Integrating Gender and Security in Climate Adaptation: Principles for Success
Publisher: International Alert
Author(s): Lucy Holdaway, Camille Marquette, and Moira Simpson
Date: 2021
Topics: Climate Change, Gender, Governance, Programming
Countries: Jordan, Lebanon, Mali, Myanmar
Men and women, and boys and girls, experience climate change, peace and security in different ways. Deeply rooted gender norms, expectations and roles lead to different impacts and shape differential coping and adaptation mechanisms for different genders, generations, ethnicities, religions, abilities or sexual orientations. Ignoring these dynamics risks creating new vulnerabilities and reinforcing existing inequalities. To be truly fit for purpose, sustainable and context-specific solutions to security threats deriving from climate stress must be grounded in the dynamics of each context and the unique needs and insights of people in their varied social identities. Harnessing the valuable contributions of diverse stakeholders and tailoring initiatives to lived experiences of climate change, insecurity and conflict is critical to making climate adaptation decision-making and strategy development sustainable. This guidance note builds on a series of engagements and research conducted in Myanmar, Mali, Lebanon and Jordan into the current state of climate adaptation programmes and policies, and the extent to which they integrate gender and security. It offers six principles and responses that can support donors and practitioners globally to better integrate conflict and gender into climate adaptation programming.