Earth Today | Gender is key

THE NEED to have adaptation planning for climate change meaningfully address gender realities was returned to the spotlight as the world celebrated International Women’s Day on Tuesday.

“In recognising people’s agency and resilience, intersectional approaches facilitate moving beyond a narrow focus on gender safeguards and prevention of gendered harm to proactively addressing how adaptation measures can promote gender equality, the empowerment and agency of women and girls of all backgrounds,” reads a section of a February 2022 research report on the Study on intersectional approaches to gender mainstreaming in adaptation-relevant interventions.

It said such approaches also “consider and address, to the extent possible, multifaceted, gender-differentiated vulnerability to climate change through support of the broader sociocultural and institutional changes necessary to sustain such progress beyond one-off interventions”.

Intersectionality, explained the report released by the Adaptation Fund (AF), is about how gender overlaps with other sociocultural factors, including race, religion, health, and age; and supports the understanding of inequalities that affect women and girls, as well as men and boys. It is therefore important, it advanced, that gender considerations form a part of adaptation interventions from design through implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

“Stakeholder engagement is an iterative process as a core part of implementation. Meaningfully including affected subgroups of women, men, and gender-diverse groups in project implementation oversight, advisory bodies, [and] management teams would provide a platform for their voices and agency, and ensure that the needs and perspectives of their respective subgroups are taken into account equitably, and their respective capabilities engaged adequately,” the report explained.

“Participatory monitoring should be used as a core strategy. For the results-based management of adaptation interventions mandated by many funding providers, project and programmes developers should select and apply a range of quantitative and qualitative gender indicators to measure progress, outcomes and social impacts,” it added.

Climate Change Report

The release of the AF report comes in the wake of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

That report has noted the need for accelerated and scaled-up adaptation, given the gamut of climate change risks and impacts.

“Climate change and related extreme events will significantly increase ill health and premature deaths from the near to long term. Globally, population exposure to heatwaves will continue to increase with additional warming, with strong geographical differences in heat-related mortality without additional adaptation,” revealed the report produced by the IPCC, which is the United Nations body for evaluating the science related to climate change.

Also projected to increase, among other things, are climate-sensitive and vector-borne diseases – in the absence of additional adaptation. Adaptation takes account of any changes made (whether in processes, practices or structures) to moderate potential damage or to benefit from opportunities associated with climate change.

“In particular, dengue risk will increase with longer seasons and a wider geographic distribution in Asia, Europe, Central and South America and sub-Saharan Africa, potentially putting additional billions of people at risk by the end of the century,” the report explained.

So dire is the situation that local climate scientists have called for Caribbean governments to ‘level up’ in their efforts to mobilise climate financing.

“For the Caribbean, the latest report provides the ammunition to demand bolder and more transformative responses to climate change. It would be sad and ultimately to our detriment if, as a region, we let this moment pass without coming together, and in one voice doing so,” Professor Michael Taylor, dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, told The Gleaner last week.

Dr Donovan Campbell, senior lecturer and head of the Department of Geology and Geography at The UWI, said it is ‘mission critical’ to rapidly secure the funding for the needed interventions.

“The report clearly shows that vulnerable, small island developing states are facing severe constraints to adaptation, and the financial needs are much higher than estimates (previously) presented,” he noted.

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