Abstract
Gender integration across national policy processes is critical to ensure effective implementation of climate change adaptation interventions in agriculture. This is especially so for countries like Nepal, where climate vulnerability and women participation in agriculture is high, accompanied by gender gaps in access to information, technologies, markets and labour burden. To do this, it becomes necessary to address the inter-related issues of gender, agriculture and climate change instead of looking at them in isolation. This study, therefore, highlights policy gaps to suggest a set of recommendations for improving gender responsiveness at policy level in Nepal. It presents the gender gaps that women face in agriculture, based on data collected from five districts of the country. Subsequently, using the concept of gender-agriculture-climate change nexus, it analyses twenty government policies and related documents of Nepal based on a set of five indicators. The policy analysis elucidates the level of gender integration in agriculture and climate change policies in the country. Eleven of the fifteen agriculture related documents acknowledge the need to focus on women farmers, with nine of them also defining provisions for women-related issues in agriculture. Two of the five climate change policies merely acknowledge gender issues related to climate change. However, only two of the twenty policy documents recognize the need to address gender, climate change and agricultural issues in coherence. Accordingly, the paper proposes a framework highlighting key points to make policy process and implementation plans in the agriculture sector more gender responsive in Nepal, focusing on the development and promotion of gender responsive Climate-Smart Agriculture technologies and practices. It suggests measures to increase access of assets and services to women farmers, improve their capacity to participate in decision making across levels, and promote transformative changes at both local and policy level.
Highlights
As per the UNFCCC guidelines and requirements, several countries have developed climate change adaptation strategies and programs
The paper analyses the extent of gender integration in 20 climate change and agricultural policies in Nepal
The policy analysis brings out the gaps which exist in terms of acknowledging and provisioning for gender in the agriculture and climate change related policies and documents
Summary
As per the UNFCCC guidelines and requirements, several countries have developed climate change adaptation strategies and programs. Various studies have shown that men and women farmers often have different abilities to adapt to climate change, variability, and weather related shocks, with women in many cases being affected more than men from climate related shocks and stresses (Goh, 2012; Quisumbing et al, 2017). This has been attributed to women’s limited access to timely weather forecast information; limited available options for crop and livelihood diversification; lack of independent source of income, access to credit or financial institutions for better investment; and low decision-making power to apply adaptation measures (World Bank Group et al, 2015; Huyer, 2016; Milazzo and Goldstein, 2017). There is a difference in adaptive capacities and vulnerabilities to climate change of men and women in agriculture (Fisher and Carr, 2015; Mersha and Van Laerhoven, 2016)
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