Understand: Vulnerable groups and climate adaptation planning

Climate change risks and impacts are highly diverse and context specific. Different groups have different levels of vulnerability and capacity within and across populations and communities. Differences in gender, social status, wealth, ethnicity, natural resource base, and religion, among others, all affect people’s ability to adapt and are important aspects to understand and work with.

The extent to which adaptation actions are effective in helping households and communities adapt to climate change depends on the socioeconomic characteristics of the people targeted by the adaptation actions. These characteristics include age, gender, income and where they live. Most adaptation actions try to incorporate these. In this section, we explore gender to understand what it means, how it intersects with poverty, and how it affects adaptation.

Gender is a social construct. It defines what it means to be a man, woman, boy or girl, gender non-conforming, masculine or feminine in a society. Everyone has specific roles, status and expectations within households, communities and cultures that define their gender roles.
Gender roles vary within cultures and change over time.

Gender relates to, but is different from sex, which refers to the different biological and physiological characteristics of females, males, and intersex persons, such as chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs.

Gender inequality is one of the root causes of poverty. Climate change, in turn, is making poverty worse. This means that, for many women and girls living in poverty, the chances of achieving a better life are threatened by a double injustice: climate change and gender inequality.

Differences between gender equality, inequality and equity. 

• Gender equality is the recognition that different genders have different needs and priorities and that all genders should experience equal conditions for realizing their full human rights and be able to contribute to, and benefit from, national, political, economic, social and cultural development.
• Gender inequality acknowledges that people of different genders are not equal. Differences arise from psychology, perceptions, attitudes and cultural norms and beliefs.
• Gender equity is the process of being fair to different genders. To ensure fairness, strategies and measures must often be employed to compensate for disadvantages that prevent the different genders from operating on a level playing field. Equity leads to equality.

Gender and poverty in Africa: women and girls bear the brunt.

• Due to gender inequality, women are more likely to be poor than men. For every 100 men, aged between 25 and 34, living in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, there are 127 women.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, boys are more likely to complete secondary school than girls. This means that girls are less likely to transition to formal employment.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, where most of the world’s poorest live, the number of women and girls living in extremely poor households is expected to increase from 249 million to 283 million between 2021 and 2030. (Central and southern Asia will also see a resurgence of extreme poverty.)
• When disaster strikes, women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die. Of the 230,000 people killed in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, 70% were women.iv Gender differences are directly linked to women’s economic and social rights. In societies where women and men enjoy equal rights, disasters have caused similar death rates in both sexes. These discrepancies are due to gender inequalities. Men and boys receive preferential treatment during rescue efforts and, following disasters, both women and girls suffer more from shortages of food and economic resources.
• Following a disaster, women are more likely than men to be victims of domestic and sexual violence. They even avoid using emergency shelters for fear of being sexually assaulted.
• Fetching water is often the responsibility of women. It has a disproportionate impact on women’s mental and physical health, as well as their income, since they have limited time to engage in other productive activities.

For women and men, vulnerability to climate change can be a result of gender roles. There are gendered differences in responsibilities, household labor, how people use their time, and food security. There are also differences when it comes to access to, and control over, land, secure housing, money, information, credit, education and health – all of which are not readily accessible to women.viii Women are also more likely to be subjected to violence.

Social norms compound these constraints by restricting women’s freedom of movement, choice and voice. Water, energy and food shortages, caused in part by climate change, result in time-consuming labor as well as increased costs for women and girls because they have to travel further and pay more to collect these resources.

Women are often responsible for gathering water, food, and fuel, along with subsistence farming, caregiving, and cleaning. Most of these are made more challenging by climate change.

In rural Mali, for example, water scarcity is a growing challenge for women who often need to walk long distances to collect water. The cost of water during the dry season in these areas is 20–40 times more than in Mali’s major cities.

Case studies from Ghana and Uganda show that one of the most significant social impacts of environmental stress in communities that rely on farming is that women’s work becomes more intense and poor households become poorer. This means the impacts of climate change will add additional burdens on women’s time. Already, women in rural areas are taking on more agricultural work as men migrate to cities in search of work.  

While climate change affects women disproportionately, actions that empower women can reverse poverty and unlock effective climate change solutions.

Besides sex, age also determines how gender inequalities are generated and how they impact different groups. Age and sex interact to create complexities in gender inequalities that need to be recognized and addressed when working on climate change adaptation.  

For example, young people are likely to be excluded from adaptation activities, governance and policies due to their age. Some societies assume that they are either too young or lack the knowledge to engage in issues that affect their lives.  

In spaces where young people do have some agency, young women are unlikely to be represented. In certain communities, it is assumed that young women do not have the capacity or interest to engage in decision making about things that affect them. Instead, it is common that decision making about issues that affect young people is left to the elders, or young men.  

When thinking about climate justice, it is important to recognize the intersectionality of justice issues.

Intersectionality refers to how different social categorizations, such as age, gender and race, apply to groups and create systems that determine discrimination, inequalities and therefore vulnerability to climate change. Simply put, the way these social categorizations interact determines how society treats people that belong to them. This affects how different people experience the impacts of climate change.

For example, in certain communities, younger women or girls are more likely than older women in the same community to be assigned labor-intensive tasks. They may spend their time collecting water and firewood instead of going to school or doing jobs that generate income. This keeps them in a vulnerable position.

Globally, gender inequality is a root cause of poverty. Climate change, in turn, is making poverty worse and exacerbating unequal relations between women and men that have existed for generations. This means that, for many women and girls living in poverty, the chances of achieving a better life are threatened by a double injustice: climate change and gender inequality.

While women and girls in many regions are hardest hit by the climate crisis, they also play a central role in developing creative and effective climate change solutions. Women and girls cannot be left on the sidelines. They must be supported to play an active role in climate change adaptation in their communities. 

At the same time, women’s meaningful participation in climate decision-making and negotiations needs to increase nationally and globally. Governments need to aim for gender parity, ensure that more women take leadership roles in government, and engage with women’s rights organizations on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

CARE’s Gender Equality Framework

Advancing gender equality to support climate change adaptation requires approaches that increase the capacity of women, girls and other vulnerable groups. These approaches need to build agency, change power relations, and transform the social structures that lead to gender-based discrimination and vulnerability. 

Men and boys need to be included in processes that challenge the norms that inform gender inequalities. To inform this approach, CARE uses a Gender Equality Framework (Figure 2). This framework acknowledges that approaches to empower women and girls must include engagement with men, boys and people of all/diverse genders.

To plan effective adaptation actions, it is important to use scientific climate information. However, the people living in affected areas hold valuable knowledge, about the climate and how it affects different people. They need to be consulted to inform and influence local policy.

CARE’s Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis (CVCA) is a tool for understanding different vulnerabilities to climate change.

The CVCA helps those developing adaptation actions to gather community-level information and broader-level information (territorial, regional, national) to gain a locally specific understanding of vulnerability to climate change and what capacity already exists to cope with it.

The tool pays close attention to gender, ecosystem and governance issues. By exploring gender inequalities in the local context, the CVCA facilitates analysis of the gender-specific barriers, opportunities and options for increasing resilience through gender-responsive approaches to adaptation planning and implementation.

How to use the CVCA 

The CVCA Handbook guides you through the process of doing a CVCA. By following the handbook, you can identify adaptation actions tailored for different groups of people, at the community level or more broadly, to support communities in increasing their resilience to climate change. The Handbook can be used for community-level planning and action, awareness and advocacy campaigning and for project and program design (Figure 4).

Steps in the CVCA process 

There are seven main steps in the CVCA process. These are shown in Figure 3. (The outputs of each step are shown in colored boxes. Possible uses of the CVCA are presented in yellow boxes). 

The steps do not have to be performed one after the other. In practice, some steps may take place concurrently. You may need to return to earlier steps to refine things as you get further along in the process. Note that these steps should be adapted based on when, how, and why you are using the CVCA. 

Participatory tools used in the CVCA

As you will see, Step 4 of the CVCA process involves participatory research. This is where facilitators can engage community members in dialogue to learn about their experiences and gain their perspectives on climate change and its impacts on their community.

The CVCA Handbook includes details on various participatory tools, shown in Table 1. (For detailed guidelines, consult CARE’s Climate Change CVCA).

In Module 8 of this toolkit, you will learn about the process of developing a community adaptation action plan. Remember to come back to Module 3 and refresh yourself on the importance of including gender dimensions, engaging people of all gender identities, and using participatory tools. This will ensure that your adaptation actions support gender equality and promote the role of women, girls, and other vulnerable groups as key agents in the development of climate change solutions.