Today on World Water Day, we are sharing a friendly reminder for WECAN's virtual event at the UN Water Conference, 'Women for Climate Justice Leading Protection of Water', happening TOMORROW, Thursday, March 23 at 2:00 pm Eastern Time. Click below to register and learn more — we hope you can join us!

This event is taking place during the UN 2023 Water Conference in New York City, which is expected to adopt the Water Action Agenda as a main outcome representing voluntary commitments of countries and stakeholders to meet the global water-related goals and targets.

The conference opens today, March 22, on World Water Day, and WECAN is submitting a commitment and releasing a Call to Action today urging governments to increase and improve their ambition to protect global water sources by enacting a rights-based approach and ensuring women’s leadership in decision- making spaces.

The most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released March 20, clearly notes how climate change has already caused widespread impacts on human systems and altered terrestrial, freshwater and ocean ecosystems worldwide. Within this context the Call to Action provides analysis and studies demonstrating how women’s leadership and rights-based approaches can protect freshwater and ocean ecosystems worldwide.

WECAN is honored to co-host this upcoming in-person event, "Rights of Nature: The missing connection to enhance and implement the SDGs on Water," held at the UN Water Conference in New York City.

This event will explore why the Rights of Nature framework presents a powerful legal, non-anthropocentric, holistic tool for water restoration and protection, and how an Earth Rights-based approach to Nature can help meet and complement the global goals and objectives of restoration and protection of water ecosystems, as well as ensure water for the environment, effective governance and the maintenance of the ecosystem’s life cycle in benefit of Nature. This will be presented through several cases of rights-bearing aquatic ecosystems.

WECAN will have a livestream of the event available on our Facebook page here:

Civil society organizations Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) and BankTrack are currently hosting a series of workshops for the Equator Principles Association (EPA), which is a consortium of 138 financial institutions in 38 countries that have adopted the Equator Principles (EP), a risk management framework used for “determining, assessing and managing environmental and social risk in projects and is primarily intended to provide a minimum standard for due diligence and monitoring to support responsible risk decision-making.”

The workshops will examine two primary topics. The first set of workshops will focus on how financial institutions can better engage with impacted communities as part of their due diligence processes. The second set of workshops will focus on the key challenges associated with market-based solutions and opportunities for other pathways forward, including frameworks for a Just Transition and community-led solutions. All workshops will highlight the importance of human and Indigenous rights protections, including the implementation of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) and addressing the need for transformative approaches to financing given the escalating climate and biodiversity crises, and health impacts from extractive industries to communities. Frontline community speakers will be presenting at the workshops.

These workshops are taking place following the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report, which delivers a final action call for keeping global warming below 1.5°C. Given the many pledges by banks to align with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, the findings in this report are pertinent to continued calls for divestment from fossil fuels.

Learn more about the workshops in our press release here.

On March 21, we organized and took action with people across the United States for the National Day of Action to Stop Dirty Banks!

WECAN was on the ground in San Francisco and Juneau to tell Wells Fargo that if they don’t move out of fossil fuels, we’ll move our money out of their banks. See the livestream from the action here in San Francisco.

To avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis, we must immediately and rapidly decrease emissions and that means ending the era of fossil fuels. Financial institutions must heed the calls of science and our global climate justice movements and divest from fossil fuels and invest in people and the planet!

See the full photo album here. Learn more about WECAN's ongoing divestment work on our website here.

On March 20, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its long awaited AR6 Synthesis report, which completes the work of the IPCC in the current report cycle, a cycle that began with the 2018 report Global Warming of 1.5°C.

Climate chaos will continue to worsen, but this report confirms there is still a chance for 1.5C to be the upper guardrail, but it will require massive and immediate action. For our communities and global ecosystems, we will not give up fighting for Climate Justice! 

WECAN will be sharing a deeper analysis soon, and is staying attuned to the many announcements following the IPCC report including the announcement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres of conditions for countries to join the UN Climate Ambition Summit in September. Conditions to participate in the global summit include ceasing all licensing and funding of new oil and gas development and halting expansion of existing oil and gas reserves, meaning that the United States risks being shut out of this important summit to accelerate climate action. Please continue following WECAN for further updates and analysis on the IPCC report and what its findings mean for people and planet.