Purpose: 

The brief documents the learning on community based adaptation approaches in ways that are useful to practitioners and decision-makers, in an effort to create an enabling environment for community-based adaptation and to promote good practice by adaptation and development actors.

Doing climate change adaptation in a community-based way is about grounding the process in a good understanding of the local social make-up, and putting the decision-making power into the hands of those affected by the climatic changes.

Integrating gender into community-based adaptation:

• Is essential for practitioners and communities to ground the adaptation process in a good understanding of the context, existing vulnerabilities and capacities.
• Is essential for communities to ensure the processes and actions they choose are relevant to both men and women in different social settings.
• Helps practitioners and communities understand why and how gender groups can be vulnerable to climate change in different ways, and how this changes over time.
• Helps to ensure decision-making power is more equally distributed between different social groups affected by climatic changes.
• Is required for community-based adaptation to contribute to the transformation of long-standing, deeply rooted barriers to development.

Overview:

The brief contains explanations on:

• Community-based adaptation: why gender matters
• Integrating gender analysis in community-based adaptation: How does it work?
• Practical steps for integrating gender analysis into community-based adaptation, involving:  identifying the purpose and questions, choosing the tools, getting the information, analysis and identifying strategic gender issues.

Usage: Guideline for implementation

Audiences: Practitioners, staff

Reference: Care International. Understanding gender in community-based adaptation. Practitioner Brief 3. Adaptation Learning Program for Africa, pp. 1-23. Accessible from http://careclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/CBA-and-Gender-Analysis-Brief.pdf [last accessed 28 Sept 2016].