Gender-responsive climate-change negotiations and policy making in Africa

Inclusive Climate Change Adaptation for a Sustainable Africa (ICCASA) project

Gender-responsive climate-change negotiations and policy making in Africa
Online Discussion
5-23 November 2018


The Twenty Fourth Conference of Parties (COP24) that will be held from 3-14 December 2018 in Katowice, Poland, promises to be another turning point for countries as they will be involved in agreeing on and adopting the implementation guidelines (referred to Paris Rulebook) of the Paris Agreement. Following the adoption of the Gender Action Plan at COP23, discussions on the inclusion of gender equality in the Paris Rulebook are gaining momentum. This is more so important for Africa because Africa contributes the least greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which constitutes 13% of the global population – yet bears the brunt of climate change. At the same time, African men and women (including the youth) are and will be faced with different vulnerabilities to the impacts of climate change due to existing inequalities such as; their role and position in society, access to resources, and power relations.

It is against this background that the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Korea-Africa Economic Cooperation Trust Fund (KOAFEC), the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), African Working Group on Gender and Climate Change (AWGGCC) and World University Service of Canada (WUSC) would like to host an online discussion on the Climate and Agriculture Network for Africa (CANA) platform. The objective of this online discussion is to explore how to ensure a gender-responsive implementation of the Paris Agreement and national climate change policy making in Africa.

This online discussion will focus on the following questions:

Week 1: What is the implication of the UNFCCC 3-year Gender Action Plan (GAP) in Africa?
Week 2: The economies of African countries are depended on agriculture; how can we ensure that gender is integrated into agricultural negotiations at UNFCCC?
Week 3: What is African Development Bank’s (AfDB)s approach to ensuring gender-responsive solutions for implementation of the Paris Agreement?

Dear All,
Thank you very much for your contribution towards the online discussion that has been taking place for the last 3 weeks. We appreciate your input. All the concerns and contributions made have been consolidated and will be very key in designing suitable interventions for “Gender-responsive climate-change negotiations and policy making in Africa”.

To summarize our the discussions, there will be a webinar on Wednesday 28/11/2018 @3PM (EAT) or 12PM (GMT)

Follot this link to register for the webinar: register.gotowebinar.com/register/5905024348335116290 .

The Afdb would help countries to act locally in order to implement wthat they thought globally through Paris Agreement. There must be adequation between the engagements agreed with the content of policies, strategies and plans investimetns wich must include gender issues.

What is the implication of the UNFCCC 3-year Gender Action Plan (GAP) in Africa?
It is a good start point to take action on the identified five thematic areas. For us to reach gender balance at all levels, including decision making, there is need for affirmative action. Capacity building will also play an important role. For the GAP to be effective for Africa, there is need for consolidated effort to identify different starting points and develop strategies that will subsequently be converted into actions.

Week 2: The economies of African countries are depended on agriculture; how can we ensure that gender is integrated into agricultural negotiations at UNFCCC?

Gender should be integrated in the agriculture negotiations and beyond. Currently we are discussing the KJWP, this is a good starting point to integrate gender. The other opportunity is how to inform the methodologies under NDC guidance when dealing with agriculture. What is also important is to go at country level and support gender integration in project and programme development. This will include the actual Gender Action Plans, Infrastructure designs, irrigation systems planning. We need capacity to have a gender lens across the board (Policy, Strategy, Implementation and Monitoring).

Week 3: What is African Development Bank’s (AfDB)s approach to ensuring gender-responsive solutions for implementation of the Paris Agreement?
AFDB can play an important role in capacity building, knowledge generation, development of tool-kits and guidelines to assist countries in developing, implementing and monitoring gender-responsive solutions. They can also coordinate countries lessons learnt and provide a platform to exchange views and ideas.

AfDB has so far been able to establish a Youth Program termed ENABLE Youth and with some of her partners looking into changing climate levels. In addition to this, I quite remember last year , AfDB launched the CSA African Program to address the triple wins of CSA across the entire agriculture value chain

AfDB can work with countries to develop indicators that can be used to track the GAPs. A major challenge has been measuring gender performance at the end of a project or activity instead of integrating the indicators at the project development/inception stage. Does AfDB have a toolkit tor guide hat can be used for reference?

Great discussion. AfDB supporting establishment of National Gender Action Plans would be a step in the right direction to enable individual countries to develop context-specific strategies that focus on the country’s stage of development and meet gender-related challenges. The Plans should take a multi-sector approach focusing on women in energy, agriculture and manufacturing, among others. The preparation process needs to include a gender analysis or a roadmap to identify gaps, opportunities, and strategies that may be integrated in the national plan as well as the undertaking of participatory stakeholder engagement processes to learn about the current situation of women and their perspectives on effective measures within a national Gender Action Plan. AfDB can also provide financial assistance and technical support for training and capacity building to prepare women for leadership roles in climate change, including at local, national and international levels.

The development of the Gender Action Plan is a good foundation that AfDB can build on in its effort to fund Climate Change projects. The extent countries have reported on their mandate in the GAP could be included in the check list as a requirement for compling the document for funding.
Because of the competing priorities countries face the gender mainstreaming in adaptation and mitigation actions is usually ignored. AfDB should request for a Gender and Equity certificate for every project. A separate body that has a mandate to promote Gender and equity could be used to issue out certificates that AfDB can use to fund the Climate Change projects. This should make the Paris Agreement implementation Gender sensitive.

The national Gender action plans are important but tend to ignore the Climate Change aspect. I would suggest that the development of a Gender and Climate Change action plan at a national level would be more focused. We need to learn from the counties that have developed them find out their effectiveness.

The UNFCCC GAP may not be a perfect framework for addressing all the gaps associated with gender and climate change, however, it provides a good starting point for subsequent and future climate change and gender work.

AfDB and other ICCASA project collaborating partners should facilitate (both technical assistance and provision of financial resources) and support national governments in Africa to develop actionable ‘National Gender Action Plan –NaGAP’ at the country level. The NaGAP development process should be all-inclusive, participatory and able to fill in any identified gaps in the global/UNFCCC GAP. Inputs galvanized from such processes can also be synthesized to feed into the UNFCCC GAP with gender and climate change negotiation processes at the international level fused with the African narrative of gender and climate change.

The NaGAP should also find its place into national development strategies of African countries for ease of implementation. AfDB can designate a gender and climate change desk/officer to help with the coordination of such initiative together with the ICCASA project partners.

The most challenging aspect of gender mainstreaming in climate action in my view is on how to identify and design interventions that are informed by detailed gender analysis, and prioritise actions that tackle the underlying causes of women’s vulnerability to climate impacts, while also taking advantage of the unique competencies, skills and knowledge of women. The intended gender related goals/outcomes and associated indicators also need to be clearly spelt out upfront. Agriculture related negotiations in the UNFCCC now need to give guidance to Parties on how such gender responsive actions can be designed, implemented and evaluated.

That is a great observation Amanda. We need to look at this using different approaches so that we can keep on learning and sharing what needs to be done in order to achieve the over all goal. We have other upcoming discussions which will focus on various sectors and countries.

Dear All,
Welcome to this week’s discussion. You are welcome to make contributions. The topic for discussion is, “What is African Development Bank’s (AfDB)s approach to ensuring gender-responsive solutions for implementation of the Paris Agreement? What recommendations would you make to the AfDB to ensure gender-responsive solutions?”.

How can we ensure that gender is integrated into agricultural negotiations at UNFCCC?
Great question.
My input is that these conversations need to be approached from the bottom-up. In Kenya, we have the National Climate Change Action Plan that has been under constant review to make it more gender responsive. At UNFCCC level, we could have various countries share how they have integrated gender in their respective policies or action plans then deliberate on how best to streamline the conversation with unified output.

This weeks’ discussion we will tackle the issue of Agriculture consideration within UNFCCC and how we can make it more gender responsive.
Africa has enormous potential, not only to feed itself and eliminate hunger and food insecurity, but also to be a major player in global food markets. This potential lies in its land, water and oceans, in its men and women, in its knowledge and huge markets. However, Africa’s agriculture is vulnerability to climate change due to the fact that its agricultural systems remain largely rain-fed and underdeveloped and farmers, especially women farmers have limited access to financial resources, infrastructure, and weather information. Discussions and negotiations on Agriculture have been going on in UNFCCC and despite the slow progress on agriculture under UNFCCC/SBSTA negotiations, many African countries are already reporting emissions and removals from the agriculture sector under either land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) or REDD, and agriculture is often included in country’s NDCs, NAPs and NAMAs. As Agriculture negotiations continue in UNFCCC, the key question is: How can we ensure that gender is integrated into agricultural negotiations at UNFCCC?

Thank for everyone who has participated in this discussion. We are entering the second week of the discussion.

1. The UNFCCC decision that established the three-year gender action plan (GAP) is an essential decision for ensuring the consideration of gender issues under the UNFCCC. The Paris Agreement requested countries to communicate their intended nationally determined contribution (INDCs) at least every five years, and report on their efforts accordingly. Therefore, the GAP should provide the guidelines and procedures for the national planning process and design of climate policies. The GAP should also provide guidance on the reporting of NDCs, including information on how to report gender-responsive projects or activities.
2. Amongst the GAP activities, coherence within the UNFCCC bodies is fundamental for ensuring coordination in responding to the gender-related matters. The UNFCCC has different bodies; to name a few, the Adaptation Committee (AC), Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, Standing Committee on Finance (SCF), Paris Committee on Capacity-building (PCCB), Consultative Group of Experts on National Communications from Parties not included in Annex I to the Convention (CGE) and Technology Executive Committee and these bodies have mandated role. The bodies are technical and provide a range of technical support to Parties. The work under GAP to ensure coherence of the work of these bodies on gender issue will give the countries the needed technical assistance and provide/identify means of implementation for their programmes/projects.

Although the gender action plan identifies itself with key aspects of capacity building, knowledge sharing, participation, implementation and monitoring that are key to gender and climate change. Most of the actions seem to be based on participation in UNFCCC processes with very few actions on actual implementation.
I would be happy under capacity development and knowledge sharing, if aspects of documentation of best cases and sharing are brought to the forefront.
At the same time, the GAP seems unattractive to the private sector, there are no clear actions on gender and climate change business case development as away of enhancing adaptation and or mitigation among women and youths

Gender Action Plan in an important tool for consolidating the several decisions that have been made in the UNFCCC negotiations. It established the activities and time line as well as spelling out the responsible persons. It is great milestone in the gender and climate negotiations. If the African countries can adhere to the implementation of the actions spelled out, gender concerns in the adaptation, mitigation and the means of implementation( capacity building, technology transfer and finance) would be mainstreamed making the actions better implemented and promote equality as a basic human rights issue.

Beyond ensuring gender responsive global climate policy formulation and implementation at the UNFCCC, the GAP also provides a roadman for guiding national climate policy and planning frameworks, and programme design and implementation. The GAP covers the full policy and programme cycle – from design, implementation to M&E – making it easy to align with policy and planning at all levels. Although this should be seen as a planning and execution tool, the specific issues to be addressed at each level with depend on the skill and commitment of policy makers and programme managers. As such capacity building of these practitioners at national level still remains the game changer. Without acces to quality information, including sex disaggregated data, and the skills to understand gender based vulnerabilities and the unique contributions of women and men, adaptation needs of different groups, and the likely implications of climate actions on women and men, policy making and programmes in African countries with continue to fair poorly on gender responsiveness.