Gender, intersectionality and climate smart agriculture in South Asia: A review

Food systems-based livelihoods are precarious for many of the most vulnerable and marginalised people, with climate variability and change posing a grave threat to food security. South Asia is expected to be one of the three most concentrated regions of hunger in the world by 2050. Whilst highly diverse in both socio-cultural systems and ecosystems, the majority depend on smallholder farming throughout the region. Transforming both agriculture and food systems is therefore critical to sustainable and equitable development and achieving food security. Yet the critical role of gender and intersectionality is still inadequately woven into this future. In this paper, we find little evidence of robust intersectional contextualisation in design and analysis of Climate Smart Agriculture practices. We examine existing evidence to illustrate how a nuanced understanding of gender relations and intersectionality can inform a climate smart approach to landscape and uses of the land to ensure food and nutritional security in the face of climate change. Gender segregated data analysis, which helps recognize the most vulnerable, is an essential underpinning to this transformed approach to policymaking and project design. Direct support is required, alongside structured interventions beyond the farm gate in relation to access to credit and finance, leadership and capacity building and an equity focussed transformation of national and regional policy frameworks on climate impacts. Focusing on literature from India, supplemented with wider South Asian research, we find that despite growing evidence on the relationship between gender, agriculture and climate change, an intersectional analysis of climate smart agriculture, including class, and caste and other social identities, remains limited.