Project successes in Morocco and Ghana offer lessons in gender and climate change

25-Nov-2019

The African Development Bank recognizes the importance of addressing gender in efforts to combat climate change and its effects in order to increase the benefits of its projects and aims to be the leading African financial institution in addressing gender and climate change.

The Bank’s Department of Gender, Women and Civil Society, as well as its Climate Change and Green Growth Department, has been mobilizing funding from the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) to strengthen capacity to address the interlinkages between gender and climate change in the work of Bank staff and the African CIF pilot countries. The African Development Bank/CIF Inclusive Climate Action Initiative is implemented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and aims to support the concrete integration of gender considerations into future CIF initiatives.

Learning from own experiences

In order to learn from regional experiences, the Bank identified two African Development Bank and CIF-funded projects that exemplify good practice in addressing gender in the project cycle.

These are the Restoration of Degraded Forest Reserve Project in Ghana and the Ouarzazate Noor Programme, an energy initiative in Morocco.

Each project report:

• demonstrates the different steps required to address gender considerations as part of the Bank’s project appraisal (design) process;
• provides examples of how project actions can be tailored to increase women’s participation in the labor force, both as part of a company’s human resource or corporate social responsibility policies; and
• shows how to measure the benefits accrued by women and men as a result of the project activities.

Moreover, the projects exemplify how companies can show their commitment to sponsor and strengthen the implementation of gender-responsive activities. Finally, the reports include a series of recommendations that can be set into action by companies working on similar projects.

The two case studies have served as a basis for developing a training package tailored to increasing the gender mainstreaming knowledge and capacities of the Bank’s staff and CIF focal points. A capacity building workshop was organized on 30 October 2019 in the Bank’s headquarters in Abidjan to test and validate the training package. The workshop was led by a trainers’ team bringing together gender experts from the Bank, the CIF and IUCN. Both directors of the two Bank departments involved in the organization welcomed over 30 participants.

           Anthony Nyong, Climate Change Director opened the Gender and Climate Change workshop, saying: “We should leave no woman behind in the climate action agenda!” Vanessa Moungar, Gender Director, during her welcoming remarks, stated: “We are beyond the moral argument, it’s a development, economic argument for transformation of the continent. Gender and climate change must be furthered through knowledge and finance.”

            

Anne Kuriakose, Senior Social Development Specialist from CIF, presented the CIF’s Gender Action Plan Phase 2 and Sector Entry Points.

Results from the Inclusive Climate Action Initiative will be presented at the Global Gender Summit , taking place in Kigali, Rwanda, on November 25 - 27 2019 in the side event “Gender responsive climate action: experience from the Climate Investments Funds”, and at COP25  in Madrid, Spain, on Monday, 10 December  2019 at 17:00 at the Multilateral Development Bank’s Pavilion in a side event titled “Gender and climate change in Africa: From sensitivity to responsiveness.”