COP 17 Event – From Grievance to Finance: Women’s Voice in Deforestation-Free Supply Chains

Climate & Company is hosting a roundtable at the Women’s Hub of the 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP17) in Yerevan, Armenia. The session brings together women practitioners, grievance experts, financial institutions and organisations working with women producers to explore how accountability mechanisms and financing tools for deforestation-free supply chains could be designed together.

Why grievance and finance need to be connected
Deforestation-free supply chains rely on two systems that rarely talk to each other. Grievance and redress mechanisms are meant to step in when compliance promises fall short. Finance models are meant to help producers transition to zero deforestation or prove they have achieved it. For women smallholders, both can reproduce exclusion. They may be expected to provide data or flag grievances, while remaining outside the land registration, producer organisations or banking structures that determine access to compliance-linked finance.

What the session will cover
Building on our work on EUDR implementation, grievance and redress mechanisms, and gender-transformative finance, the roundtable will explore:

• Who can raise a grievance and whose voice is heard when risks emerge in supply chains
• Who is trusted as a source of evidence, and how women’s knowledge of land, production and risk can be recognised
• How finance could respond when women identify risks or needs, so that voice, evidence and finance reinforce each other

The session is a facilitated conversation, and we warmly invite participants to share their own experience and perspectives.