Gender dynamics in a changing climate: how gender and adaptive capacity affect resilience

care_gender-dynamics-in-a-changing-climate

Purpose:

The brief identifies the factors shaping gender dynamics and adaptive capacity and gives examples of how to integrate gender into community based adaptation approaches as well as outlining knowledge gaps and recommendations for policy and practice.

This learning brief synthesises lessons drawn from CARE’s Adaptation Learning Programme for Africa (ALP), which has been supporting vulnerable communities in sub-Saharan Africa to adapt to the impacts of climate change since 2010. It is based on evidence and practical experience in implementing community based adaptation (CBA), about gender dynamics and the ways in which CBA can increase adaptive capacity and promote gender equality.

Overview

Recommendations for policy and practice:

  • Tackle the gender dimensions of livelihoods: they are context-specific and addressing them in appropriate ways demands context-specific action. Gender-sensitive analysis, policy and planning is critical to this.
  • Include gender equality in climate change policy goals and strategies.
  • National and sub-national adaptation planning needs to be led by affected communities, and be based on an understanding of the gendered nature of climate change impacts as well as adaptation initiatives themselves so as not to further entrench inequality. Gender-equitable participatory actions will bring more gender balance into initiatives.
  • Some of the fundamental challenges women face cannot be resolved through a single CBA programme. Action is needed by other organisations and across government departments and through advocacy to address the entrenched drivers of gender inequality and poverty.
  • Strengthen interdepartmental work between women’s departments and climate change departments.
  • Close the gap between policy and implementation where adequate policies do exist that focus on addressing gender equality.
  • Power imbalance and access to decision-making in the home, community and country must be recognised and addressed in the global response.
  • Approach efforts to address adaptive capacity and gender equality not as an issue for women alone, but as an issue that is critical for the advancement of everyone in society; it is an indispensable part of achieving social justice.
  • Invest in context-specific analysis as it is critical to understand the interconnected factors shaping adaptive capacity in order to design effective and appropriate adaptation action.
  • Invest in improving women’s economic empowerment in the face of climate change to address the way resources and labour are distributed and valued in the economy.
  • Programmes need appropriate timeframes and adequate resources in order to influence social change.
  • CBA programme designs should be required to produce gender disaggregated monitoring and to establish monitoring and evaluation of changes in gender dynamics.
  • Investing in understanding and measuring the gendered impacts of climate change beyond economic loss is important for making all types of loss and damage visible and to ensure it is accounted for, so as to build an evidence base of the human impact of climate change.

Usage: Guideline for implementation

Audience: Staff and Practitioners

Reference: Care, Gender dynamics in a changing climate: how gender and adaptive capacity affect resilience. accessible from: http://careclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Gender-and-Adaptation-Learning-Brief.pdf [last accessed 28 Sept 2016]

Loading

No ratings yet.

Rate This!

Download: http://careclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Gender-and-Adaptation-Learning-Brief.pdf

Understanding Gender in Community-based Adaptation. Practitioner Brief 3

care_understanding-gender-in-community-based-adaptation

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].

Loading

No ratings yet.

Rate This!

Download: http://careclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/CBA-and-Gender-Analysis-Brief.pdf