A Gender-responsive Approach to Climate-Smart Agriculture: Evidence and guidance for practitioners

Taking a gender-responsive approach to Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) means that the particular needs, priorities, and realities of men and women are recognized and adequately addressed in the design and application of CSA so that both men and women can equally benefit. The gender gap in agriculture affects how men and women access and benefit from CSA. A gender-responsive approach to CSA addresses this gap by recognizing the specific needs and capabilities of women and men. Site-specific CSA practices that are also gender-responsive can lead to improvements in the lives of smallholder farmers, fishers and foresters, as well as more sustainable results

Weathering the storm or storming the norms? Moving gender equality forward in climate-resilient agriculture

Much is known about the effects of climate change on women, and most research on the topic focuses on women’s greater vulnerability as a result of their reliance on natural resources, lower access to resources and information, and gender and social norms which inhibit their ability to take action and participate in making household and community decisions. Less attention is given to women’s active role as agents of change, their knowledge and capacity to respond to climate impacts, or tackling of the causes of vulnerability (Dankelman 2010; MacGregor 2010; Perez et al. 2015; Huyer et al. 2015). In the area of agricultural climate adaptation, Davidson (2016) noted that research on gender has primarily focused on barriers to adaptation for women to date, finding that women-headed farming households tend to be more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and women in all types of households are relatively more vulnerable as well.Women farmers are less likely to adopt adaptation strategies due to financial and resource limitations and less control over land (see Jost et al. 2016; McKinley et al. 2018; Mishra and Pede 2017), while agricultural organizations tend to exclude female farmers from many of the benefits of extension, including access to information, tools, seed, fertilizers, and improved livestock. Davidson concludes that as a result, women are often excluded from participation in adaptation decision-making, so that their unique knowledge and needs associated with their specific roles in farming tend not to be reflected in those decisions

Statistical properties of near‐surface flow in the California coastal transition zone

The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1029/91JC01072During the summers of 1987 and 1988, 77 near-surface satellite-tracked drifters were deployed in or near cold filaments near Point Arena, California (39°N), and tracked for up to 6 months as part of the Coastal Transition Zone (CTZ) program. The drifters had large drogues centered at 15 m, and the resulting drifter trajectory data set has been analyzed in terms of its Eulerian and Lagrangian statistics. The CTZ drifter results show that the California Current can be characterized in summer and fall as a meandering coherent jet which on average flows southward to at least 30°N, the southern end of the study domain. From 39°N south to about 33°N, the typical core velocities are of O(50 cm s−1) and the current meanders have alongshore wavelengths of O (300 km) and onshore-offshore amplitude of O(100–200 km). The lateral movement of this jet leads to large eddy kinetic energies and large eddy diffusivities, especially north of 36°N. The initial onshore-offshore component of diffusivity is always greater than the alongshore component in the study domain, but at the southern end, the eddy diffusivity is more isotropic, with scalar single particle diffusivity (Kxx + Kyy) of O(8 × 107 cm2 s−1). The eddy diffusivity increases with increasing eddy energy. Finally, a simple volume budget for the 1988 filament observed near 37°N off Point Arena suggests that subduction can occur in a filament at an average rate of O (10 m d−1) some 200 km offshore, thus allowing the cold water initially in the filament core to sink below the warmer ambient water by the time the surface velocity core has turned back onshore. This process explains why satellite temperature and color imagery tend to “see” only flow proceeding offshore

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

Mainstreaming gender and social differentiation into CCAFS research activities in West Africa: lessons learned and perspectives

This Info Note aims to present a summary of results from gender-related activities at the CSVs in West Africa. The gender mainstreaming included the capacity building of implementation team, the empowerment of women with gender sensitive activities and the understanding of gender perception on climate change and adaptation strategies

Current meter observations over the continental shelf off Oregon and California: February 1981 - January 1984

A large-scale west coast shelf experiment called SuperCODE was conducted off Oregon and California between February 1981 and April 1984. Current and temperature measurements were made from subsurface arrays off Coos Bay (43°N), Crescent City (42°N), Eureka (41°N), Half Moon Bay (37.5°N) and Purisima Point (34.70), between February 1981 and September 1982. Some additional measurements were made in the Santa Barbara Channel during May - September 1982 and off Coos Bay and Eureka during September 1982 - January 1983. This report summarizes the results of the measurements by presenting statistics, scatter diagrams, progressive vector diagrams and time series plots of hourly and the six-hourly low-passed data

Large-scale structure of the spring transition in the coastal ocean off western North America

Past measurements off the coast of central Oregon and Washington have shown that the rapid change from northward monthly mean winter winds to southward summer winds forces a "spring transition" of the coastal ocean: sea levels and temperatures drop, and mean surface currents shift from northward to southward. Current and water temperature data from 35°N to 48°N from 1981 and 1982, and sea level and wind stress data from 1971-1975 and 1980-1983, show the transition to have a large alongshore scale, typically 500 to 2000 km; the large-scale wind stress appears to be the forcing mechanism at latitudes north of approximately 37°N. South of 37°N, sea level usually falls more gradually before the northern transition event. Both wind and sea level events generally progress from south to north over a 3- to 10-day period, but this is not always true. Several aspects of the spring transition reflect coastal trapped wave dynamics. Previous studies at 45°N found persistent vertical shear of the southward summer current, associated with a cross-shelf density gradient. During 1982 the shear and the density front develop over the shelf break immediately after the transition at 43°N and to the south, but they are much less persistent than at 48°N. The stronger winds between 38°N and 42°N and the narrower shelf result in an offshore displacement of the density front and vertical shear past the shelf break, leaving the water over the shelf less stratified and more subject to barotropic reversals of the current than that farther north, where the front stays closer to the coast.Keywords: western North America, spring transitio

Seasonal cycles of currents, temperatures, winds, and sea level over the northeast pacific continental shelf: 35°N to 48°N

Seasonal cycles of coastal wind stress, adjusted sea level (ASL), shelf currents, and water temperatures off the west coast of North America (35°N to 48°N) are estimated by fitting annual and semiannual harmonics to data from 1981-1983. Longer records (9-34 years) of monthly ASL indicate that these two harmonics adequately represent the long-term monthly average seasonal cycle and that the current measurement period is long enough to estimate the seasonal cycles. We characterize the differences between fall/winter and spring/summer as follows: For fall/winter, monthly mean winds north of 35°N are northward for 3-6 months (longer in the north than in the south); south of 35°N, the mean winds are near zero or weakly southward; monthly mean alongshore currents are northward over midshelf and shelf break at all locations sampled at depths of 35 m and deeper and are associated with high coastal sea levels and relatively warm water temperatures. For spring/summer, monthly mean wind stresses are southward at all latitudes for 3-6 months (longer in the south than in the north), sea levels are low, and water temperatures are relatively cool; monthly mean currents at 35 m depth over the shelf are southward for 1-6 months (longer at the shelf break than over midshelf and longer in the north than in the south), while the deeper currents are less southward or northward. The magnitudes of the seasonal cycles of all variables are maximum between approximately 38°N and 43°N, generally decreasing slightly to the north and greatly to the south. At each location the seasonal cycle of the alongshore current from 35 m depth at midshelf leads the sea level slightly and both lead the wind stress and temperatures by 1-2 months. The seasonal cycles of all variables show a south-to-north progression (south leads north by 1-2 months). At 48°N, annual mean currents at 50 m depth over the shelf break oppose the annual mean wind (northward wind and southward current). Similarly, at 35°N, annual mean currents at 35 m depth over both midshelf and shelf break are opposed to the annual mean wind (southward wind and northward current). From 35°N to 43°N, both summer and winter regimes are dominated by strongly fluctuating currents