Gender Lens Investing: Unlocking Opportunities for Climate and Gender Impact

The problem

Climate change is not gender neutral and our response shouldn’t be either. Women are disproportionately impacted by climate change and biodiversity risks. The impacts are broad and varied: women’s health is at risk due to working in extreme temperatures and malnutrition from unpredictable food supplies; ever greater amounts of time are being spent on unpaid care and domestic tasks as women walk further to collect depleted forests and water supplies; increasingly unpredictable incomes are causing stress within families and putting women at risk of gender-based violence. There are many others.

Women are not passive victims of climate change and there is a strong evidence base demonstrating the benefits of considering gender, and working with women’s rights organisations, in our response to climate change. Effective efforts to combat climate change should enable women to be drivers of locally led mitigation, adaptation, and nature-based solutions. We need to support women’s leadership in a just transition to a green, inclusive economy.

To do this, we must mainstream and integrate gender disaggregated data into climate modelling, strategy, implementation, and evaluation, particularly in climate investing. By integrating gender metrics into the investment lifecycle, asset owners and managers will not only be able to quantify the risks and co-benefits, but actually help accelerate the pace of reaching their climate targets while increasing returns (such as IFC’s study showing that private equity and venture capital teams with gender balance achieve 10% to 20% higher returns¹).

The opportunity

There is a clear business case for investing in women. Increasing the participation of young women in Africa’s workforce will drive an estimated USD $287 billion to its economy by 2030². $1.4 trillion in annual global GDP could be created if the employment and earnings gap for refugee women were closed.³

Women have important roles in communities as stewards of the environment, including managing resources and food production for their families. The facts support this. A 1% rise in the proportion of women managers in a company is associated with a 0.5% reduction in CO2 emissions.⁴ As entrepreneurs and business leaders, women can develop climate solutions in a way that meaningfully considers how these solutions can be designed effectively to serve all segments of society. A Bloomberg study found that having 30% more women on boards is linked to better climate governance and increased innovation in key sectors.⁵

Our solution

In March of this year, KPMG and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) hosted a public-private roundtable to discuss the financing gaps and strategies to mainstream gender in climate finance. The roundtable was an opportunity for public and private investors, women’s rights organisations, development professionals, and technical specialists to convene on the challenges and barriers to investing in climate and nature solutions with a gender lens.

A key takeaway from this roundtable was the need for case studies and best practices that can help financiers that lack the tools, infrastructure, and incentives to fully mainstream gender into climate investing.

In response to this need, KPMG has developed a pilot training for asset managers, asset owners, and intermediaries on how to integrate gender and climate considerations into the design and structuring of different financing mechanisms, especially focusing on emerging markets. The nature and structure of the finance provided can have an impact on gender and climate outcomes, so it is important to identify key considerations, risks, and opportunities when it comes to choosing the right financing route (instruments and structure).

The training focuses on sharing case studies and ideas of various gender-focused climate financing mechanisms – and how the gender and climate lenses can strengthen business cases. This training is designed to be applicable to a broad range of asset owners, managers, and intermediaries with the option of providing bespoke trainings tailored to local realities and different organisational structures as well.

You can download our training brochure here. If you are interested in taking part in this pilot training, please contact Cathy Chen.

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Cathy Chen
Associate Director
KPMG in the UK
Profile | Email | Phone

_{¹ Report: Moving Toward Gender Balance in Private Equity and Venture Capital (ifc.org) 
² Gender Parity will unlock $287B for Africa’s Economy by 2030: Mastercard Foundation Report - Mastercard Foundation (mastercardfdn.org) 
³ Gender and Climate Investing — 2X Global 
⁴ https://www.oliverwymanforum.com/climate-sustainability/2023/jan/applying-a-gender-lens-to-climate-investing.html 
⁵ More Gender Diversity on Corporate Boards Makes for Better Climate Governance and Innovation | BloombergNEF (bnef.com)}