Responses to climate change tend to focus on scientific and economic solutions rather than addressing the vitally significant human and gender dimensions. But effective thinking must move beyond these limited approaches; gender equality is not a ‘residual’ issue that can be left to consider at a later point but rather lies at the heart of the problem and of solutions to climate change.
BRIDGE advocates for a transformative approach in which women and men have an equal voice in decision-making on climate change and broader governance processes, are given equal access to resources and have their needs taken into account equally at all levels of policymaking institutions and processes.
Climate change and its responses offer an opportunity to reframe current development challenges through a new lens that examines global inequalities and the unequal power relations between men and women.
Visit the BRIDGE publications page to read the full Gender and Climate Change Cutting Edge Pack.
The Gender and Climate Change Cutting Edge Pack, authored by Emmeline Skinner, hopes to inspire thinking and action. The Overview Report offering a comprehensive gendered analysis of climate change which demystifies many of the complexities in this area and suggests recommendations for researchers, NGOSs and donors as well as policymakers at national and international level.
The Supporting Resources Collection provides summaries of key texts, conceptual papers, tools, case studies and contacts of organisations in this field, whilst a Gender and Development In Brief newsletter contains three articles including two case studies outlining innovative local led solutions.
Our programme of work
The Gender and Climate Change Cutting Edge Pack is the result of a collaborative programme over two years that involved global contributors from a range of non-governmental, multilateral and bilateral organisations in shaping its content and key messages from the outset.
In addition to engaging a core group of expert advisors from Africa, Latin America and Europe throughout the process, a global ‘Community of Practice’ engaged in online and face-to-face discussions around key debates highlighted in the Cutting Edge Pack. Primary information for the Overview Report and In Brief was generate through participatory processes with FUNDAEXPRESIÓN in Colombia and the Community Awareness Centre in India, which has enabled us to capture not only the dynamic impacts of climate change at the local level but the innovative, gender-transformative responses that are being led by women and men in these regions.
