Checklist: Gender Considerations for Climate Services and Safety Nets

“Climate services” refers to the “production, translation, transfer, and use of climate knowledge and information in climate-informed decision making and climate-smart policy and planning” (Climate Services Partnership). Climate services can be a critical means of resiliency-building for smallholder farmers. However, due to gender-related factors, women and men can face differing challenges and opportunities to access climate-related information as well as using it to improve management and benefitting from those improved management decisions. To ensure equal distribution of benefits and promote gender equality, it is critical that food security and climate-resiliency initiatives take into account gender considerations from the earliest planning stages. CCAFS has developed a checklist to guide the consideration of gender issues in climate services projects

Strategies for achieving gender-responsive climate services

Rural climate services can provide benefits to both women and men by addressing gender-based challenges that prevent access to and action on weather and climate information. Working with women’s groups and identifying gender-based preferences for use of information and communication technologies (ICT) can be important pathways to enhance women’s access to communication channels. To address gender-based access constraints, it is important that interventions include partners experienced in promoting gender equality in decision-making spaces. It is critical to provide weather and climate information that is relevant to both women and men farmers’ needs. Collaboration with rural development initiatives that promote women’s empowerment can be key to supporting women farmers who may have limited capacity to act on information

Identifying Pathways for More Gender-Sensitive Communication Channels in Climate Services

Access to accurate and useful climate-related information is a prerequisite for smallholder farmers to use and benefit from climate services with respect to both agricultural and livelihood decision-making. Whether or not farmers access particular climate-related information products is determined by the types of information products that the national meteorological service and other providers make available, by access to the communication channels used to disseminate information, and by demand for the information. Gender-based factors can influence differing access to communication channels for women and men. The present brief highlights some of these key challenges to achieving socially inclusive access to weather and climate information, and presents promising pathways for developing gender-sensitive communication channels in climate services

Inclusion of gender equality in monitoring and evaluation of climate services

The working paper aims to identify recommendations for gender-aware monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of rural climate services, highlighting system design and indicator development. Drawing from the literature from rural development sectors, the paper first identifies key lessons learned on gender-aware M&E. For example, to measure changes related to gender equality, it can be key to incorporate frameworks for measuring empowerment, use mixed methods and participatory tools, and follow gender-aware interview practices. Clearly incorporating gender equality objectives in the theory of change, facilitating gender support for M&E project teams, and carrying out a robust social assessment that includes gender analysis can be important practices to ensure that gender considerations are taken into account from the onset of M&E design. It is also critical to meet the minimum standards for sex-disaggregated data collection and analysis to ensure that gender trends can be accurately assessed. The paper then focuses on considerations specific to rural climate services. The paper highlights that gender-aware M&E for climate services must collect datasets that represent key factors underlying gender inequalities in access and use of weather and climate information, particularly: i) access to group processes, ii) access to sources and formats, iii) relevance of weather and climate information, and iv) capacities to act on information. It can also be necessary to collect datasets that allow for assessment of how climate services contributes to women’s participation in agricultural decision-making. The appendices present sample quantitative and qualitative questions for collection of the datasets. The paper also presents three case studies of M&E used in climate services projects and programs supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and its partners. The case studies help to analyse the differing M&E practices used to take into account gender equality, according to the scope and expected outcomes of an intervention. The working paper concludes with recommendations for gender-aware climate services M&E. These emphasize that baseline assessments must collect information on key gender differences and trends that influence inequalities in access and use of climate services in order to ensure that gender-based challenges to benefit from climate services are assessed from the onset. Furthermore, it is important that mixed methods are used to monitor and evaluate changes in the factors influencing gender inequalities in access and use over the course of the project. Assessment of the impacts of climate services on women’s participation in agricultural decision-making is also critical; it can be important to assess additional indicators of women’s empowerment, as well, depending on the project’s expected outcomes. In response to methodological challenges, it is paramount that data detailing individual experiences concerning access and use of climate information is collected from both women and men in order to ensure accurate and complete gender analysis

Enhancing climate services design and implementation through gender-responsive evaluation

Assessing and responding to gender inequalities, and promoting women's empowerment, can be critical to achieving the goals of climate services, such as improved climate resilience, productivity, food security and livelihoods. To this end, our paper seeks to provide guidance to rural climate service researchers, implementing organizations, and funders on gender-responsive evaluation of climate services, including key questions to be asked and appropriate methodology. We draw on case studies of rural climate services in Mali, Rwanda and Southeast Asia to illustrate how gender-responsive evaluations have framed and attempted to answer questions about climate information needs, access to information and support through group processes, and contribution of climate services to empowerment. Evaluation of how group participatory processes can enable women's and men's demand for weather and climate information can help close knowledge gaps on gender equity in access to climate services. Quantitative methods can rigorously identify changes in demand associated with varying interventions, but qualitative approaches may be necessary to help assess the nuances of participatory communication processes. Furthermore, evaluation of how women's and men's information needs differ according to their roles and responsibilities in distinct climate-sensitive decisions can help assess gender inequities in climate services use. Evaluation that critically considers the local normative and institutional environment influencing empowerment can help identify pathways for climate services to contribute to women's empowerment. Qualitative and mixed method methodologies can be helpful for assessing the normative and institutional changes upon which empowerment depends. Although evaluations are often conducted too late to inform the design of time-bound projects, they can contribute to improvements to climate services if results are shared widely, if implementers and funders consistently factor evidence and insights from prior evaluations into the design of new initiatives, and if ongoing climate service initiatives conduct preliminary evaluations regularly to support mid-course adjustments

From rain to famine:assessing the utility of rainfall observations and seasonal forecasts to anticipate food insecurity in East Africa

East Africa experiences chronic food insecurity, with levels varying from year-to-year across the region. Given that much can be done to prevent this level of suffering before it happens, humanitarian agencies monitor early indicators of food insecurity to trigger early action. Forecasts of total seasonal rainfall are one tool used to monitor and anticipate food security outcomes. Factors beyond rainfall, such as conflict, are key determinants of whether lack of rainfall can become a problem. In this paper, we present a quantitative analysis that isolates the value of rainfall information in anticipating food security outcomes across livelihood groups in East Africa. Comparing observed rainfall and temperature with food security classifications, we quantify how much the chance of food insecurity increases when rainfall is low. Results differed dramatically among livelihood groups; pastoralists in East Africa more frequently experience food insecurity than do non-pastoralists, and 12 months of low rainfall greatly increases the chances of "crisis" and "emergency" food security in pastoralist regions. In non-pastoralist regions, the relationship with total rainfall is not as strong. Similar results were obtained for livelihood groups in Kenya and Ethiopia, with slightly differing results in Somalia. Given this, we evaluated the relevance of monitoring and forecasting seasonal total rainfall. Our quantitative results demonstrate that six months of rainfall observations can already indicate a heightened risk of food insecurity, a full six months before conditions deteriorate. Combining rainfall observations with seasonal forecasts can further change the range of possible outcomes to indicate higher or lower risk of food insecurity, but the added value of seasonal forecasts is noticeable only when they show a strong probability of below-normal rainfall

Household-level effects of providing forecast-based cash in anticipation of extreme weather events:Quasi-experimental evidence from humanitarian interventions in the 2017 floods in Bangladesh

In 2017, Bangladesh experienced the worst floods in recent decades. Based on a forecast and pre-defined trigger level, a Red Cross Red Crescent project distributed an unconditional cash grant of BDT 5000 (USD 60 equivalent) to 1039 poor households in highly vulnerable, flood-prone communities in the Brahmaputra river basin before an early flood peak. Systems that can deliver forecast-based cash grants are a potential adaptation strategy to deal with changes in extreme events linked to climate change. This paper presents the results of a mixed-methods, quasi-experimental study, based on a post-disaster household survey. The research assesses the effectiveness of the forecast-based cash distribution in helping beneficiaries to take preparatory early actions and reduce the negative impacts of the flood on their health, well-being, assets and livelihoods. The assessment shows that the cash grants contributed to improving households' access to food, a reduction in high-interest debt accrual of vulnerable households, and reduced psychosocial stress during and after the flood period, compared to a control group of similarly vulnerable and flood-affected communities that did not receive the forecast-based cash assistance. The intervention may also have prevented households from being forced to make destitution sales of valuable assets, as indicated by qualitative data collected in July, but we do not see these benefits sustained after a second flood peak in August 2017. There is a need for further research to assess the longer-term effects of forecast-based cash on the socio-economic development and well-being of the most vulnerable