Mapping Climate-Agriculture-Gender Inequity Hotspots to Build Resilience

Mishra, A., Lecoutere, E., Puskur, R., Koo, J. and Azzarri, C. 2022. Mapping Climate-Agriculture-Gender Inequity Hotspots to Build Resilience. Blog post. Agrilinks, Feed the Future, USAID. https://agrilinks.org/post/mapping-climate-agriculture-gender-inequity-hotspots-build-resilience

In many cases, women are more vulnerable to adverse climate change impacts, due to their limited asset ownership, such as land, as well as more reduced access to capital, labor and agricultural inputs. Women also have more limited access to information, which, in turn, means lower awareness and knowledge of climate risks and strategies to manage them. Social norms and gender roles in many countries limit women’s participation in strategic decision-making in their households and communities, making them less able to participate in and affect group activities, access extension services or adopt new practices and technologies. Overall, their capacity to respond to climate stress is lower.

However, this generic knowledge of women’s vulnerabilities to adverse climate change effects limits policy action. More granular knowledge on women’s involvement in agriculture and on how their involvement is affected by climate stresses is needed to support adaptation responses.

To this end, we studied 87 low- to middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to understand different climate change risks as well as impacts on women engaged in agriculture. We defined climate-agriculture-gender inequity hotspots as areas where large numbers of women participate in agriculture and food production and where extreme climate hazards can trigger crop failure, pest and disease outbreaks, and degradation of land and water resources.