Gender and Coastal Ecosystem Management

Asean Social Work Journal

The conversion of mangroves into shrimp ponds occurred in the coastal area of Kampung Beting, Pantai Bahagia Village, Bekasi Regency, West Java Province, Indonesia, in the period 1990–2010. High income from shrimp ponds makes people ignore the ecological functions of mangrove forests, one of which is to prevent abrasion. However, since 2010, the destruction of hundreds of hectares of mangrove forests, worsened by climate change that hits almost the whole world, especially island countries like Indonesia, has submerged the shrimp ponds in Pantai Bahagia Village with sea water. Now, not only the shrimp ponds as their major income have disappeared, but also their living space is also threatened by severe abrasion. Gender inequality and the marginalized role of coastal women also make the socio-economic conditions of the community become worse. This study observes the role of women in Pantai Bahagia Village in responding to environmental and socio-economic problems in their area. This s...

Revista de Gestão Costeira Integrada, 2016

The paper addresses the gender specific vulnerability of coastal people in climatic hazards in Bangladesh. This study has been conducted by qualitative methods with some qualitative tools i.e. Key Informants Interview (KII) and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) to get the vivid and comprehensive views about gender specific susceptibility of climate induced hazards from social, gender, cultural and behavioral perspectives. The paper explores the gender specific vulnerability of climate change and possible sustainable livelihoods of coastal people in Bangladesh. This paper finds that climate change is not gender neutral. It affects men and women differently for their roles and responsibilities in the society. Women's roles are often confined to household labor such as looking after children and ailing people, as well as disaster specific roles such as saving properties from obliteration. These roles make women particularly vulnerable in natural hazards. By contrast, men's roles often include working outside and so are more likely to escape natural hazards. The paper also finds that woman's dependency on natural resources is severely affected by climate change variability which causes vulnerability to women in natural hazards. This paper outlines key considerations of gender and climate change that can helps policy makers improve policy and implementation for the diminution of vulnerability of women in Bangladesh as well as developing countries of the world.

United Nations Environment Programme and Gender and Water Alliance (2022). Gender Mainstreaming in Coastal and Marine Ecosystems Management: Principles, Case Studies and Lessons Learned. Nairobi., 2022

Lead authors: Anamika Amani (GWA, India) Anne-Marie Hanson (GWA, United States of America) As oceans, seas and coastal areas all over the world are facing increasing pressures owing to climate change, pollution and globalization, women and men feel the impacts of degraded coastal and marine ecosystems in different ways. Across societies, women and men use and manage marine and coastal ecosystems differently and have specific knowledge, capabilities and needs related to coastal and marine resources. Historically, the work and contributions of women, informal workers, and indigenous groups have been routinely ignored or underestimated in coastal and marine research, management, and policy, including, but not limited to, their important work in fisheries and aquaculture, in the processing and trading of marine products, in managing plastic and other waste from urban and tourist growth, and in conservation and disaster risk reduction initiatives. Increasingly, collective calls for participative, integrated and sustainable approaches to marine and coastal science and management are met with calls for gender inclusiveness, mainstreaming and sensitivity across the environment and development agendas. Yet, even as policymakers, environmental managers and development practitioners are made aware of why gender mainstreaming is important in the integrated management of marine and coastal ecosystems, they lack the practical guidance and tools on how to do it. This report brings together gender experts and experts from other fields in coastal and marine research to bridge this gender-technical divide.

Frontiers in Climate

In this paper, we present the results of a rapid review of the literature on gender and coastal climate adaptation. The IPCC's 2019 Special Report on Oceans and Cryosphere (SROCC) highlighted some of the major ways in which gender inequality interacts with coastal climate change. However, the report does not consider how gender interacts with adaptation interventions. This review was driven the need to understand these dynamics in more detail as well as deepen the understanding of how coastal climate adaptation affects the attainment of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. Our analysis is based on a screening of over 1,000 peer-reviewed articles published between 2014 and 2020. The results were strongly populated by natural science publications leading to very low coverage of gender as a social dimension of adaptation. Of the papers reviewed, a mere 2.6% discussed gender and often only in a cursory manner. While the li...

Journal of Coastal Conservation, 2018

It is recognized that climate variability has had detrimental impacts on integrity of coastal natural resources. It is also known that coastal communities have been relying on those natural resources for their livelihoods in different ways. It is from this interdependence that this study was proposed, to analyse the role of coastal resources in sustaining community livelihoods of the coastal communities in the changing climate in two villages, Msinga and Nyamisati, all based in Rufiji district, Tanzania. The study employed the mixed method design whereby household questionnaires,-key informant interviews, focus group discussions, field observations and literature review were used to collect primary and secondary data. Findings show that coastal resources including fish and mangrove are impacted by sea level rise, storm surges, tropical storms, droughts, floods and change in salinity conditions eventually compromising their integrity. Consequently livelihoods that depend on these resources such as fisheries and agriculture in the delta have declined in productivity over the past 10 years, causing food insecurity to majority of households. People have been adapting in different ways with respect to climate change impacts mainly through the use of social networks and coastal resources utilization particularly sale of fish, mangrove logs and timber. However, utilization of such resources was unsustainable as it entailed overexploitation and use of prohibited fishing gears and unlawful harvesting of mangrove. Nonetheless, coastal communities are still vulnerable to climate change impacts owing to low resource base, whereby women are the most vulnerable group due to poor participation in decision making at family level. Besides, to monitor coastal resources utilization, institutions were put in place through policy and legal frameworks. Enforcement of bylaws with respect to resources utilization such as permits for mangrove and fisheries utilization and ban of agriculture in the delta was meant to make coastal natural resources more resilient to the impacts of climate change. However, some of enforcements of some bylaws made community members prone to impacts of climate variability and change by being landless. The study recommends the integration of participatory approaches regarding the natural coastal resources management including capacity building to women in order to build their resilience to impacts of climate variability and change.

Proceedings of the 1st Aceh Global Conference (AGC 2018), 2019

This paper aims to identify and describe the role of coastal women in coastal environmental management. The study was conducted on coastal communities living along the Malabro Beach Area – Tapak Padri in Bengkulu City. Collected based data from some informants selected by snowball sampling techniques including groups of women traders, fishermen, and village tourism management groups. Meanwhile, the required data is collected through group focused discussion techniques, interviews, and observations. Data analysis was done out simultaneously along with the process collecting data using analytical techniques that are commonly applied in qualitative research. Research produces information that the role of coastal women in coastal environmental management includes; (1) efforts to institutionalize values in the community and future generations, namely the efforts made by coastal women to socialize as well as pass on values about environmental cleanliness to community members and future ge...

Regional Synthesis Report , 2019

2022

Vulnerability of coastal areas to sea level rise is driven not only by global environmental changes but likewise by socio-economic development and the ability of affected communities to cope with such changes. As such we endeavored to achieve an integrated analysis of the effect of the complex and dynamic social, economic and environmental factors found in the region to the vulnerability of human communities, and their implications for management and governance of coastal systems and adaptation capacities.