On 11-12 Dec, Regional Workshop on Gender and Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) in ASEAN was held in Bangkok, Thailand. The workshop was jointly organized by WOCAN, ASEAN Secretariat, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the German Development Cooperation (GIZ). The workshop aimed to support the integration of gender concerns into the ASEAN Multi-Sectoral Framework on Climate Change (AFCC): Agriculture and Forestry towards Food Security. This is in line with ASEAN commitment to promote gender equality and will contribute to the implementation of the Vientiane declaration on enhancing gender perspective and ASEAN women’s partnership for environment sustainability.
The workshop provided a space for ASEAN Member States and regionally and nationally-based development partners, research institutes, non-governmental organizations, farmer organizations to collectively develop concrete recommendations and actions for ASEAN Secretariat, ASEAN Committee on Women (ACW) and Member States. There were 59 participants (48 women & 11men) representing 7 ASEAN countries . The format for the forum incorporate panel discussions and facilitated sessions such as Marketplace and Caravan which helped stimulate lively discussion and debate.
After the opening remarks, the scene was set for gender and CSA with the testimonial from Ms. Siyet Chey, Famer from Cambodia. She explained how she is affected by climate change and how she is using water saving techniques, biogas and diversifying her crops to adapt and mitigate the climate change effects. This testimonial was followed by presentation of Patti Kristjanson, CCAFS, on gender-focused research in CSA and highlighted some of the innovative approaches developed through CCAFS to disseminate information and knowledge on CSA practices and ensure women are benefiting include. Such as the agriculture reality show which is being watched by millions of rural households across East Africa that targets and informs women, men and youth on practical and accessible CSA technologies and strategies.
Then in a talk show format five experts were asked to discussed how gender concerns have been integrated in CSA. The key recommendations given by speaker for ASEAN were:
- To invest in research to better understand how and why climate change affects women, men, and children.
- Take a bottom up approach (evidence-based advocacy, good practices) to design policies and plans and set priorities.
- Build accountability in agricultural research by assessing how it contributes to gender quality in agriculture and development
- Take political leadership to put gender equality on the agenda of CSA national and regional debates.
In the session on identifying opportunities to include gender in climate finance and climate smart agriculture investments, Jeannette Gurung, discussed the W+ standard that measures benefits to women in climate change projects, through 6 domains: food security, time, leadership, income, health and education. Robert Dobias, ADAPTAsia, emphasized that it is important to focus not only on global funds but national level opportunities to include climate finance as part of national development projects, which could include a gender component. Meera Mishra, IFAD, introduced the Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) which is a fund to support climate change adaptation activities as part of existing of new IFAD projects, taking into account the needs and vulnerabilities of women and men.
On the day 2 of the workshop, some of the participants presented best practices on gender-sensitive CSA experiences.
- IRRI: Gender-sensitivestakeholderanalysis of risk-coping and adaptation practices of rice farming households in response to extreme climate events
- ICRAF: Understanding gender-specific preference on trees, land use & adaptation strategies
- Climate – resiliency field schools: Promoting a Climate-Informed Agriculture Practice
- FAO: Integrating Gender aspects into Forestry and Climate Change projects – Lessons learnt from project experiences in Cambodia
- FAO: Research on the gendered impacts of climate change – assisting policy development for climate smart agriculture
- Vietnam: Strengthening women’s capacity in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation
The participants also worked together to develop strategy to integrate gender issues in assessment & design, monitoring & evaluation and implementation and decision-making processes and coordination mechanisms for the CSA projects under the AFCC.
Practical recommendations were developed on how to include gender into adaptation and mitigation projects -from assessment to monitoring and evaluation- as well as in the ASEAN and AFCC coordination mechanisms. These recommendations focused on the following topics:
- Increasing political commitment and advocacy (e.g. include commitments to gender equality and women’s empowerment as an objective alongside the objectives related to climate smart agriculture, with clear outcomes;
- Identifying and supporting champions to push for and maintain gender equality as a cross-cutting priority in the AFCC framework, to translate Vientiane Declaration principles into national plans of action)
- Strengthening capacities of ACW members and ASEAN working groups (climate change, crops, fisheries, forestry) on gender dimensions of climate change, women leadership, gender integrated planning, etc.
- Using approaches and tools to integrate gender in the project cycle (e.g. collection of sex-disaggregated and gender-sensitive data when carrying out assessments/stocktaking, gender sensitive indicators in M&E systems, include gender criteria in quality review of project proposals, gender analysis and gender and development assessment tools)
- Documenting and sharing good practices from community level to inform national policies and plans (communication strategies, knowledge platform, etc.).
- Allocating a specific budget line to support gender-responsive approaches and activities
- Reviewing existing regulations, operational procedures, and project review processes and to integrate gender.
- Ensuring a more balance representation of men and women in ASEAN planning meetings/conferences/policy processes (e.g. invite representatives of women NGOs, producer organization, organizations working with women farmers/fishers/rural women, establish participation quotas).
Watch the 3min video of the workshop proceedings