Gendered vulnerability to climate change in semi-arid areas

Recent research indicates that vulnerabilities to impacts of climate change are gendered, but policy approaches aimed at strengthening local communities’ adaptive capacity largely fail to recognise this. The paper “Gendered vulnerabilities to climate change: insights from the semi-arid regions of Africa and Asia” by Nitya Rao et al, published in Climate and Development (2017) interrogates some of the emerging evidence in some semi-arid areas of Africa and Asia from a gender perspective, using water scarcity as an example. It emphasises the importance of moving beyond the counting of numbers of men and women to unpacking relations of power – of inclusion and exclusion in decision-making – and challenging cultural beliefs that have denied equal opportunities and rights to differently positioned people, especially those at the bottom of economic and social hierarchies. Some references are made in the paper to findings in pastoralist groups in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania.

Posted on 20 October 2018 in Pastoralism & Climate Change, Pastoralism, Gender & Youth