publications, and evaluations on both Nordic and national contexts. The search-keywords in both google-search engine and academic data bases included: climate, gender, equality etc.
Policy document screening
The screening of climate policy documents focuses on Long-term low emission strategies and National Climate Action Plans. The screening of National Climate Action Plans is based on the one carried out by Norion in 2021. Additional and updated relevant document identified were also screened, although not collected systematically. Therefore, these documents are to be perceived as case examples.
The documents were first screened for keywords such as ‘gender’, ‘equality’, ‘women’ and ‘just’ both in English and national languages and then manually analysed for gender-responsiveness.
Some reservations apply to the approach of screening and assessing climate policy documents for gender-responsive indicators. The occurrence of the term "gender equality" in climate policy documents, such as strategies, is not necessarily a reflection of what is operational, meaning that the policy in its actual implementation may still no be gender-responsive, and might even be detrimental to gender equality. Conversely, it is also possible that documents that do not explicitly mention gender equality still include gender mainstreaming activities at some point in the policy cycle. Therefore, the results from such a document screening cannot stand alone but should be considered in relation to other gender mainstreaming activities identified in this review.
10.1.4 Recruitment
In the process of recruiting contributors to the data collection of the assessment study, we have personally reached out to app. 179 people across the five Nordic countries. 78 non-governmental experts (researchers, NGO’s, consultants etc.), 56 national inter-governmental stakeholders (climate policy makers and gender experts) and 45 regional and local/municipal stakeholders across the Nordic countries have been contacted in the form of a workshop/focus group invitation and/or an email-inquiry (sometimes including interview invitation or email-questionnaire).
- In Denmark we reached out to 9 inter-governmental stakeholders, incl. representatives from the gender equality department, the ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities, The Ministry of Environment, The Energy Agency.
- In Finland we reached out to 7 inter-governmental stakeholders, incl. Ministry of the Environment, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and Ministry of Agriculture and forestry.
- In Iceland we reached out to 9 inter-governmental stakeholders, incl. Ministry of the environment, energy and climate, Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Directorate of Equality, Department of Climate Action at Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources and the Prime Minister's Office of Iceland.
- In Norway we reached out to 17 inter-governmental stakeholders, incl. representatives from the Ministry of Climate and Environment, the Norwegian Environment Agency, the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE), The Norwegian Directorate of Agriculture, Ministry of Transport, the ministry for Culture and Gender Equality, and the Sámi Parliament of Norway.
- In Iceland we reached out to 14 inter-governmental stakeholders, incl. the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Sami Parliament Sweden, the Ministry of Climate and Enterprise, Swedish Environmental Equality Agency, Swedish Gender Equality Agency and Sweden's government agency for development cooperation.
In the summary of data collection activities detailed below, we specify the number of contributors involved in various events.
10.1.5 Participation
Out of 56 national inter-governmental stakeholders contacted, app. 9 have participated. Each country does, however, have representatives in the NKL project Steering Group who have been invited to share inputs for the study, invited for an initial project meeting, as well as for focus groups. Furthermore, they have been invited to comment on a draft version of the report and to a feedback meeting. It is worth noting that the Icelandic officials have expressed challenges in finding time and resources for contributing to the assessments, and consequently had to withdraw from the process.
The data gathering and participant recruitment efforts spanned the preparatory phase for COP28, including the conference itself and the follow-up debriefing period. During these times, many potential contributors were exceptionally occupied, presented significant challenges in engaging relevant contacts for the review.
E-mail questionnaires were sent out to 78 non-governmental experts. Four completed the questionnaire, while 17 contributed through participation in the focus group as part of an online cross-Nordic workshop (more on this event in the section below). The questionnaire focused on whether and to what extent the stakeholder, or the organization or agency they were representing, had been consulted in relation to policymaking regarding gender-just transition, or invited to participate in relevant events.
Out of 45 regional and local/municipal stakeholders contacted, 5 of them contributed to the assessment.
Local and municipal stakeholders were contacted about their knowledge on gender mainstreaming efforts in climate policies in their region or municipality. Some of the stakeholders answered an email-questionnaire, while others were interview via telephone. 3-4 stakeholders from each country were contacted, and at least one from each country has been participating to the assessment. Three local stakeholders participated in a focus group as part of the online cross-Nordic workshop.
10.1.6 Focus group workshop
We facilitated an online workshop consisting of plenary sessions and focus groups. Four focus groups, facilitated separately in break-out rooms, consisted of inter-governmental stakeholders, non-governmental stakeholders and local/regional stakeholders, respectively. The first session of the workshop focused on the UNFCCC GAP and on gender mainstreaming in general, setting the scene and ensuring that all participants were familiar with the topic.
The aim of the workshop was to garner insights about the status of gender mainstreaming climate policies across the Nordic, as well as to identify barriers and enablers. The focus group questions were guided by the UNFCCC GAP assessment framework developed for the purpose of the assessment.
The focus group workshop was carried out on the 15th of December, 2023, and lasted two hours. It was facilitated on the digital platform Miro, allowing co-creating active engagement and easy data collection. A facilitator from the assessment/project team facilitated each focus group, and participants participated by writing responses on colour-coordinated post-its and discussing with each other. After each focus group session, central barriers and enablers were shared with the rest of the participants in a plenary session.
Invitations for the workshop event were shared on social media, open for participation for everyone app. 150 people received an invitation personally. Before the event, 60 participants had registered. App. 40 participants joined the workshop, however with varying degrees of activity. Among explicitly active participants there were 4 from Denmark, 3 from Finland, 3 from Iceland, 4 from Norway and 5 from Sweden. Aside from this, some active participants did not represent a country, including one participant from the Saami Council, and representatives from the NCM.
10.2 Appendix B – The UNFCCC GAP
This is a visualisation of the UNFCCC GAP made by Norion Consult, to provide an overview. Find the UNFCCC GAP w. amendments by following this link: https://unfccc.int/documents/627886.
10.3 Appendix C - List of stakeholders contacted and consulted
10.3.1 Contributors
Name | Position | Organisation |
Aase Kristine Lundberg (NO) | Researcher | NordForsk |
Alexander Andersson (DK) | Political advisor | KVINFO |
Andersen Kristensen (DK) | Diversity Consultant | Central Denmark Region |
Annika Carlsson Kanyama (SE) | Researcher | Stockholm University |
Auður Önnu Magnúsdóttir (IS) | Executive director | The Icelandic Women’s Rights Association (IWRA) |
Emma Fryksmark (SE) | Gender Mainstreaming Coordinator | Swedish Environmental Protection Agency |
Eva Hallström (SE) | Group leader, Region Värmland | The Swedish Environment Party |
Eva Heiskanen (FI) | Researcher | University of Helsinki |
Ewa Larsson (SE) | Spokes person | Gröna kvinnor / Green Women |
Finnborg Salome Steinþórsdóttir (IS) | Adjunct Lecturer | Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland |
Freyja Barkardottir (IS) | Consultant | Ráður, Consultancy |
Gabriela Ramirez (SE) | Communications and Digital Marketing Strategy Lead, Project Coordinator to Femin-ICT | Vitala Global Foundation, Impact Hub Stockholm |
Gine Maltha Kampmann (DK) | Director | Equalis |
Heta Heiskanen (FI) | Senior Specialist | Finnish Ministry of the Environment |
Ida Petersen (DK) | Culture- and communications consultant in Sustainability and Energy | The Housing Company Zealand |
Inkeri Tanhua (FI) | Researcher, Gender equality and diversity specialist | Equality Research Helsinki |
Jimmy Sand (SE) | Researcher | The Swedish National secretariat for gender research, Göteborg University |
Johanna Holmström | ||
Karina Standahl (NO) | Researcher | CICERO - Norwegian institute of Climate Research |
Kavya Michael (SE) | Researcher | Chalmers University of Technology |
Kirsti Kierulf (NO) | Director | Norwegian Association of Municipal Engineers |
Lena Rainer (SE) | Consultant | Sweden’s Energy Communities |
Maja Farstad (NO) | Research Manager/Senior Researcher - PhD (Sociology) | Ruralis - Institute for Rural and Regional Research |
Maja Rehnlund (SE) | Environmental coordinator | Swedish Energy Agency |
Malin Gustavsson (FI) | Consultant | Ekvalita |
Marianne Berger Marjanovic (NO) | Senior Advisor | Nordic Council of Ministers |
Nanna Hoff (SE) | Architect SAR/MSA/Urban designer / Spational planner | U.D. URBAN DESIGN AB |
Nina Lander Svendsen (DK) | Head of Section | The Danish Ministry of Environment |
Petra Berg (FI) | Postdoctoral Researcher | Univerity of Vasaa |
Rasmus Bo Sørensen (DK) | Consultant | Inka Consult |
Seema Arora-Jonsson (SE) | Professor, Rural Development | Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences |
Sigridur Finnbogadóttir (IS) | Gender Budgeting Project Manager | The City of Reykjavik |
Solgun Furnes (NO) | Advisor and NGO | Renewables Norway and vice-chair in Kraftkvinnene |
Susanna Bairoh (FI) | Researcher | TEK (Academic Engineers & Architects in Finland) |
Tallulah Cherry (DK) | Consultant | Inka Consult |
Tatjana Latinovic (IS) | President | The Icelandic Women’s Rights Association (IWRA) |
Tonje Johansen | Adviser Arctic and Environmental Unit | Saami Council |
Vigdís Fríða Þorvaldsdóttir (IS) | Director of education | Landvern |
- | Ministerial advisors | The Danish Department of Gender Equality (Ministry of Digital Government and Equality) |
- | Ministerial advisors | The Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment |
10.3.2 Steering Group
Name | Position | Organisation |
Aaron Tuckey | Project Coordinator and Climate Analyst | Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Climate Action Department |
Anna Collins Falk (SE) | International Coordinator and Senior Advisor | Swedish Gender Equality Agency |
Anna Maria Gran | Senior Adviser | Sustainable Environment and Green Tech in the Danish Ministry of Environment |
Auður Ævarr Sveinsdóttir | Head of Division | Icelandic Ministry for the Environment and Natural Resources |
Jennifer Unelius | Climate Change Adviser | The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency |
Marianne Berger Marjanovic | Senior Adviser | Nordic cultural policy and Nordic gender equality, The Nordic Council of Ministers' Secretary |
Mikaela Thuresson | Project Officer | Gender Equality and LGBTI-rights at The Nordic Council of Ministers and The Nordic Council |
Natalie Winger | Adviser | Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment |
Saija Vuola | Ministerial Adviser | Ministry of the Environment of Finland |
- | Ministerial Advisors | The Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities |
Ministerial advisors | The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs |
10.3.3 Project Group
Name | Position | Organisation |
Katrine Weber | Consultant | Norion Consult |
Sofie Malm Henriksen | Consultant | Norion Consult |
Elvira Borgmann | Consultant | Norion Consult |
Rikke Fischer-Bogason | Chief Consultant, Partner | Norion Consult |
Karina Standal | Senior researcher | Norwegian Center for International Climate Research CICERO |
Solveig Aamodt | Senior researcher | Norwegian Center for International Climate Research CICERO |
Malin Gustavsson | Consultant, Gender equality expert | Ekvalita |
Inkeri Tanhua | Researcher, Gender equality and diversity specialist | Equality Research Helsinki |
Freyja Barkardóttir | Consultant, Gender equality expert | Ráður |
Kavya Michael | Post Doc/Researcher | Chalmers University of Technology |