Photo: Groupwork during the regional workshop on the interlinkage between gender equality and climate change, Dar-es-Salaam, September 2023
The SDG13 - Climate Action project aims to strengthen East African civil society organisations to promote gender-sensitive climate change adaptation and mitigation. This is achieved by accompanying and supporting them in mainstreaming climate and environment issues at both organisational and project level and by developing technical and methodological capacities for effective project planning, management and advocacy work. This combination of measures enhances the partners’ capacity to step up their climate action and to build the climate resilience of the communities they work with.
The project activities actively involve staff members of the partner organisations. Thereby, they develop skills and knowledge about gender-sensitive climate action, which translates to enhanced inclusion of climate and environment issues in their organisations’ work. Indirectly, the communities the partner organisations are working with benefit from improved project planning and implementation.
East African countries are strongly impacted by the consequences of climate change, even though they have contributed little to global warming. The effects of climate change are jeopardising the livelihoods of people in East Africa who are heavily dependent on natural resources and small-scale agriculture. Climate models predict that these extreme weather events will likely increase, further exacerbating the situation for the population, especially smallholder farmers. Although the population is aware of the effects of climate change, they often lack the means and opportunities to adapt and increase their resilience. The governments in the region have created policy frameworks to combat climate change and adapt to its consequences. However, these are often not sufficient to reach the local population and don’t take their needs into account. Civil society actors play an important role in closing this implementation gap.