WUNRN
GENDER-RESPONSIVE STRATEGIES ON
CLIMATE CHANGE:
RECENT PROGRESS & WAYS FORWARD
FOR DONORS
05 August 2011 - Agnes Otzelberger
Gender dimensions need to inform
donors' climate change policy and programming from the outset. If they don't,
donor governments, and their partner countries and organisations will miss
vital opportunities to enable far more effective, responsive and sustainable climate
change adaptation and mitigation, and to transform gender inequalities.
Gender equality is both pathway
to and potential goal of successful climate-resilient and low-carbon
development. Yet, the crucial linkages between gender equality and climate change
adaptation and low-carbon development processes too often remains unrecognised.
Gender-blindness – or the neglect
of the particular roles, needs, priorities and skills of women, men, girls and
boys at different stages of their lives – is prevalent in most climate change
policy and programming. By sidelining half of the population and developing
countries' poorest and most vulnerable people, we lose the potential for
climate change responses to contribute to more equitable communities and
institutions, and for those institutions to participate in more gender
equitable climate change responses.
At the very least, it is vital to
ensure climate change responses do not exacerbate gender inequalities. For
example, if women have less access to land or training, the available means for
them to diversify livelihoods in the face of climate change are fewer compared
to men. Responses to climate change could provide an entry point to challenge some
of these entrenched inequalities and catalyse transformation.
Donors' leadership on promoting
better inclusion of the social and gender dimensions of climate change is
paramount. However, little attention has been paid to how donors as a
particularly important group of actors in this area could move forward.
Supporting this endeavour is the key aim of a new IDS/BRIDGE report
entitled Gender-responsive strategies on climate change: recent progress
and ways forward for donors.
The product of a qualitative
evidence-gathering process and enquiry into DFID's and other donor agencies'
experiences of integrating gender into their climate change policies and
programmes, the report provides insights into what has hindered and enabled
such integration processes from a donor perspective. It also provides an update
on knowledge and the status of gender in global and national policy response to
climate change and offers a set of principles and ways forward for a range of
donors.
The report concludes that large
gaps in knowledge, policy and practice remain, particularly around low-carbon
development and around understanding gender dimensions as being about more than
'vulnerable women' who are 'victims of climate change'. It also notes that many
donor agencies do not lack gender or climate change capacities per se, but much
rather the mandates, capacities, resources to properly link them with climate
change policy and practice.
Key recommendations of the
report are, therefore, to create enabling organisational environments for
such linkages, tackle the 'gender disconnect in project and programme cycles',
and to address 'mainstreaming fatigue'. Further principles and recommendations
are focused on the need for gender-responsive policy dialogue, better
cooperation between multilateral organisations, partner country policies and
programmes, and for an improved evidence-base on gender and climate change.
Further information about
this report and the BRIDGE programme on Gender and Climate Change:
The report author, Agnes Otzelberger,
undertook the research on behalf of BRIDGE in close collaboration with DFID's
Climate and Environment Department, BRIDGE
and the IDS
Climate Change Research Team. Agnes is an IDS Alumnus and works on
integrating gender into climate change initiatives for CARE.
The report complements a two year
programme led by BRIDGE and funded by DFID, GIZ and SDC, in collaboration with
various organisations working globally on gender and climate change, that aims
to promote better understanding of the gender dimensions of climate change, and
of the potential of climate change policy to transform gender relations.
This work will culminate
in a new BRIDGE Cutting Edge Pack on Gender
and Climate Change, due to be published in September.