Gendered Impacts of Climate Change and Disaster Risk in Antigua and Barbuda

The Enabling Gender-Responsive Disaster Recovery, Climate and Environmental Resilience in the Caribbean (EnGenDER) Project is funded by Global Affairs Canada and the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which is led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and jointly implemented by UN Women, World Food Programme (WFP) and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA). The aim of the project is to identify and address any gaps to ensure equal access to disaster risk resilience, climate change and environment solutions for women, men, boys and girls in nine beneficiary Caribbean countries, including Antigua and Barbuda (ANU). The three priority sectors selected by the National Decision-Making Mechanism for ANU under the EnGenDER Project are protected areas, finance and infrastructure.

In December 2020, the UN Women Multi-Country Office (MCO) Caribbean completed the Gender Inequality of Climate and Disaster Risk and Cost of Inaction (GICDR) Study. The study focused on the gender-responsiveness of climate change policies and strategies, and incorporated a mapping of the coping adaptive capacities for key vulnerable groups through stakeholder consultation.

The MCO, in collaboration with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), also completed a gender-responsive, resilience-building Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices and Behaviours (KAPB) Study in July 2021. This study provided a better understanding of any institutional gender biases that are not captured in policy documents, which can influence the ways in which gender is mainstreamed in the key priority sectors at the national level.

Results from both studies confirm that natural hazards and climate change impact men and women differently for a host of factors, which include their different roles and individual and family responsibilities, and policy development and service delivery by mandating bodies.