Somalia: Gender-Sensitive Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment (G-CVCA) and Community Adaptation and Action Planning (CAAP) Development

Mar 19, 2019 | World Vision
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The Somali Resilience Programme (SomReP) is a consortium of seven international non-governmental organizations (INGO). SomReP works to enhance the resilience of chronically vulnerable households, communities and systems across Somalia/land. In 2011 and 2017 there were droughts which consequently led to famine in the region. In 2018 even though there was improved precipitation, flash floods and strong winds caused additional shocks which exposed the deficiencies in the government system toward the response of shocks which among others included: weak human and institutional capacity, lack of effective policies and regulations at the government level geared toward supporting Somalia’s vulnerable populations and the increasing fragmentation and instability in the country.

The Somali Resilience Program (SomReP) adopts an ambitious approach to tackle the challenges that come due to recurrent droughts and the chronic vulnerability among Somali pastoralists, agro-pastoralists, and peri-urban households. The approach builds on previous experience in dealing with shocks and stresses and explicitly design programs that promote existing local adaptive capacity of households and communities. SomReP is implemented through a consortium of seven INGOs (ACF, ADRA, CARE, COOPI, DRC, Oxfam and WVI) with the Technical Unit housed under World Vision Somalia for the coordination and provision of technical support/direction to the program. These seven international organizations have deep experience in Somalia and jointly aim to build resilient households and communities across Somaliland, Puntland and South-Central Somalia using their own potential and abilities other than depending on hand-outs. This ambitious approach was adopted to foster synergies on approaches and promote best practices by different members to better support the communities.

SomReP has secured funding from EU under EU RESTORE project partly to promote resilience through strengthening the capacity of the targeted populations at the household and community level to respond to and deal with a myriad of shocks and stress factors. SomRep utilizes a G-CVCA approach to conduct participatory and gender-based climate vulnerability needs assessment. G-CVCA is a detailed contextual analysis of climate change vulnerability and adaptive capacity of people’s livelihoods through climate change lens that takes into account specific social and gender inequalities as well as governance issues of disaster risk reduction. G-CVCA is an extensive and participatory engagement process where community knowledge on climate is assessed and the same is complemented with desk-based research, the findings are then finally shared with the community for review and validation. The processes of information gathering and community engagement serve to build local knowledge on climate issues and design appropriate strategies to enable them adapt to the changing context.

Gender-sensitive Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment (G-CVCA ) is a powerful tool that allow both communities and project staff to understand the gender based vulnerabilities that arise as a result of climate change and analyze communities’ own capacity to adapt to these changes and build resilience to disasters. By combining local knowledge with scientific data, the process builds people’s understanding of climate risks and adaptation strategies as well as provide a framework for dialogue between communities and other stakeholders. The overarching objective of G-CVCA is to provide a solid foundation for the identification of practical strategies to facilitate community-based adaptation to climate change.

1.1 G-CVCA Process and Framework

G-CVCA is a participatory process that provides a framework for analysis of gender-based climate vulnerabilities and communities’ capacity to adapt to climate change and build resilience to disasters. The G-CVCA brings together local stakeholders in an empowering learning process that results in tangible but flexible action plans that addresses vulnerability to climate change. It is a process of building community ownership that enhances community dialogue and generates new knowledge. G-CVCA focuses on 1) climate risk, capacity and livelihood analysis; 2) gender and diversity analysis; 3) community institutional analysis 4) analysis of relevant local policies, assessments, plans and other gender-climate strategies , all these will enable the community to understand climate related hazards, risks and existing response strategies for different groups identified by the community.

The objectives of the G-CVCA are:

· To analyze vulnerability to climate change and adaptive capacity at the community-level with a focus on social and in particular the gender dimensions. Thus G-CVCA is a methodology for gathering, organizing and analyzing information on the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of communities, households and individuals.

· To help assess community knowledge on climate as a complement to scientific data to achieve greater understanding of the local impacts of climate change on different groups in a community. The process of gathering and analyzing information with communities serves to build local knowledge on climate issues and appropriate strategies to adapt. The participatory exercises and associated discussions provide opportunities to link the knowledge of different groups in a community to available scientific information on climate change. This helps local stakeholders understand the implications of climate change for the livelihoods of women and men, girls and boys, so that they are better able to analyze risks and plan for community-based adaptation.

The G-CVCA is seven-stage process that starts with 1) deciding on the questions one wants to answer in the G-CVCA , 2) deciding what data one needs to answer the questions, 3) checking if there are already data to help answer the questions and identifying the data gaps, 4) selecting or drafting appropriate tools to collect the needed data, 5) gathering and analyzing the data, 6) validating the data, and finally, 7) documenting and dissemination.

SomReP therefore seeks the services of the qualified and dynamic G-CVCA consultant(s) to facilitate all the seven stages and train project staff on G-CVCA processes and how they can implement it and sustain the gains.