Gender Sensitive Adaptation

Communities around the world experience the different effects of climate change: flooding and changes in rainfall patterns affects agricultural production and changing temperatures can lead to the spread of diseases. People have always adapted to the changing natural conditions, but adaptation strategies are now concertedly developed, deliberately designed and actively implemented. These projects need to ensure consistency with national strategies. How can we make sure this occurs according to local needs, in a participatory manner and – most importantly - with gender equality at its heart?

The case of Community Based Adaptation (CBA)

CBA offers a bottom-up, participatory path to climate change adaptation with the aim of enabling local communities to build on and improve on their existing adaptive capacities. There are some toolkits available on CBA projects design, for example CARE International:  “Community-Based Adaptation Toolkit” (http://www.careclimatechange.org/tk/cba/en/).

Currently our partners the Centre for Global Change and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community are developing toolkits for gender-sensitive adaptation projects, which will be available by the end of August.

Our partner in Bangladesh has published a book on CBA with a specific chapter in gender issues: Sharmind Neelormi “Gender Issues in Adaptation”.