Mainstreaming Gender into Climate Action: Lessons from Peru

Countries
Source
NDC Partnership
Climate Objective
Cross-cutting
Planning and Implementation Activity
Governance and Stakeholder Engagement
Linking with the Sustainable Development Goals
Sectors and Themes
Gender
Language
English
Region
Latin America and the Caribbean
Barriers Overcome
Information
Institutional
Political
Socio-cultural
Case Summary
  • If countries are to successfully mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts while meeting their Paris Agreement commitments, gender responsive climate policies are essential.
  • In 2014, Peru was the first country in Latin America to develop a gender and climate change action plan. This case study summarizes the subsequent successes and challenges the country faced in rolling out its Gender and Climate Change Action Plan across multiple sectors, providing lessons to inform other countries.
  • Peru’s experience demonstrates the benefits of top-level political will and strong coordination between national bodies that deal with climate change and gender equality. In addition, wide-ranging participatory consultations on the action plan integrated the views and needs of vulnerable populations, including rural and indigenous women’s organizations. This has helped women to become agents of change in the climate arena.
  • Ongoing challenges include: a lack of specialists in many sectors to effectively integrate gender into their programs; attitudes among some ministries that gender policy is limited to “women’s issues” and not relevant to them; and a lack of budget allocations for gender-related actions.