Towards Gender-Responsive National Adaptation Plan (NAP) Processes: Progress and Recommendations for the Way Forward

The report finds that while most reviewed National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) mention gender, they often conflate gender with women's issues and position women as vulnerable beneficiaries rather than agents of change. It highlights significant gaps in context-specific gender analysis and the underutilization of existing in-country gender capacities. The authors recommend that governments commit to gender-responsive processes, enhance institutional linkages between climate and gender actors, and that development partners invest in capacity building and harmonize gender mainstreaming guidance.

• Most countries have attempted to integrate gender into their NAP documents, but these references often lack detail on how goals will be achieved. For example, Sudan identifies gender sensitivity as a "foundational principle" and Cameroon links reducing vulnerability to addressing gender-based violence, yet few documents explain the practical implementation of these ambitions.
• Gender integration in NAP documents is frequently limited to a focus on women rather than a broader analysis of gender dynamics. This is evidenced by the fact that women are mentioned far more often than the term 'gender', leading to strategies that target women specifically—such as women's cooperative societies in Sudan—without addressing the underlying power structures and roles of men.
• Women are predominantly framed as vulnerable groups or beneficiaries of adaptation rather than as active stakeholders or agents of change. In Brazil, for instance, women's status is cited as a contributing factor to vulnerability, and they are often grouped with children and the elderly as the "most vulnerable" without analysis of the specific drivers of that vulnerability.
• There is a significant lack of context-specific gender analysis in NAP processes. While about half of the reviewed documents showed some evidence of its use—such as Palestine analyzing factors limiting adaptive capacity for women—self-assessments from 10 out of 15 countries indicated that gender analysis had not yet been used in their planning phase.
• Adaptation options designed for women tend to reinforce traditional gender roles by focusing on household management, such as water access and family health in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Palestine, and Sudan. Very few documents, with Burkina Faso being an exception, address women's economic empowerment through income-generating activities.
• Although capacities to integrate gender exist within various government ministries, NGOs, and academic institutions, they are often not effectively utilized in the NAP process. More than half of the countries in the self-assessment felt these capacities were underused, often due to a lack of inclusion of gender representatives in institutional arrangements from the start.
• Institutional and conceptual barriers hinder gender integration, including the tendency to treat adaptation as a technical 'hard' issue (focusing on infrastructure) and a lack of collaboration between climate and gender ministries. Additionally, information gaps persist regarding sex-disaggregated data on climate impacts and adaptation needs.

APA

Dazé, A., & Dekens, J. (2018). Towards Gender-Responsive National Adaptation Plan (NAP) Processes: Progress and Recommendations for the Way Forward. NAP Global Network. https://napglobalnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/napgn-en-2018-towards-gender-responsive-nap-processes-synthesis-report.pdf

Chicago

Dazé, Angie, and Julie Dekens. Towards Gender-Responsive National Adaptation Plan (NAP) Processes: Progress and Recommendations for the Way Forward. NAP Global Network, 2018. https://napglobalnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/napgn-en-2018-towards-gender-responsive-nap-processes-synthesis-report.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Dazé |first1=Angie |last2=Dekens |first2=Julie |title=Towards Gender-Responsive National Adaptation Plan (NAP) Processes: Progress and Recommendations for the Way Forward |publisher=NAP Global Network |date=2018 |url=https://napglobalnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/napgn-en-2018-towards-gender-responsive-nap-processes-synthesis-report.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{daz2018towards, author = {Dazé, Angie and Dekens, Julie}, title = {{Towards Gender-Responsive National Adaptation Plan (NAP) Processes: Progress and Recommendations for the Way Forward}}, institution = {NAP Global Network}, year = {2018}, url = {https://napglobalnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/napgn-en-2018-towards-gender-responsive-nap-processes-synthesis-report.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }