Good practices

Numerous programmes and projects have already considered gender when analyzing adaptation to disasters and risk reduction, thus demonstrating that the inclusion of a gender perspective is possible – and effective. This section highlights some of these successes.

The Latina Genera project (UNDP) is developing a joint programme with the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR/UNDP) that seeks to integrate the gender approach into risk management. To achieve this, the project has made an initial suggestion that, if adopted, would form a virtual community, develop conceptual frameworks and methodological tools, and provide training for UNDP staff and partners.

• The Office of the IUCN World Gender Counsellor and the Secretariat of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) have begun designing a methodological guide to incorporate a gender perspective in national disaster reduction platforms.

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Socio-economic processes

Measures Possible negative impacts Suggestions

Migration and community destabilization in areas affected by climate change

Promote women’s rights. Encourage equal access by women and men to skilled and remunerated jobs.

Ensure women and men have equal access to labour protection systems.

Draw attention to the contribution migrant women and men make to their families and communities. Develop support services for communities, families and individuals left behind (i.e., who remained in the community of origin).

Socio-economic and gender inequalities in access to job opportunities, education, health, housing and credit.

More households headed by women in societies that still exclude and discriminate against women heads of households.

More women in jobs traditionally considered as “masculine,” where they are exploited and poorly remunerated in irregular or seasonable jobs.

Increased incidence of harassment, sexual abuse and domestic violence during the migratory cycle.

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Gender equity and gender equality are a relatively new themes in mitigation, but there are already concrete examples of the gender perspective helping to reduce GHG emissions:

• In Costa Rica, the Payment for Environmental Services Programme, administered by the National Forest Financing Fund (FONAFIFO), helps to mitigate carbon emissions and to properly manage natural resources by offering economic incentives to land owners for them to refrain from deforesting their lands. Since men own most of the land and women have little access to these economic incentives, FONAFIFO charges a fee to ensure that part of this programme’s profits supports the women who want to acquire land.119

• Under the Kyoto Protocol, Luxembourg designed a plan to reduce CO₂ emissions and added it to the national plan on gender equality, designed to grant women in developing countries access to energy, to prevent air pollution in homes, and to reduce disaster risks.

• In 2006, the World Bank’s Community Development Carbon Fund Project signed an Emissions Reduction Purchase Agreement (ERPA) with Kenya’s Green Belt Movement, founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai. As part of the ERPA, groups of women will plant hundreds of trees in Kenya, enough to eliminate 375,000 tonnes of carbon by 2017, maintain regular precipitation restore land lost to erosion and, at the same time, provide an income for poverty-stricken rural women.

The United Nations, governments, international organizations and civil society women’s organizations are already acting to remove gender inequalities in work on climate change:

• The Caribbean Risk Management Initiative (CRMI), with offices in UNDP Cuba and UNDP Barbados/OECS, with the collaboration of BCPR, CDERA, UNIFEM, SURF, UNFPA, the Latina Genera project and ECLAC, has launched the project Improving Gender Visibility in Risk Management in the Caribbean. The project will conduct a gender analysis of the present situation of climate change risk management in various countries in the Caribbean. Later, it will present a series of political recommendations.

• The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) took a leading role in organizing responses received to help women affected by the tsunami in Asia in 2004, including studying gender impacts, holding participatory consultations, and supporting the integration of gender perspectives into relief efforts.

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• The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has published several research reports on the links between gender and climate change, beginning with Gender Perspectives on the Conventions on Biodiversity, Climate Change and

Desertification.

• In its Climate Programme 2004-2008, the Federal State of Lower Austria has implemented five measures to mainstream gender, including: the appointment of women to decision-making positions; the granting of equal opportunities in planning, organization and promotions to women; and the inclusion of gender considerations in public relations work.

• Ghana has carried out studies on the conditions of women’s vulnerability in order to identify social, economic and political interests and changes in land use, and adaptation to climate change.

• In cooperation with 10 cities in four European countries, the Climate Alliance of European Cities examines the situation of women in municipal climate protection bodies, explores the possibility of coordinating women’s leadership in making decisions about adapting to climate change, and reviews ways of increasing the number of women in decision-making positions.120

• Of the 17 National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) presented to the UNFCCC by less developed nations, some consider women’s vulnerability or they include women among the target populations of proposed adaptation activities. Even so, very few governments mention gender equality as a priority and it is not prominent in specific adaptation projects.

• The Office of the IUCN World Gender Counsellor has led the efforts to include the political impact of the themes of gender, the environment and climate change in United Nations fora. In 2007, it promoted the awarding of prizes, on International Women’s Day, to women who contributed to work on climate change.

Civil society women’s organizations throughout the world that have taken note of and begun to act on this include:

• Various African and European women’s organizations, including LIFE/Genanet, Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF), South African Gender and Energy Network (SAGEN), and ENERGIA, all launched efforts related to gender and climate change during UNFCCC’s COP-9.

• WEDO has a partnership initiative with NGOs and governments in various countries to integrate the gender perspective into national responses to climate change and to publish their lessons learned.

• In Latin America, the Nature Fund periodically organizes international seminars on indigenous women and climate change; the most recent seminar was held in Colombia in 2007.

• The Guardianas de la Ladera (Guardians of the Hillside) in Manizales, Colombia, are a group of women who have done traditionally male work in order to preserve their houses and their environment on the unstable city hillsides. Their project was developed with 90 women heads of households.