Addressing gender and C/D/E through transformative action

Event summary

The event began with a summary of the main elements presented in the Thematic Integration Brief (TIB) on C/D/E and Gender Equality. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by climate change and environmental related disasters. C/D/E risks deepen existing gender inequalities: for example, women and girls face severe health and life risks — being up to 14 times more likely to die in disasters. At the same time, investing in women and gender equality delivers proven results — from more effective forest conservation and stronger environmental governance to measurably greater climate resilience and readiness — making gender equality a driver, not just a beneficiary, of climate action. The summary of the TIB was followed by an explanation of the different levels, with examples: gender negative/neutral, gender sensitive, gender responsive and gender transformative.

The conceptual input was then followed by three practical examples of gender transformative action:

• The The Solar Energy for Agriculture Resilience (SoLAR) project aims at strengthening an enabling environment and unlocking investments for the promotion of socially inclusive solar energy systems for agriculture in South Asia and East Africa. The project includes specific measures targeted at facilitating women’s ownership of solar pumps, empowering their economic and social agency. In this way, SoLAR contributes to making women the owners and runners of new technologies, rather than the end users only.
• The Projet Résilience alimentaire des personnes déplacées internes (ProRes) aims at strengthening food resilience of internally displaced people in Burkina Faso, of which a large majority are women and children. They are not only most affected by the crises leading to displacement, but they also face structural inequalities, a lack of access to resources, and exclusion from decision-making processes. The project combines immediate response with measures to strengthen household capacities. It ensures’ family’s access to cultivable land, including women-headed families, and thus strenghtenes their economic agency and positioning within society. It also strengthenes women’s involvement in decision-making processes.
• The Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA) was founded 10 years ago to respond to the urgent need to fund and support gender-transformative climate action across the Global South, where the impacts of climate change are intensifying. GAGGA strengthens the infrastructure that enables women-led organizations to access funding, tools and knowledge to address climate change, thereby contributing to the transformation of the relationships between the genders. Among other things, they focus on strengthening women’s decision-making power, their control over land and natural resources and their access to resources and policy influence.

After short group discussions participants concluded that to socio-cultural norms are major barriers for gender-transformative work; that programs need to be context specific and programmers have to understand the specific needs and knowledge level of women in order to work towards greater empowerment; that women’s access to resources and ownership allows them to have a voice in the community, which may lead to a transformation of gender relations; and that in order to reach a large-scale transformative change towards enabling and inclusive policies, policy makers need to be on board.

Documentation