Gender, food security, forests and climate change

Women are not foresters or farmers – they are both,

and more

Average time in a 24 hour day – southern Zimbabwe

Sleep

Domestic work

WoodlandsDryland crops

Leisure – social networking

Vegetable garden

Women manage livestock, crops and

wild resources

Women as integrators

Livelihood strategies involve multiple activities - choosing what to grow, raise, gather, or sell is never a decision made in isolation of other options

As an aside

Therefore, Forestry cannot be decoupled from Agriculture

REDD+ recognises “agriculture as a driver of deforestation” but has not thought through how to integrate forestry and agriculture to enhance livelihoods

Women’s education and status are key to child

nutritionThe first 1000 days of a child’s life are

the most important in terms of their life-long health, well-being and performance

Countries’ successes in improving child nutrition are more strongly correlated with women’s education and status (>50%) than with making food more available (36%)

Gender roles are linked to climate adaptation and

mitigationGlobally, men and women tend to perform different jobs/tasks

Climate change will alter what they can do, exposing men and women to different risks and opportunities

Men and women have different access to resources, including physical (e.g markets), social (e.g. networks), financial (e.g. credit), natural (e.g. land, water)

In times of change, they will have different options and ‘safety nets’ for coping with change

Differing sets of knowledge and skills

Men may know which seeds to plant when the onset of rains is delayed; women may be able to judge which tree species fare better in droughts

Yet, women often not as connected to the formal networks and information

providers

Kenya Tanzania Uganda Ethiopia0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Male-headedFemale-headed

% of households with access to cell phones

Recent findings regarding weather advisories

Source: CCAFS-FAO Gender-CC study in Bangladesh, Uganda and Ghana

• Seasonal weather forecasts are rare, and the current format is problematic for smallholders to understand and use

• Daily weather forecasts are reaching both men and women, through radio for men and women in some places; through church and groups for women in most – but with limited use

Challenges for climate-smart livelihoods

Source: CCAFS-FAO Gender-CC study in Bangladesh, Uganda and Ghana

• Learning visits to ‘climate analogue’ sites is desirable but problematic for women for various reasons

• ‘Climate smart practices are being taken up, but only the easiest ones, and largely not by women

Yet women are marginalized from ownership and

decisions

In sub-Saharan Africa women produce 80% of the food but own less than 10% of land

Participation in decision making and politics, and access to decision makers is not always equal for men and women

Meeting 1 overall attendance (n=250)

Women

Men

Meeting 1 plenary presenters (n=13)

WomenMen

Meeting 2 overall attendance (n=188)

WomenMen

Meeting 2 plenary presenters (n=7)

WomenMen

Women are poorly represented in agricultural, forestry, meteorological

and policy professions (e.g. two recent CC meetings)

What this means in the context of climate

changeGreater vulnerability of women:• More extreme weather events: women and

children are 14 times more likely to die than men during disasters

• Water scarcity will increase women’s labour

Gender-specific abilities to act:

• Women determine family nutritional security

• Agricultural productivity increases radically when women have equal access to inputs

Women as the key to family food security and child nutrition

There is lots of evidence that interventions aimed at women lead to enhanced child nutrition and food security at the household level

Actions to empower women in dealing with climate

changeUnderstand women’s priorities when

selecting crop varieties, farming practices and natural resource mgmt for adaptation interventions

Strengthen women’s resource tenure (also to improve performance of REDD+ and access to carbon markets)

Link early warning systems to nutrition programmes

Invest in capacity of women professionals in agriculture, forestry & climate change

Incorporating gender into local and community-level actions

Use participatory approaches to involve all members of the community in planning and improve understanding of local gender roles and differing vulnerabilities

Draw on local knowledge, which is linked to men’s and women’s gender-differentiated roles; enhance local capacity to adapt

Tailor science-based climate prediction information to different groups’ needs to make it more useful and used by smallholders (co-creation of new knowledge)

Climate Change and Key Gender Research Questions

1. How do the different types of climate change impacts, such as more frequent droughts and flooding, differently affect men and women?

2. In what ways do men and women adapt to climate variability and extreme events?

3. How do men’s and women’s roles complement each other when coping with changing climate conditions?

4. How may gender roles change when climate conditions change?