Everyone, including women and indigenous people, is a key actor in addressing climate change issues. In developing a project to be submitted to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), one of the aspects less known to the public is the importance of gender mainstreaming and social inclusion, with special attention to indigenous people and local community in climate project. This is imperative because vulnerable groups such as women, children, elderly, and indigenous people are often affected by climate change and climate projects differently and disproportionately. Indonesia’s National Designated Authority (NDA), supported by Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), discussed the issue through a webinar titled “Gender, Indigenous People, and the GCF” held on August 12th, 2021. This webinar is one of the series of activities in the Call for Project Concept Note capacity building conducted last June.

In this session, NDA in partnership with ECo elaborated that Gender and Social Inclusion (GESI) perspective should be integrated throughout the project lifecycle, starting from project identification and design stage, including for projects that have the potential to affect the lives of a large number of indigenous people in Indonesia. In 2018, the national indigenous civil society organization, Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (AMAN) recorded between 50 - 70 million indigenous people in Indonesia1, thus the probability of climate projects affecting their lives is high. Moreover, to support Presidential Instruction Number 9 Year 2000 on Gender Mainstreaming in National Development, in 2010 the Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection issued regulations on gender-responsive planning and budgeting that encourage the use of gender and social inclusion perspective in all development sector, including sectors related to climate change issues.

The webinar also addressed many misconceptions around gender mainstreaming, such as the notion that gender issues only apply to women. The fact is through gender mainstreaming, differences in experience, aspirations, needs, and challenges faced by women and men must be considered in all stages of development project. For example, until early 2020 the average length of schooling for girls was lower than for boys, because boys were prepared to be the main breadwinners, while girls were prepared to be housewives. However, in coastal communities the average length of schooling for boys is lower than for girls. This is due to sons often have to join their fathers to go to sea for long periods of time, which causes them to drop out of school after graduating from elementary school, while girls can continue their education to junior secondary level. Participants also identified other vulnerable groups that they would consider in their climate projects, such as migrant workers and scavengers.

Gender and social inclusion lens should be used throughout the lifecycle of a project, starting from the planning and design stage, preparation, implementation, to the monitoring and evaluation stage. Some project proponents felt the social dynamics of gender and inclusion are beyond their scope, and it is a highly complicated issue to be addressed. However, the webinar highlighted that gender and social inclusion can be integrated into projects in the simplest form, such as not limiting community involvement to one gender only and ensuring every group in the affected community has representation in the project’s discussion and decision-making processes that affect the lives of communities in the project area. Ensuring that the voice of every community group are heard and considered can make a huge difference in the project design and implementation.

To quoting Chandra Sugarda as the NDA’s Gender and Social Inclusion Specialist, “Gender mainstreaming (and social inclusion) is not only seen from the number of community groups participations and involvement, but also ways of accommodating different needs of different group in the affected community and providing access to participation for all, including marginalized people”. As an entry point, it is important that gender and social inclusion reflected in project identification stage in the concept note. This can be done by identifying the needs of different groups of people and building a safe, supportive environment for them to be involved throughout the different stages of climate projects.

Webinar ini adalah sesi tambahan pertama dari rangkaian kegiatan penulisan nota konsep (concept note) GCF. Pemrakarsa proyek perlu mengaplikasikan pengetahuan yang diperoleh dari rangkaian webinar ini untuk memperbaiki desain proyek dan memperkuat cara mereka mengimplementasikan proyek perubahan iklim ke depannya.

[https://www.refworld.org/docid/4954ce40c.html](https://www.refworld.org/docid/4954ce40c.html)
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