Training manual to support country-driven gender and climate change: Policies, strategies, and program development.

Climate change is a global phenomenon that affects all countries and peoples across borders. Nonetheless, social and cultural systems influence both how environmental pressures affect societal groups and how they can contribute to reducing harmful emissions. The roles and responsibilities ascribed to women and men in a society impact their respective dependence on their natural environment, shape their capacity to adapt to a changing climate, and lead to specific knowledge of how to influence their environment. When these inequalities between men and women are removed and their specific abilities and knowledge promoted, their full potential to contribute to fighting climate change can be unlocked. Women’s agency in particular has been woefully neglected by mitigation measures in the past. There is growing recognition that by empowering women to actively participate in reducing emissions and strengthening community resilience, climate change projects become more successful, more sustainable, and more equitable.

Women are involved in helping their communities and families adapt to environmental changes every day all over the world, but their potential to contribute to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is often overlooked. In the past, academic work and development cooperation has focused chiefly on women’s role in adaptation and has only recently turned to women’s role in averting climate change impacts. This manual includes examples from adaptation but focuses on facilitating the design of inclusive climate change mitigation.

For instance, mitigation measures that target women on the household and community level and give them access to energy-efficient technologies such as improved cookstoves can significantly reduce GHG emissions and produce important development cobenefits such as improved health and less time spent on collecting biomass for fuel. The efficiency and equitability of such measures is increased if women are empowered to produce and sell such cookstoves themselves and are enabled to engage in continued education or training in ways to generate income and adapt to environmental changes. In short, climate change responses that take into account social factors produce more sustainable outcomes.

Inclusive climate change action is a crosscutting approach to achieving gender equality, emission reductions, and development goals that are embedded in country development strategies and sector policies. In order to make climate policies and projects more effective, efficient, and equitable, policy makers and practitioners need to engage in a policy dialogue to bridge the gap between climate change and gender expertise. An integral part of planning and implementing climate change measures that benefit women, reduce emissions, and achieve sustainable development goals is the ability to access appropriate finance. 

Objectives of the Training Course

The content of this manual gives the training audience an overview of the links between gender and climate change as well as of the climate policy and finance landscape, and it provides information on how to mainstream gender into climate policies and projects. By developing an understanding of gender and climate change issues and inviting a diverse group of participants to share their knowledge and expertise, the training aims to develop capacity and a multilevel cross-sector partnership that will enable decision makers to identify and prepare more equitable projects and access climate finance. This manual serves to facilitate this training as a progressive model for replication in other countries.

The training course on gender and climate change and mitigation finance has the following aims:

»  Create awareness of the advantages of and need for gender-sensitive mitigation action

»  Develop participants’ capacity to mainstream gender into climate policies and projects

»  Encourage a policy dialogue and knowledge exchange between policy makers, especially from environment and line ministries, and representatives of women’s organizations and groups

»  Support country readiness for new gender-sensitive climate finance mechanisms

»  Lay the foundation for gender-sensitive climate policies and projects that enable equitable access to technologies and distribution from climate finance

»  Develop participants’ understanding of the concept of gender, of climate change issues and policies, of the links between gender and climate change, and of the climate finance landscape

»  Empower marginalized stakeholders to participate in decision making to facilitate a partnership between representatives working on climate change and gender issues