Linking Gender Equality and Climate Resilience in Rural Southern Africa: Policy Gaps

The increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in Southern Africa threatens the livelihoods of vulnerable people. The implementation of adaptation strategies and measures to increase the resilience of the vulnerable communities is a major priority. This chapter seeks to explore the gendered impacts of climate change in rural Southern Africa, along with the intricate relationship between gender equality, gender empowerment, and gender resilience building. It also assesses the legal and policy gaps in approaches for implementing climate change resilience building and concludes by proposing a model for gender resilience by communities in rural Southern Africa. Findings reveal that climate change impacts are gendered and closely related to existing inequalities. There cannot be any climate resilience without gender equality and gender empowerment. Climate change resilient laws and policy approaches for implementation are not in sync with international, regional, and national gender laws and policies. They do not take into consideration issues of inequality and the gendered nature of resources. This paper proposes a gender-resilient framework that integrates the use of gender analysis tools, including the empowerment framework, to facilitate the collection of disaggregated data on gender vulnerability impacts, inform gender-sensitive planning and participation, and monitor progress towards achieving gender resilience.