Woman in agriculture, and climate risks: Hotspots for development
This study (PDF), in the Climatic Change journal, presents a methodology to identify hotspots where climate change adaptation and gender based interventions could be prioritized. There is rising interest among research and development practitioners to arrive at impact driven solutions in the field of gender and climate change adaptation. Climate change adaptation interventions can be better targeted by being linked with a type of climatic risks experienced by women farmers, their social profile and their needs based on the role they play in agriculture. First, female participation in agriculture is defined as the absolute number of females whose major economic activity is working in agriculture, which was derived by compiling rural level data. Second, three types of climatic risks (drought, extreme rainfall and heat waves) were mapped using gridded data. Lastly, female participation was overlayed with climate risks using a geographic information system (GIS). 36 hotspots were identified, including 14.4% of the women farmers. Socio-economic characterization of the hotspot population highlights barriers, such as labor, credit and market access, and lower wage rate for female farmers. The potential of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies and practices to assist female farmers to adapt to climate change, while trying to address constrained they face, are emphasized. Furthermore, there is potential to learn from current efforts for efficient scalability of gender and climate change adaptation interventions. These results can be used as an input for planning gender-based policies to enable streamlining priorities. This may be done by including special provisions as part of the women specific state, or national level policies for the hotspot regions, or allocating resources for activities especially targeted at these hotspots. The hotspot identification needs t be followed by further examination of gender issues in each hotspot to formulate suitable adaptation options. Assessment of the socioeconomic characteristics of the hotspot population can help in further reforming interventions.