Opportunities for building gender into sound basin planning on land and water investments in

the Nile Basin

Alan Nicol, Liza Debevec and Likie Nigussie

Background• Significance

– Moving from recognition (Dublin 1992: “Women play a central part in the provision, management, and safeguarding of water”) and mainstreaming to practical application in development

– Alignment with the SDGs (5, 6 and others) as a primary development objective to achieve coherence and more effective development outcomes

– Build on centrality of equality as a moral imperative and development challenge

– Relevance to the outcomes of land and water investments in the Eastern Nile, particularly at basin and sub-basin scale

National gender strategies

Project-level recognition, but how to achieve?

NBI gender strategy

Project aspirations and goals

Project levers

NBI: Strategic understanding• Builds on Africa Union

Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (2004)– “Gender inequalities

often lower the productivity of labor, in both the short and the long term, and create inefficiencies in labor allocation for households and in general economy. They also contribute to poverty and reduce human wellbeing”

• The NBI gender strategy:– Opportunities for

improving the programs and projects’ impact through gender mainstreaming include project responsiveness to gender issues and the alignment of NBI policies, processes, and resources to support such interventions

Project-level recognition: Baro-Akobo• Baro-Akobo-Sobat Multi-purpose

Water Resources Development Project:

• “Gender and social equity considerations will be mainstreamed into the implementation of the project including”: including– Stakeholder involvement (including

women and their representatives in all project planning

– Infrastructure design to include equitable access to services

– Institutional framework to ensure all voices are heard (particularly women’s)

– SSEA process will focus on assessing specific impacts on women and other vulnerable groups (relocation, migratory labor forces, etc.)

An opportunity for advancement

Moving from ideals to practical actions

Systematically map existing data

Assimilate, combine and synthesize

Build into decision-making processes and show how it is done

Monitor and evaluate results (establish

framework of gender indicators)

Basin Gender Profiles• Active since 2014, (4)BGP aims to

provide an evidence base for analysis of gender disparities and implications for basin development

• Open-source, sex-disaggregated data (focus on water and land), where available (and identification of gaps, where not)

• Potential users: Policy makers and basin authorities, researchers and civil society, planners and implementers

• Identification of gender-related R4D needs in basins

• Not an end in itself, but a tool for interpretation and analysis– http://maps.vista-info.net/gis/htm/IWMIBasinMaps/

Presenting data mapped to basins

• Interpretation of data in relation to wider social development knowledge:– e.g. challenges of gendered division of

labour in agriculture– access to land and nutritional decision

making– Identification of data gaps

• Support identification of investment options and social development impacts

• Capacity for overlaying data and building a composite index

Baro-Akobo: Basin Gender Profiling• (a) Component 1: development of an

integrated water resources management and development plan for the Baro-Akobo-Sobat (BAS) sub-basin based on a comprehensive assessment of options through a Strategic Social and Environmental Assessment (SSEA) as well as through a technical, economic, financial and institutional assessment;

• (b) Component 2: Preparation of priority projects (feasibility studies) in the field of hydropower, irrigation, water supply, navigation, flood control, or watershed management.

• (c) Component 3:Identification of medium to long term infrastructure projects.

Help develop a a strategic overview of basin gender and development challenges e.g.

divided into: barriers and investment opportunities,

institutional arrangement and anticipated outcomes

Support operational application of profiles within decision

making, and protocols for doing so at project level

Socio-economic gender profiling / mapping sheets could

accompany infrastructure project identification

Ways forward

• Establish potential uses and entry points• Test application and linkage to decision

making in project environment• Review and refine tools and procedures with

social development / mapping experts• Write up and record results in a practical form • Contribute to next 10-year strategy and basin

development planning process

THANK YOU