Gender and Climate Change –Challenges and way forward

Author: Abdou Rahman Sallah

            Executive Director BAJ Gambia

Gender inequalities substantially limit women’s access to control over and use of services and productive resources. As a result, natural hazards have different impact on men and women. These inequalities make the effect more devastating for women. With equal gender opportunities, a new environmentally friendly perspective needs to be developed that makes men and women equally accountable for their personal consumption and renders them responsible for the impact they have on the environment.

Urgent actions are needed to combat climate change but lack of information on gender and climate change has slowed our reactions. Today, there is inadequate information on gender issues relating to climate change. Further research is therefore needed in several aspects to establish the linkages between gender and climate change.

One key challenge is the small proportion of women in relevant professions and position of authority. International climate change process would be achieve sustainably we need to espouse the principles of gender in all stages of the process from research, through analysis, agenda formation, negotiation and decision making, regime implementation etc.

Regional training on sustainable land mgt, climate change adaptation in Banjul

A five-day training on local project management for recipient communities of the regional sustainable land management and climate change adaptation in the Sahel and West Africa Programme (PRGD) will run from the 11^th till 15^th August 2014, at the Ocean Bay Hotel.

In his welcoming remarks, the governor of North Bank Region, Lamin Queen Jammeh, said the forum was aimed at developing the capacities of rural communities, project managers and promoters through training, using a regional approach towards Sustainable Land Management (SLM) and climate change adaptation in the Sahel and West Africa.

It was due to the commitment of the respective governments, development partners and individuals’ efforts that the PRGDT project was conceived some time back, he said.

He noted that individual projects under the main project are being harmonised for training and are currently being attended to with great enthusiasm from participants in The Gambia.

“This training workshop, which converged all stakeholders on SLM starting from the local communities at rural policy makers and at national levels, was a clear manifestation that decentralization is taking place in a context of differential but shared responsibility in the management of our scarce resources,” Governor Jammeh added.

He said countries through the realization of the impact of climate change, particularly in the rural areas, is affecting livelihoods, and adaptation as a climate response to the communities could not be overemphasized.

The use of sound knowledge and appropriate tools to address climate change effects and impacts as desired by the training could be one of the surest means of improving community livelihood which would ensure environmental sustainability.