The diversity of gendered adaptation strategies to climate change of Indian farmers: A feminist intersectional approach

Participatory monitoring in community-based fisheries management through a gender lens

In small-scale fisheries management, the significance of participation is widely recognised but we are still learning how this can be better operationalised to include different groups, such as women or Indigenous peoples. Participatory monitoring is one tool which has been used to increase participation in fisheries management. The aim of this review is to use critical interpretive synthesis to examine the literature on participatory monitoring within community-based fisheries management from a gender perspective. The synthesis identified and discussed several key areas: reasons presented in the literature for engaging with the themes of gender or participatory monitoring, gendered aspects of participatory monitoring, knowledge valuation and prioritisation in management, replicability and transparency of programme or research methods, and marginalisation narratives. Our findings show the complexities of conducting gender-aware participatory monitoring. Participatory monitoring has the potential to be a transformative and empowering process if the power dynamics involved are considered and addressed.

Diversifying Indigenous Vulnerability and Adaptation: An Intersectional Reading of Māori Women’s Experiences of Health, Wellbeing, and Climate Change

Despite evidence that Indigenous peoples’ multiple subjectivities engender diverse lived experiences both between and within Indigenous groups, the influence of multiple subjectivities on Indigenous peoples’ vulnerability and adaptation to climate change is largely un-explored. Drawing on ethnographic research with Indigenous Māori women in Aotearoa New Zealand, this paper provides empirical evidence that subjectivity-mediated power dynamics operating within Indigenous societies (at the individual and household scale) are important determinants of vulnerability and adaptation which should be considered in both scholarship and policy. Using an intersectional framework, I demonstrate how different Māori women and their whānau (families) live, cope with, and adapt to the embodied physical and emotional health effects of climate change in radically different ways because of their subject positionings, even though they belong to the same community, hapū (sub-tribe), or iwi (tribe). In underlining these heterogenous experiences, I provide an avenue for reconsidering how climate adaptation scholarship, policies, and practices might better engage with the complex, amorphous realities within Māori and other Indigenous communities. I argue it is possible to develop more inclusive, tailored, and sustainable adaptation that considers divergent vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities within Indigenous communities, groups, and societies and supports customised vulnerability-reduction strategies.

One Size Does Not Fit All—Addressing the Complexity of Food System Sustainability

Food system sustainability has been highlighted as one of the major strategies to ensure healthy diets. A plethora of approaches to stabilize food systems have been suggested, including agroecology, climate-smart agriculture, and other forms of sustainable agriculture. However, a disconnect between sustainable production and consumption exists, which may hinder further progress toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2. This discourse was needed to connect these intersectional perspectives. To meet this need, we bring together the disconnected socio-environmental pillars and show how together they contribute to the food system sustainability agenda. We discuss the complexity of food system sustainability to cater to different geographies, building on evidence from development projects worldwide. We account for factors such as the need to incorporate intersectionality factors, food-system-related policy issues, food waste, food injustice, and undernutrition. While these intersectional inequalities can be solved through various human interventions, policy implementation, and dietary choices, we found that connecting the different policymakers remains a significant challenge for a sustainable food system. We propose implementing specific food system sustainability strategies that will be useful for policymakers and other stakeholders to enable the inclusion of a socio-environmental perspective for food systems that connect agricultural production with consumption.

Climate risks and adaptation strategies of farmers in East Africa and South Asia

Understanding major climate risks, adaptation strategies, and factors influencing the choice of those strategies is crucial to reduce farmers’ vulnerability. Employing comprehensive data from 2822 farm households in Ethiopia and Kenya (East Africa; EA) and 1902 farm households in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal (South Asia; SA), this study investigates the main climate risks that farmers faced and the adaptation strategies they used. Among others, excessive rainfall and heightened crop pest/disease incidence are commonly observed climate-induced risks in all study areas, while cyclones and salinity are unique to Bangladesh. Drought is prevalent in Ethiopia, India, Kenya, and Nepal. Farmers in those countries responded with strategies that include change in farming practices, sustainable land management, reduce consumption, sell assets, use savings and borrowings, seek alternative employment and assistance from government or NGO. In general, farmers faced several multiple climate risks simultaneously and they responded with multiple adaptation strategies. Therefore, this study used a multivariate probit (MVP) approach to examine the factors influencing the adoption of adaptation strategies. Unlike other studies, we also tested and corrected for possible endogeneity in model estimation. All the countries mentioned have low adaptive capacity to address climate change, which is further weakened by inadequate governance and inefficient institutions. We observed significant differences in the choice of adaptation strategies between male-headed households (MHHs) and female-headed households (FHHs), as well as across countries. Generally, MHHs are more likely to seek additional employment and change agricultural practices, while FHHs and households headed by older persons tend to reduce consumption and rely on savings and borrowings. Institutional support for adaptation is much less in EA compared to SA. Training on alternative farming practices, enhancing non-farm employment options, better institutional support, and social security for older farmers are crucial for climate change adaptation in both regions.

Documentation and validation of climate change perception of an ethnic community of the western Himalaya

The high-altitude regions of Himalaya are among the best indicators of climate change yet noticeable for the lack of climate monitoring stations. However, they support ethnic communities whose livelihood activities are climate driven. Consequently, these communities are keen observers of the same and documenting their perception on changing climate is now an important area of global research. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the prime objective of documenting the climate change perception of Bhangalis-a resident community of western Himalaya, and analyzing variation in their perceptions in relation to age and gender. For this, respondent surveys (household, n = 430; individual interviews, n = 240) were carried out and the collected data were subjected to statistical analyses. The study also validated the perception of Bhangalis using the available weather data (1974-2017) through the Mann-Kendall test. The results reveal that Bhangalis perceived 11 indicators of changing climate, of which decrease in snowfall was the most prominent (reported by ~ 97% of the respondents). The perceptions varied between the two genders with males having significantly higher proportion of responses for all the 11 indicators. Similarly, differences in perception among the age groups were also observed, elderly people reported higher proportion of climate change indicators as compared to respondents of lower age. Notably, patterns of temperature and rainfall perceptions by the Bhangalis agreed with the trends of meteorological data. This highlights the importance of the study in documenting knowledge of ethnic communities especially from areas that lack monitoring stations. It argues for involving them in climate change programs.

Enhancing and expanding intersectional research for climate change adaptation in agrarian settings

Most current approaches focused on vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation to climate change frame gender and its influence in a manner out-of-step with contemporary academic and international development research. The tendency to rely on analyses of the sex-disaggregated gender categories of 'men' and 'women' as sole or principal divisions explaining the abilities of different people within a group to adapt to climate change, illustrates this problem. This framing of gender persists in spite of established bodies of knowledge that show how roles and responsibilities that influence a person´s ability to deal with climate-induced and other stressors emerge at the intersection of diverse identity categories, including but not limited to gender, age, seniority, ethnicity, marital status, and livelihoods. Here, we provide a review of relevant literature on this topic and argue that approaching vulnerability to climate change through intersectional understandings of identity can help improve adaptation programming, project design, implementation, and outcomes.

Gender perspectives in resilience, vulnerability and adaptation to global environmental change

The main goal of this special issue is to offer a room for interdisciplinary and engaged research in global environmental change (GEC), where gender plays a key role in building resilience and adaptation pathways. In this editorial paper, we explain the background setting, key questions and core approaches of gender and feminist research in vulnerability, resilience and adaptation to GEC. Highlighting the interlinkages between gender and GEC, we introduce the main contributions of the collection of 11 papers in this special issue. Nine empirical papers from around the globe allow to understand how gendered diversity in knowledge, institutions and everyday practices matters in producing barriers and options for achieving resilience and adaptive capacity in societies. Additionally, two papers contribute to the theoretical debate through a systematic review and an insight on the relevance of intersectional framings within GEC research and development programming.

A synthesis of convergent reflections, tensions and silences in linking gender and global environmental change research

This synthesis article joins the authors of the special issue "Gender perspectives in resilience, vulnerability and adaptation to global environmental change" in a common reflective dialogue about the main contributions of their papers. In sum, here we reflect on links between gender and feminist approaches to research in adaptation and resilience in global environmental change (GEC). The main theoretical contributions of this special issue are threefold: emphasizing the relevance of power relations in feminist political ecology, bringing the livelihood and intersectionality approaches into GEC, and linking resilience theories and critical feminist research. Empirical insights on key debates in GEC studies are also highlighted from the nine cases analysed, from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific. Further, the special issue also contributes to broaden the gender approach in adaptation to GEC by incorporating research sites in the Global North alongside sites from the Global South. This paper examines and compares the main approaches adopted (e.g. qualitative or mixed methods) and the methodological challenges that derive from intersectional perspectives. Finally, key messages for policy agendas and further research are drawn from the common reflection.