General
This project focuses on addressing gender inequalities within the climate resilience sector in Malawi and Mozambique. It is a two-year project that builds on a current project titled “Building urban climate resilience in South-Eastern Africa
The project will target two districts; Zomba which is in Southeast of Malawi and Chokwe - in Mozambique which lies on a flat terrain in lower Limpopo. Zomba District has a population of 746,724 (390,006 females and 356,718 males); Zomba City has 105,013 people (53,394 females and 51,619 males). Zomba has many natural resources and agriculture is the main economic activity in the district. Population pressure hascaused unsustainable use of resources resulting in massive deforestation, erosion and siltation of rivers and the Lake. Zomba’s topography and climate related hazards are linked; cyclones, strong winds, droughts and persistent flooding are most common particularly in low-lying areas. Chokwe District has a population of 217,019 (119,998 females and 97,021males); Chokwe City has 67,954 people (37,258 females and 30,696 males). Chokwe is extremely exposed to natural hazards: droughts, recurrent cyclones, storms, and especially floods. Cyclical flooding of the city from Limpopo river has led to high magnitude floods in Chokwe, displacing 250,000 people and 700 deaths.
In both Chokwe and Zomba districts women comprise 80% of the agriculture labour force. Climate change is increasing the frequency and magnitude of droughts and apocalyptic floods in both districts. The effects of climate change have brought gender related impacts such as wetlands hydrological regimes and this is multiplying the burden of women’s water collection and management responsibilities. Climate extremes are degrading ecosystems and this in turn increases the burden of care on women and girls, resulting in time and vitality deficiencies that lead to loss of productive time for income generation opportunities. There is vulnerability of livelihoods of women and their households in thesedistricts due to loss of assets from consistent flooding. This is compoundedby fact that women and other marginalized households living in these districts do not receive proper and timely early warning information before disasters either because the early warning systems do not exist, or women don’t have access to the information. Due tothe impact of climate change, fluctuations in annual rainfall in the two regions, have led to substantial reduction in crop production and women have been affected morethan men since traditionally they are responsible for providing food for the family. Women in the two districts have been more affected by climate change because of other underlying conditions including: overreliance on rain fed agriculture, lack of access to diverse income generation activities as a resilience building mechanism.
Chokwe and Zomba districtshave similar land characteristics where both have low lying areas that are drastically flood prone and high pressure on the land raising a lot of land disputes. Higher areas have very low production potential due to poor soils, low rainfall and harsh water supply conditions. Additionally, both regions share cultural contexts that constrain women’s empowerment due to limited access to productive agricultural resources and services which reduces women’s adaptive capacities, especially during climate-related extreme events.Past climate related projects implemented in these areas have not substantively been gender transformative and they have not produced gendered and sustainable outcomes.
The project will contribute to the following SDGs: “Goal 5. On gender equality,” through the deliberate targeting of women and youth as key beneficiaries and agents of change. “Goal 11. On sustainable cities and communities,”through a GTA where women engage in climate resilience decisions. “Goal 13. On climate action,” attainment of the project’s objectives will directly address the impacts of climate change. As a long-term plan, this project will build local partners’ institutional capacity through equipping them with skills and resources for integrating Gender Equality into planning and implementation of Climate Resilience initiatives, ensuring institutional sustainability and project ownership beyond the ACCF contract period through policyand practice influence
Gender transformation calls for a redistribution of power and a commitment to tackling many forms of inequality including the way women are structurally excluded from participation and leadership in climate resilience decision making and economic empowerment.
Oxfam will develop a Gender Action Plan (GAP) for the project as a tool to ensure gender inclusive implementation of the project and adherence to gender mainstreaming, visibility and accountability of gender interventions and their transformative results sought. The GAP process will among other things entail collection of sex desegregated data at baseline, undertaking a gender, social and power analysis through use of various tools and methods that Oxfam has used widely and in Southern Africa, collationof the gender activities, targets and outcomes for tracking, agreement and internalization of the GAP by key stakeholders in the project, where needed development of capacity and skills to supportattainment of the gender outcomes, development of a review system to track performance in the implementation of the GAP and clear oversight.
Oxfam will undertake a gender and power analysis at the inception of the project to enhance Oxfam and partners contextual understanding of how the policies, programs, and issues of climate resilience have differentially affected groups of women and men in Zomba and Chokwe and assess the underlying causes of inequality. Key areas of inquiry will be among other things on gender roles, access and control over resources, decision making and types of power and distribution, knowledge and enjoyment of rights, capacities and vulnerabilities, levels of agency and equality, and other social norms, institutional, political, legal and economic factors that affect the different groups. This information will strengthen the application of our theory of change. Oxfam will use consultants and internal gender experts to undertake the analyses. The process will entail literature review, context analysis, stakeholder consultation, collection of date from the field using appropriate sampling, validation of results with key stakeholders, and inputting into the GAP and continued oversight. Oxfam uses a range of tools in its field analysis. Based on the project’s focus the approach is to use a mix of tools and concepts to generate the data and information. The tools under consideration include the Harvard Analytical Framework, the Force Field Analysis, the Moser Framework and given thatthis project is about transformation, it will also use the Women’s Empowerment (Longwe) Framework.
The project will employthe following specific strategies aligned with Gender Transformative approach:
• Challenge power dynamics through use of GenderAction Learning (GAL) Methodology: the project will employ GAL Methodology that has been used in several Oxfam projects in Southern Africa, including Malawi and Mozambique, Asia and Horn of East and Central Africa. The methodology promotes challenging ofpower structures and foster transformation of power relations at individual, household, organizational and community levels. The methodology is both a capacity-building and knowledge-building programme which provides an opportunity for participants to implement gender-focused behavioural change interventions. The GAL processes are reflective and will assist beneficiaries in this project and the district city councils to analyse the gender and power constructs and define locally relevant solutions to address the underlying gender inequalities and their manifestations. At organisations level, the process will feed into existing organisational processes and dynamics and will be owned by the Councils so that ‘gender’ will not be seen as something extra or additional, but as an intrinsic part of ongoing organisational life. The process will enable the groups of women and city councils to deeply reflect on how gender relations are currently part of individual, community organisational life and how they would like them to be different. The process both at community level and City Council level will be facilitated by an experienced Oxfam staff and experts.
• Build women’s agency in ClimateResilience Spaces: The project action aims to enable women, especiallywomen from marginalised communities, to actively influence climate resilience plans, budgets and programmes through skills building and facilitating their participation in decision making. The project will support women to influence local adaptation plans and budgets at Council Level and in Parliament by using indigenous knowledge to inform the planning and implementation. This is about women’s voice and agency
• Expand women’s knowledge in eco-friendlybusiness: The project action aims to enable women,especially women from marginalised communities, to participate in economic activities to build a green and equitable economy in Zomba and Chokwe.
• Expand women’s voices and active citizenship through community and national media: In order to address the invisibility of women’s voices and knowledge on issues related to climate resilience, the project will be using community radio to disseminate relevant information to women in targeted communities Use of community and national media for public mobilisation on climate resilience mandates. This will support women’s ability to know, claim and defend theirrights.
• Build partnerships with Women’s Movements and groupings: The project will build linkages with movements as way to transform power structures at a greater scale. Linkage will be established with Rural Women’s Assembly, Women’s Caucus at Zomba District Council, and this is part of ensuring there is agency among women to inform climate resilience from a transformative perspective. It is about the power of women to organise, to voice, and to action. This project has intentionally planned to build women’s transformative leadership.
• Generation of evidence and knowledge to inform policy, practice, ideas and beliefs: This will be done through partnerships with academic institutions such as LEAD, University of Malawi based in Zomba and ISPG based in Chokwe and incentivising young people particularly young women in higher education institutions in knowledge creation on climate resilience through funding research scholarships in gender and feminists research agendas .
• Build leadership of women in Climate Change sector: By linking women to eco-friendly business and financial knowledge through training and alliances building, the project will thrust women into a sector that is traditionally dominated by men and make them a relevant player and shaper of decisions that impact their own lives. and transform them into holders of knowledge.
• Foster youth involvement: The project will promote youth focused programming in the economic activities to support job creation for the young people, and tackle the predominant exclusion of young people in the sector.
• Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG): The Project has planned to conduct EVAWG campaigns at community levels to support the tackling of structural violence against women and girls which limits their social, economic and political empowerment. The Projectwill work with men as agents of change in this campaign and will support reduction ofviolence which can limit women’s leadership inthis sector and economic violence can constrain the gains women can make in engaging in eco-friendly businesses. The campaigns willalso sensitise communities on the issue of land rights, unpaid care and domestic work for women. The EVAWG campaigns are being implemented in Malawi and Mozambique by Oxfam.
