Syeda Hadika Jamshaid, Climate Change Specialist at the Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC), Pakistan, is also currently serving as the UNFCCC Gender Focal Person for Pakistan.
She supports the MoCC in building climate resilient infrastructure, towards achieving Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), localizing carbon market tools for sustainable development, and mainstreaming gender into policies and programs.
What initiatives are Pakistan taking to make women and marginalized groups more resilient to climate change, which has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic?
Pakistan is implementing various initiatives that have tried to address gender-related issues, apart from mitigating climate change impacts. Examples include the following projects:
We have started the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme (TBTPP). This programme provides livelihood opportunities for women in forestry.
It also assists women with raising plant nurseries in rural areas. Importantly, it employs female community mobilization teams of the Forest Department; which would approach those women who are impoverished and destitute, and then educate and train them.
Another initiative is the Prime Minister’s Green Stimulus package which is targeted at COVID-idled daily wagers, including women, and largely focuses on diverting and re-configuring components of TBTTP to plant trees, raise saplings, and protect the plantations from intruders.
Clean Green Pakistan Movement (CGPM) was re-designed post-COVID to assist with the objectives of job creation, by contributing to total sanitation, solid waste management, and hygiene within identified districts of two provinces (Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).
This movement was redesigned to target a total of 53,250 livelihood opportunities over the span of three months.
This would include community and, social mobilizers raising awareness around sanitation and drain cleaning, garbage collectors/scavengers, as well as certified Clean Green Champions.
After the success of the pilot phase, the movement has been scaled up to include Azad Jammu Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan.
I would also like to mention Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) risk reduction in Northern Pakistan which aims at building resilience through Early Warning Systems (EWS), infrastructure, and disaster management policies.
Project planning involved gender assessment: it aims to ensure enhanced participation of women.
All the above-mentioned adaptation measures are created with the intention of building community resilience by means of enhancing the participation of women.
Besides, with a view to narrowing gender gaps and integrating gender perspectives in all sectoral policies, plans and strategies, the National Climate Change Gender Action Plan (ccGAP) is currently being drafted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Pakistan in coordination with the Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC) and other relevant stakeholders.
You have been involved in the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) process, which Pakistan has recently completed.
Would you like to share how gender issues factor into the current INDC process?
As already highlighted, to make the updated NDC gender-sensitive, a Gender working group was formulated, which was led by a woman.
This Group would identify the gender gaps in NDC sectors and develop recommendations to close these gaps. The working group participated in various meetings and developed a working paper to inform the NDC about emerging priorities and challenges.
However, women’s participation in the rest of the working groups was low, and in some cases even nil. I also noted that the gender representatives from provincial departments should have further been allowed to improve the recommendations but given the time constraints, the best possible outcome was delivered within the given time frame.
We are hoping to fill this gap through the on-going ccGAP consultations.
The working groups organized a series of meetings to identify and consolidate Pakistan’s efforts over the last five years and to design recommendations for the next five years.
The groups also identified the capacity, technology, and financial needs for NDC implementation. In addition to these, a few new areas were highlighted which were never a part of Pakistan’s NDC.
These are youth, air pollution, health, WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene), Blue Carbon, Carbon Markets, etc.
Different sector partners helped the MoCC to develop evidence-based recommendations to enhance the NDC commitments.
All these activities have been concluded, and NDC is now in the final stages of completion.
The Ministry of Climate Change has prepared a roadmap for the 26th iteration of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 2021 (COP26); to systematically engage government agencies and other partners in the process.
As a part of the roadmap, thematic committees have also been constituted. Could you please tell us how gender has been mainstreamed into these committees?
What are the achievements of the working group on gender and women’s issues?
Two technical working groups were created, namely, adaptation and mitigation.
Both groups had subgroups based on NDC sectors like waste, land use change, agriculture, industry, energy, etc.
It was ensured that provincial focal points are also a part of the groups in addition to participation from government sector, private sector, development sector partners, academia, private think tanks and community-based organizations.
Gender, as the crosscutting issue, had its own working group to ensure the recommendations are gender sensitive.
Pakistan will have its own pavilion at COP26, with side events, for which necessary arrangements have been made.
Could you identify gaps and challenges, with reference to gender considerations in climate resilience in Pakistan?
First and foremost is the inconsistency in the efforts that have been made so far. To sustain inclusive climate-resilient programming and operations,
We need policies which necessitate all programs to be gender-sensitive.
We have seen such approaches adopted at different levels in certain NGOs and in the commercial sector.
The development of gender indicators and markers will ensure gender-sensitive public programming.
Secondly, I would like to highlight that the biggest challenge in South Asian countries is the unavailability of sex-disaggregated data.
Countries need to build capacities and human resources at the local level to collect and maintain this data on a regular basis, so as to understand and build evidence on the gendered impacts of climate change and to design climate informed-programs.
Jamshaid spoke to Bhawana Upadhay, Senior Specialist, Gender and Inclusion, ADPC.
