“Climate-Resilient Gender Smart” Initiative –learning from lacking experiences in Bangladesh

Under the backdrop of being one of the most vulnerable countries in the world, Bangladesh has been practicing institutional and autonomous adaptation since ages. Acknowledging the limitation of adaptation within an uncertain regime of future Green House Gas (GHG) emission scenario, different concepts and frameworks have been tossed to overcome consequences of climate change/ variability. “Resilience” is one of the recently evolving jargons by the development practitioners through “mainstreaming” climate change/ variability issues in regular development initiatives. Climate-resilient development helps minimize the costs and consequences of climate impacts so that it does not hinder progress towards development goals.

It is globally acknowledged that women are disproportionately vulnerable under climate change/variability. Gender differences are continuously reinforced by the impact of climate change/variability and the response provided during their occurrences/aftermath. There have been efforts in Bangladesh to enhance adaptive capacity of women and men in climate vulnerable areas through community based adaptation (CBA) since early 2000, which was pioneering at global level. Involvement of women with different income generating activities depending on the given geo-physical context of an area has been tried. However, there is a general lack of understanding how to address women's empowerment through such activities.

To address women's empowerment through an” adaptation project”, the approach is often sketched and practiced just as another “livelihood project”, without much understanding on how to link livelihood adaptation initiatives to gender equality. The classical theoretical debate centers on the increased workload on women while directly involving them in livelihood development (often with alternative livelihoods) and adaptation projects. The question remains whether only focusing on engagement of vulnerable women in enhanced/ alternative livelihood practices and ignoring the inherent expression of gender equality, for example, ownership and access to assets/ resources, access to credits and services, embedded patriarchy in the society among others, can contribute towards resilience against climate change/ variability or extreme weather events. Income potential can contribute in a major way towards empowering women. However, the broader perspective of gender equality goes beyond mere income potential of women. This is largely missing in the community based adaptation/ resilience programs in Bangladesh. However, we have to acknowledge that there is a gap in the understandingin the global literature of adaptation on how to frame gender-sensitive CBA.

Gender relations have been undergoing a process of considerable transformation in Bangladesh over the last three decades as part of broader economic transition and social change, no denying the fact that patriarchy controls women's spheres of influence till date. It is crucial to address patriarchy related issues and to link/ connect to different development initiatives in a given context through CBA. Climate change, development and gender professionals must work together to set an example of “Climate Resilient Gender Smart Initiative”.

The writer is Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Jahangirnagar University.