“Most of the small-scale farmers that we have where I come from are actually women,” says Bbala Goretti, an administrative officer in the Muncie region in Zambia. “It is the women that look after children. It is the women that make sure that children eat. It is the women that make sure that children go to school.”
In communities all around the world, women play a central and decisive role in farming, forestry, and fishing activities – producing much of the food, carrying almost all of the water, and gathering the fuel for cooking. So when Goretti’s district wanted to find a way to protect woodland in their area, under a resilience program funded by the Climate Investment Funds (CIF), she knew they had to work directly with women: offering them solar-powered stoves that would eliminate the need to cut firewood or burn charcoal.
The result was impressive. Not only were trees protected from being cut down – acting as valuable natural storage for atmospheric carbon – but women used the time previously spent gathering firewood to grow more food. The excess vegetables were sold and the income invested in savings groups, which were in turn reinvested in cattle and their children’s education.
“That is what climate finance does,” says Goretti, proudly. “It changes people's lives.”
Women powered local change
Bbala Goretti’s experience is an example of how taking a gender transformative approach in local resilience projects can create a reinforcing chain of environmental and development benefits.
As the world races to reach our climate goals, many communities are already experiencing1 violent storms, devastating floods, and record droughts with ever-increasing frequency and unpredictability. Rapid and effective solutions must be found, empowering frontline communities to adapt their ways of life to shifting weather conditions and new climate-related risks.
With a $1.2 billion portfolio for testing and funding innovative solutions, CIF’s Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) has helped developing countries to invest in promising new responses to climate impacts. Switching to more diverse or drought-resistant crops like millet, cassava, and sorghum has contributed to shielding farmers from the impact of erratic weather patterns. Boring new solar-powered wells or building community rainwater tanks has ensured that communities can survive dry spells and eased the burden on women responsible for fetching water. Better waste management has helped to prevent contamination and the spread of diseases during floods and heavy rains.
Over 15 million people across 5,000 communities worldwide have already benefited.2 And embedded in the PPCR’s design is a commitment to hearing and elevating women’s voices.
“We know from a lot of evidence now that climate change is not gender neutral,” explains Franziska Denninger, IFC’s Climate Lead for the Gender and Economic Inclusion Department. “What this means, in a nutshell, is that the way that climate change impacts men and boys is different from the way it impacts women and girls.”
Climate change not only disrupts planting cycles and reverses development gains, but can severely worsen inequalities that women already face. In many countries, women are blocked from owning assets, accessing loans, or sitting on decision-making bodies. They are often expected to look after the household, the children, and the elderly, while also tending to the livestock and carrying heavy loads of firewood and water.
But with a little bit of smart planning, climate investments can recognize the barriers women face and take steps to address them.
Women in drip irrigation and canal construction
Like in Niger, where a CIF and IFC funded project not only provided solar-powered drip-irrigation technologies to over 500 women - along with cheap finance to purchase them3 - but matched these investments with hands-on trainings about using and maintaining the technology effectively.
This approach paid off: women were able to farm during the dry season, plant higher-return crops, and spend less time fetching water from faraway sources.
In Cambodia, women were actively recruited to build an irrigation system under a project from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to protect communities from flooding and drought. A range of measures – from families being encouraged to apply together, to gender-segregated toilets being provided on-site - ensured that qualified women were encouraged to come forward. Women reported that working on the construction sites earned them more respect within their community, helping to shift perceptions about their roles.
In other ADB projects in the country, equal male-female representation levels at Village Planning meetings were achieved through relatively simple steps, such as ensuring they are held at times when women can attend. This has led to disaster plans focusing on issues that disproportionately affect women more than men.
In Zambia, CIF and the World Bank rolled out projects to help alleviate the impacts of frequent droughts and rising temperature that are severely threatening crops, with women employed to help build canals. On top of that, over 2,000 adaptation grants were allocated to more than 128,000 households, 40 per cent of which were headed by women.
Ripple effect
As Bbala Goretti’s experience proves, smart, women-led climate adaptation not only protects communities from life-endangering climate impacts, but also contributes to a sweeping range of other developmental benefits and helps tip social norms in a more equal direction.
Mariana Alfonso, lead climate change specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), has seen how deploying CIF funding to encourage gender-transformative and sustainable forestry activities can kickstart a series of other benefits. “Since women typically allocate more of their income to household and children's needs compared to men, these initiatives also have a significant ripple effect on community and human development.”
The work is far from over. But as more women are supported to step out of traditional gender roles and take the lead in climate resilience projects, they can help put their communities on a path to a more sustainable and just future.