Climate Change and Gender Equality

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Dibya Devi Gurung is a Gender, Diversity, Social Inclusion and Climate Change Specialist in Kathmandu, Nepal. She has over 23 years of work experience in gender inequality, social inclusion, integration and agriculture, sanitation, hygiene, and supporting women’s economic empowerment.

What are some of the main challenges to promoting gender equality in climate change?

In the context of Nepal and, you know, in disaster and climate change, the one who has the least assets is affected the most.

When we are trying to define who are vulnerable groups, you know, fundamentally, either they are just women (gender), either they don’t see the intersectionality part of it, you know, so it is compounded.

When historical discrimination and vulnerability get compounded, those are the most vulnerable. So that aspect or that lens is hugely being missed.

In the State of Gender Equality and Climate Change in Nepal Report, it mentions that women are still vastly under-represented in key decision-making bodies. Could you please elaborate?

Of course, many of our policies and strategies speak for bringing women and all these vulnerable groups into the decision-making body. But if you deep dive and see it, the ones who are not included and who don’t know are the ones who are the most vulnerable.

Even among these vulnerable people, they are so much exposed to disasters and the impacts of climate change. I feel that we may be losing out on using their knowledge, skills, and experience.

So, most of the time in my own studies, what I’ve seen is we are always meeting the people who are in this network, who are in the decision-making, or who are part of the networks.

We are listening to them, but most of the time, they have not directly experienced the impacts of climate change or directly experienced disasters.

The types of inputs they get in planning, the type of information we get may not be the most accurate.

In disasters and climate change, the one who has the least assets is affected the most!

Researchers struggle to find reliable sex-age and disaggregated data, what are some innovations and practices you use to overcome this challenge in your research?

Climate change research usually falls in the technical field first, and then the social aspect comes later. The preliminary questions I ask are, ‘How can we bring in social and gender expertise or methods?’ ‘How has it been integrated?’ and ‘How has it been factored into the research design?’

You need people with expertise or even technical persons to analyze climate vulnerabilities with a gender and social inclusion lens.

I try to work with larger technical groups and give them some tools and methods to help because you can’t become a gender expert overnight.

My advice is to work hand in hand with them and try to use different lenses, and go beyond numbers. When they are doing research, gender and social inclusion has to have a dedicated space for analysis at each level, but it also has to go through each step of your research.

Dibya spoke with ADPC as part of its ‘Climate Talks’ panel discussion series.