Strengthening Gender Equity in Locally Led Adaptation Processes in Africa

Women worldwide play a key role in agriculture, household food security, and climate adaptation, but they face significant barriers to accessing adaptation resources and are largely excluded from decision-making processes. The barriers women face include the absence of adequate gender consideration in funder and public policies, program design, and technology selection; as well as restrictive sociocultural perceptions, norms, and structures, like the gendered division of labor.

Using numerous examples from Africa’s agricultural sector, this working paper discusses and illustrates seven factors that enable gender equity within Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) processes, and how these can work together to benefit groups disproportionately affected by climate change. Three featured case studies — fishing communities in Senegal, women-led enterprises in South Africa, and community-based agroecological efforts in Zambia—show these factors at work.

This paper builds on prior WRI research on locally led adaptation, which includes understanding the extent of LLA efforts globally and how to put LLA principles into practice.

As investments in LLA grow, funders, governments, and other implementers must take steps to ensure that programming also addresses gender inequities while promoting local agency, taking advantage of the strong complementarities between gender equality and adaptation goals.

Executive Summary

Highlights

Locally led adaptation (LLA), which is gaining recognition around the world, requires that finance and decision-making processes prioritize the agency of local actors on the front lines of climate change impacts, thereby enabling more effective and inclusive management of climate risks.

Although the benefits of integrating gender considerations into policies and programs are now well established, efforts have not focused on fostering the long-term transformations needed to attain gender equality.

As investments in LLA grow, funders, governments, and other institutions must take steps to ensure that programming also addresses gender inequities while promoting local agency, taking advantage of the strong complementarities between gender equality and adaptation goals.

Using numerous examples from Africa’s agricultural sector, this working paper illustrates seven factors that enable gender equity within LLA processes, and how these can work together to benefit groups disproportionately affected by climate change.

Three featured case studies show these factors at work: fishing communities in Senegal, women-led enterprises in South Africa, and community-based agroecological efforts in Zambia.

Context

Women in Africa and worldwide play a key role in agriculture, household food security, and climate adaptation, but they face significant barriers to accessing adaptation resources and are largely excluded from decision-making processes. The barriers women face include the absence of adequate gender consideration in funder and public policies, program design, and technology selection; as well as restrictive sociocultural perceptions, norms, and structures, including the gendered division of labor. Locally led, gender-equitable adaptation must confront these barriers, deliberately ensuring decision-making power for women and women-led partner organizations throughout the design and implementation of adaptation measures.

About this paper

Written by World Resources Institute (WRI) and Women’s Climate Centers International (WCCI), this working paper draws from literature, case study analysis, and key informant interviews to explore enabling factors that help funders and implementers supporting LLA integrate gender considerations more effectively into their programming and thereby share power with women and other typically marginalized groups. This paper focuses on the agriculture sector in Africa, recognizing that Africa’s agricultural systems face many climate risks, including drought, floods, heatwaves, and higher incidence of pests and disease. Agriculture in Africa was also of particular interest to the funder of this research.

This paper builds on prior WRI research on locally led adaptation, which includes understanding the extent of LLA efforts globally and how to put LLA principles into practice.

Key Findings

• Although gender-related considerations such as including women in project or program activities are frequently cited in the literature, these efforts do not generally meet established criteria for promoting gender transformation. Gender-transformative activities are those that contribute to gender equality as a long-term outcome, for example, going beyond merely inviting women’s participation to designing and implementing programs that foster shifts away from harmful social norms and power dynamics.
• The benefits of gender-transformative LLA can include better-informed adaptation planning that reflects women’s priorities and realities and enables longer-term climate resilience and gender equity.
• Based on Huyer et al. (2021b) and other literature, the authors identified seven enabling factors that help embed gender equity within LLA. These factors have the potential to contribute to long-term gender transformation and climate adaptation:
  • The presence of gender considerations in funding, national policies, and other frameworks. This includes strategies to identify and challenge the decision-making structures that have historically excluded and devalued women.
  • Flexible, adaptable project finance and program design. For example, accommodating the unique or specific needs of women to effectively engage in and benefit from adaptation projects.
  • Confronting institutions and norms that constrain women. Understanding how and why women are left out of decisions, services, and activities, and taking deliberate measures to address context-specific sociocultural barriers.
  • Greater exercise of agency. Creating targeted spaces and platforms to promote women’s leadership, including opportunities to assume key leadership positions in their communities and local government, and women’s groups and associations, to advance climate resilience.
  • Decreased labor burdens for women and girls. Reducing the time women dedicate to domestic and productive responsibilities through more equitable division of labor and labor-saving technologies.
  • Gender-equal access to and control over resources, including finance and land. Structures and models that can make adaptation resources more accessible to women include local revolving fund systems, savings groups, climate insurance programs, and cooperatives.
  • Gender-equal benefits from technology. Selecting and disseminating innovations that meet women’s specific needs and the agricultural activities they engage in.

Recommendations

The authors recommend the following priority actions for funders and implementers seeking to support gender equity within LLA processes:

• Commit to and invest in long-term, equitable relationships with local partners, especially women and women-led organizations.
• Invest in capacity building of staff to conduct gender analyses, implement gender policies, and foster equitable partnerships.
• Enable leadership opportunities and decision-making authority for women within institutions, programs, and projects.
• Ensure that any use of technology or innovation is gender-responsive and appropriate for the local context.
• Ensure alignment with national gender policies, strategies, and international commitments.
• Value the time and expertise of women and local partners.
• Drive locally contextual structural changes required for long-term gender-equitable LLA. This includes working with women, men, and local partners to assess and confront harmful sociocultural norms and societal structures and biases, ensuring adequate safeguards.

Given their position within the global adaptation finance architecture and their influence over the size, length, priorities, and terms of related funding windows, funders should also take these actions:

• Provide patient and flexible funding—in terms of duration and the time expected to achieve anticipated outcomes—paired with longer timelines of at least five years to accommodate social change and iterative learning processes.
• Ensure that agreements with partners allow adaptive management as social and adaptation needs evolve.
• Promote bottom-up accountability for applying gender policies and fostering equitable partnerships through locally led monitoring, evaluation, and learning, as well as other internal accountability processes.