SECORES asked the consultants of HUMANYA to conduct a study on the relationship between gender & inclusion and social-ecological resilience (SER).
In the first main chapter, the study focuses on the question “How can the relation between gender/inclusion and SER be explained? Is it important to strengthen it?” and develops two answers:
- By including the social perspective in a SER-approach: adaptive capacities which should strengthen social resilience within a SES are insufficient when it is mainly based on ecological, economic and technological perspectives, with little to no attention to the social environment.
- By taking into account everybody who matters: not including different social groups in the use and management of ecological systems will result in less optimal functioning ecosystems. Consequently, opportunities to strengthen resilience within a system will remain unexploited.
The second chapter answers the question “How to strengthen the relationship between gender/inclusion and resilience within a social-ecological system?” and develops 8 elements:
- By asking “Resilience for whom and at whose expense”: increasing resilience from a social perspective within a social-ecological system is not about simply ‘changing the rules of the game’.
- By combining social- ecological resilience analysis and (gender) inclusion analysis, rather than searching for a single unifying framework for gender and resilience analysis.
- By adopting a multi-faceted approach when applying a gender/inclusion lens, while working on SER.
- By choosing deliberately from different narratives while reinforcing the gender/inclusion perspective within social-ecological systems.
- By applying a gender/inclusion lens while reinforcing resilience of social-ecological systems: a multi-layered and systemic approach.
- By building agency, transform structures and change relations among excluded persons/groups so that they can actively participate in projects aimed at SER.
- By implementing strategies throughout the project/programme cycle to reinforce gender(equality) /inclusion while working on resilience within a social-ecological system.
- By connecting more explicitly social and ecological interaction through a regenerative lens.
Based on the findings, the researchers come to the following conclusions:
- There is no doubt that there is a relationship between inclusion (including gender equality) and resilience within a social-ecological system: without gender equality/inclusion, social-ecological systems will never be resilient.
- This means that it is important to strengthen this relationship, so that more opportunities are created for different social groups within a community to participate equally in processes that can strengthen their own social resilience and that of their natural environment (without being at the expense of certain groups or (part of) the natural environment). This implies that “working on mainly ‘ecological’ goals” is not a reason for not including or applying a gender/inclusion lens in development interventions.
- Social-ecological resilience is co-shaped by roles, responsibilities, social identity, agency, knowledge and (power) relations, structures determined by normative factors such as gender, ethnicity, socio-economic class, caste, … These aspects influence how and if different social groups will be or will be not involved in processes that either strengthen or may undermine resilience of a social-ecological system. This leads to the conclusion that there is not ‘one size fits all’-approach for applying a gender/inclusion lens to strengthen SER. The Tinker-Tailor-Transform narratives which identify the effect of a certain (gender) inclusion approach within a social-ecological system, illustrate this diversity in approaches. Looking at resilience from a regenerative perspective is another approach where diversity is linked to an ecological worldview with ecological and human outcomes interdependently connected. Instead of trying to come to one overall approach or workingp model, it is more effective to foster a closer engagement between (gender) inclusion and social-ecological resilience whilst preserving the strengths of each approach.
- Examples of strategies, given by partners of SECORES members, that integrate a gender and inclusion perspective, were given throughout different moments within the project cycle. This makes the researchers conclude that integrating gender and inclusion to strengthen resilience within a SES is important in each stage and level of project implementation, and that this even starts from before the start of a project or program.
They also formulated 7 recommendations:
- Develop an organizational vision or principles on inclusion. From there and based on your own and partners’ practices, explore the meaning of this vision while working together on strengthening resilience within social-ecological systems.
- Achieving social-ecological resilience requires a systemic and integrated (non-fragmented) approach.
- Link nature and people more strongly within strategies, programs and systems, put in place to monitor and adjust SER-oriented projects and programs.
- Be(come) aware/create openness for awareness of existing ‘dominant narratives’ that unconsciously shape our ways of thinking and creation of solutions.
- Integrating the gender and inclusion perspective to strengthen resilience in a social-ecological perspective should best start from before the beginning of a project or program cycle and needs to be implemented throughout the whole cycle.
- Learn from and with each other about (gender) inclusive practices within projects that want to strengthen social-ecological resilience. This also allows to look beyond the own reference frame and to develop new insights that can strengthen or broaden this frame.
- The study provides a number of leads and pointers that members of SECORES, its partners and SECORES itself can use to integrate gender and inclusion more strongly within their vision, strategy and practices. In line with this, further exploration of the available literature sources and tools is recommended, which have been brought together in the annexes of this report.
Click here for the full text of the study, including an overview of possible tools in annex 3.