Strengthening gender responsiveness of the Green Climate Fund ecosystem-based adaptation programme in Namibia
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Scholars of gender and climate change argue that gender-blind climate change actions could exacerbate existing inequalities and undermine sustained climate change adaptation actions. For this reason, since 2017, the Green Climate Fund placed gender among its key programming prerequisites, making it the first multilateral climate fund to do so worldwide. However, to date, no lessons to inform planned gender-responsive ecosystem-based interventions in Namibia have been drawn from community-based natural resource management. Thus, this paper aims to share key lessons regarding the way in which gender assessment is useful in enhancing equity in an ecosystem-based adaptation programme for the Green Climate Fund. To this end, we conducted in-depth interviews and group discussions in the 14 rural regions of Namibia with 151 participants from 107 community-based natural resource management organisations (73.5:26.5; male:female ratio). The results identified gender imbalances in leadership and decision-making due to intersecting historic inequalities, ethnicity and geography, as well as other socio-cultural factors in local community-based natural resource management institutions. We also identified income disparities and unequal opportunities to diversify livelihoods, gendered differentiated impacts of climate change and meaningful participation in public forums. Overall, the assessment indicates that considering gender analysis at the initiation of a community-based climate change adaptation project is crucial for achieving resilience to climate change, closing the gender gap, building capacity to increase equity and empowering women in resource-dependent environments in Namibia and Sub-Saharan Africa more broadly.
Date Issued
2021-09-10
Date Acceptance
2021-09-03
Citation
Sustainability, 2021, 13
ISSN
2071-1050
Publisher
MDPI AG
Journal / Book Title
Sustainability
Volume
13
Issue
18
Copyright Statement
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
License URL
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
Environmental Sciences
Environmental Studies
Science & Technology - Other Topics
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
adaptive capacity
climate change adaptation
community-based natural resource management
community-based tourism
gender responsiveness
Green Climate Fund
nature-based solutions
resilience
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
18
Date Publish Online
2021-09-10