Women are key actors for successful climate change adaptation and mitigation. The Jordanian government has committed to supporting women's roles in climate decision-making and policy implementation.
Photo: IUCN Global Gender Office Climate change has severe and unprecedented impacts on people everywhere, but existing social conditions leave women more vulnerable to its effects compared to their male counterparts.
But women are more than just climate victims. Women can and do play important roles in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. However, their potential to act as agents of positive change is often limited by a lack of access to resources, information and decision-making spheres. Because women are less represented in decision-making, many climate policies and plans do not include women’s unique perspectives and inputs, and do not fully utilize women’s significant capacities to address climate change.
Recognizing the vast potential contributions that women can make to climate change adaptation and mitigation and the need for gender-responsive planning and action, the Kingdom of Jordan has taken a gender-responsive approach to national climate planning. In 2010, Jordan requested IUCN’s support in mainstreaming gender throughout their climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in 2010. The resulting gender-responsive climate action plan is groundbreaking in the region.
Jordan’s climate change Gender Action Plan (ccGAP) outlines the power of women as potential change agents, highlighting the importance of the roles that women currently play and laying out strategies to increase women’s levels of education, awareness, technical training and participation capacity. The plan aims “to ensure that national climate change efforts mainstream gender considerations so that women and men can have access to, participate in, contribute to and hence optimally benefit from climate change initiatives, programs, policies and funds.”
Jordan’s climate change Gender Action Plan has been a major driver for national-level dialogue on gender and climate change, and highly influential to the kingdom’s national climate plans and global climate commitments.
In 2013, Jordan became the first country in the Middle East to develop a comprehensive national climate change plan (NCCP). Jordan’s NCCP champions both gender equality and women’s contributions as key to a more sustainable future, and identifies the ccGAP as an important tool for furthering gender equality and women’s advancement in Jordan. The plan includes specific guidelines for integrating women and gender considerations in climate change strategies for stakeholders across all sectors and levels of government.
The ccGAP and ccGAP-influenced NCCP led to Jordan’s gender-responsive Third National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2014. This communication emphasized the importance of building the capacity of women to participate in in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies and declared women to be key agents of change in efforts to address climate issues.
In 2015, Jordan referred to their ccGAP in their 2015 Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), which outlined their gender-inclusive strategies in adaptation and mitigation-related economic sectors, emphasized their commitment to gender mainstreaming within the context of sustainable development, and recognition of gender as a cross-cutting issue.
Jordan has also shown leadership in other innovative climate projects including the Social, Ecological & Agricultural Resilience in the Face of Climate Change (SEARCH) project, which aims to give local communities and other stakeholders the skills and knowledge they need to assess the impact of climate change on a day-to-day basis and helps them develop a realistic vision for building climate resilience.
As Parties and stakeholders come together to sign the Paris Agreement in April 2016, lessons learned and models of success are increasingly important to achieving broader-scale climate and sustainable development goals. From a gender perspective, Jordan shines as an outstanding example of national commitment to ensuring that policies and plans empower citizens to promote climate resilience.
Jordan’s work to mainstream gender into national policy and programming is the result of a long-term, multi-sectoral collaboration amongst ministries, international organizations including IUCN, and civil society at all levels that builds on existing commitments and strategies, including the ccGAP. Above all, the country’s groundbreaking recognition that gender issues need to be incorporated into climate change action plans demonstrates Jordan’s commitment to gender equality and willingness and ability to empower women through policy innovation and cross-ministerial and -sectoral cooperation.
