THE GENDER AND CLIMATE RESILIENT COMMUNITIES INITIATIVE

According to its website, Gender CC–Women for Climate Justice (gendercc.org.za) works on projects that focus on climate change and environmental sustainability. “These diversified enterprises will be developed with participatory methodologies to ensure women, rather than just men, in the communities can determine viable, culturally appropriate and marketable additions” to the enterprises involved.

The organisation contributed extensively to the South African National Climate

Change Response Policy in 2010, where it partnered with various gender and environmental organisations to integrate gender in the policy framework.

A key project is the Gender and Climate Resilient Communities Initiative. With agriculture one of South Africa’s key economic drivers, GenderCC says it has partnered with farming co-ops in different regions as well as the peri-urban and urban parts of Gauteng, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to reduce poverty through increased climate resilience and reduced climate vulnerability of grassroots communities. And to ensure women take part in the local economy and decision-making of the community.

This project seeks to better integrate gender throughout all activities, because “climate change worsens existing vulnerabilities and gender inequalities and adds to the pressures on the environment and natural resources on which so many South Africans directly rely”.

In most instances, the poor, the majority of whom are women, “are more vulnerable to climate change due to their limited resources and as a result, it is harder for them to adapt to the changing environment”.

The Project subscribes to several of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.