Since the publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987, which introduced the three pillars of sustainable development, to the adoption of the 2030 Agenda in 2015 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the development community has become increasingly concerned with rising inequalities—whether geographical (North/South), social (rich/poor), demographic (present/future generations), anthropological (men/women), or environmental.

Today, development actors are emphasizing the urgency and legitimacy of a new approach that explicitly links reducing inequalities—particularly gender inequalities (SDG 5)—with combating climate change (SDG 13). Since 2015, multilateral, regional, and bilateral development banks, United Nations agencies, civil society organizations, the media, and academia have reflected this commitment in their strategies, discourse, and actions, including funding, advocacy, and research.

The French law of August 4, 2021 (No. 2021-1031), unanimously adopted, establishes the fight against poverty and the preservation of global public goods—including health, climate, biodiversity, education, and gender equality—as key priorities of development policy. At AFD level, this commitment is reflected in its '100% Social Link and 100% Paris Agreement commitments.

It is therefore worth examining how different actors conceptualize and integrate the gender equality and climate agendas, each with its own dynamics and characteristics, to identify the main narratives shaping their approach.

The main objective was to identify and analyze the institutional discourses linking climate change and gender equality, as presented by various development aid actors. These include transnational organizations (such as the European Union), international bodies (UN agencies), multilateral and bilateral development donors and agencies, civil society organizations, and epistemic communities like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This research project, commissioned by the Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (OFCE), aimed to:

• Map relevant institutions and themes,
• Analyze these discourses,
• Examine the cognitive and discursive frameworks and their evolution over the past decade,
• Provide insight into AFD’s positioning at the intersection of these issues.

The PRESAGE laboratory (OFCE/Sciences Po Paris) was tasked with analyzing the discourse of various actors across a broad range of documentary sources. A total of 800 documents in French, English, and Spanish, produced by 54 organizations, were filtered using 150 keywords and semantic fields related to climate change mitigation and gender equality to gain deeper insights into their framing.

To achieve this, the research team employed Critical Frame Analysis (CFA), the most advanced methodology for analyzing public policy discourse on gender equality and its dissemination. CFA combines cognitive, discursive, and sociological analysis to examine how public policies are framed, revealing different interpretations and logics surrounding gender equality, climate change mitigation, and their intersections.

The research led to the production of:

• A state-of-the-art review outlining the historical and discursive foundations of the interpretative frameworks used to link gender and climate issues.
• A mapping of key actors, including the reference texts they rely on.
• An analysis of the discourses connecting gender equality and climate change.

The project culminated in the publication of a research paper detailing the research partners, methodology, analyzed materials (including speeches, narratives, strategies, activity reports, and brochures), and recommendations for effectively integrating gender and climate considerations into development policies.

Additionally, the study contributed to academic literature through a second publication in the A question of development collection and an opinion piece in The Conversation France. The findings also provide valuable insights into AFD’s strategies and those of other stakeholders in advancing inclusive and equitable climate action.

Download the publications:

• “Quels cadres interprétatifs autour des enjeux genre et climat : enseignements d'une analyse bibliométrique” (Research Papers No. 255, Éditions Agence Française de Développement, July 2022)
• “How do international organizations address the articulation between gender and climate?” (A question of developpment No. 54, Éditions Agence Française de Développement, April 2022)

Read also: When gender and climate go hand in hand, new prospects for development

Eight key narratives emerged, reflecting different perspectives on the link between gender and climate:

• The vulnerability prism – framing gender and climate through the lens of vulnerability, particularly in emergency climate action.
• The smart economics approach – positioning gender inclusion as an economic opportunity to advance the climate agenda.
• Integration tools – developing mechanisms to embed gender equality into climate policies and strategies.
• Women and girls as agents of adaptation – emphasizing their empowerment as a key factor in climate resilience.
• Gender mainstreaming for transformative action – advocating for systemic gender integration to drive meaningful climate solutions.
• Intersectionality of inequality and discrimination – recognizing how multiple forms of discrimination shape the gender-climate nexus.
• The eco-feminist perspective – portraying women as stewards of nature and protectors of the environment.
• Decolonizing gender and climate action – challenging dominant frameworks and advocating for inclusive, context-specific approaches.

These frameworks have been structured based on their frequency of use, the categories of actors adopting them, and their evolution over time:

• Some are well-established, while others are still emerging.
• Their adoption varies both across and within different actor categories.
• They reflect differing levels of ambition for change, ranging from adaptive to transformative approaches.
• They are not fixed and can be combined or adapted over time.

Each narrative highlights distinct—sometimes even divergent—political, economic, and social priorities. They all have their strengths and limitations.

This work aims to inform AFD’s strategic reflections and, more broadly, contribute to the ongoing discussions among key development actors on how to integrate these two critical themes more effectively.

Contacts:

• Hélène Périvier, economist and director of the Programme de recherche et d'enseignement des savoirs sur le genre (PRESAGE) of the OFCE-Sciences Po
• Maxime Forest, political scientist, research associate at the OFCE and lecturer at Sciences Po
• Serge Rabier, research officer at AFD

522 is the number of public development banks identified to date (Xu et al, 2021) that make up the Finance in Common global coalition. Responsible for around 10% of the world’s annual investment, these institutions play an essential role in the international financial architecture. With a mandate and public responsibility, they provide financial support in sectors where social and/or environmental profitability is greater than private profitability, such as health, education and the fight against climate change. Thus, they are called to play a decisive role in achieving the 2030 Agenda.

Some public development banks (PDBs) analyse their alignment with the SDGs, but the use of disparate methods does not yield reliable and comparable results. At the same time, the majority of PDBs publish an annual activity and sustainable development report. These documents, available online, are a wealth of information today little exploited and on which we rely in our project.

Read also: FICS 2021: A new database of the world's Public Development Banks and financing institutions unveiled

This research project led by AFD aims to test the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for the benefit of sustainable development. It resulted in the creation of the SDG Prospector, a tool that offers a unified and relevant method to map the extra-financial commitments of public development banks. It quantifies the degree of importance given to each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in official PDBs documentation.

The analysis was conducted over a five-year period (2016-2020) for 237 institutions. Thus, it is possible to draw up an overview of the SDG alignment by bank, geographies, size of balance sheets, mandates, levels of development, etc.

Read also: Using Artificial Intelligence to assess progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals

In order to extract the information contained in the annual reports of public development banks, the SDG Prospector applies an artificial intelligence method specialized in language analysis (Natural Language Processing). This innovative technique is more accurate than a keyword analysis, as it allows the tool to recognize the context of sentences.

To do this, the SDG Prospector relies on a learning base, which allows it to identify when a text mentions the SDGs and to determine which SDG it is. The learning base consists of more than 8,500 texts related to the 2030 Agenda, mainly from United Nations documents, government reports and NGOs. Specializing in the recognition of SDGs, the Prospector divides each annual report into paragraphs of about ten lines and determines whether there is mention of one, several or no SDGs.

The results allow to draw an extensive mapping of PDBs’ positioning towards the 2030 Agenda: 

• PDBs strategic and operational narrative is mainly structured around the SDGs, such as SDG 8 “Decent Work and Economic Growth” and SDG 9 “Innovation and Infrastructure”; 
• SDG 13 “Climate Action” is increasingly taken into account by the entire sample, and we note a positive correlation between the size of PDBs’ balance sheet and their consideration for SDGs that are associated with environmental protection; 
• Biodiversity constitutes a negligible part of PDBs’ narrative;
• Social SDGs account for 21% of PDBs’ annual reports. However, cross-cutting SDGs such as gender equality, reduced inequalities and the eradication of poverty represent a minor share of PDBs’ narrative;
• PDBs that have similar characteristics in terms of size, mandate and geography tend to share the same SDG narrative.

Analyze your document with the SDG Prospector: sdgprospector.org

The artificial intelligence techniques used allow new data to emerge, both for research and for the operational implementation of the SDGs. Other innovative projects followed by AFD contribute to this dynamic, in line with the IA-Biodiv Challenge.

Read our Research Paper: "The Proof is in the Pudding: Revealing the SDGs with Artificial Intelligence"

Contact:

• Régis Marodon, Special Advisor on sustainable finance at AFD
• Jean-Baptiste Jacouton, Research Officer at AFD