Climate Change Resilience

5thPIGGAREP MPR Gender 01The need for disaggregated gender data was highlighted as a key issue among discussions held at the fifth Multipartite Review (MPR) meeting for the Pacific Islands Greenhouse Gas Abatement through Renewable Energy Project (PIGGAREP) in Savaii, Samoa.

Commenting in an attempt to increase the focus on women, Ms. Nileema Noble, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative , said, "This remains a significant gap in the project that needs to be addressed immediately, going beyond training to ensure that disaggregated responses are put into design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation processes."

Enhanced reporting was recommended as a way to address this issue to draw attention to the impacts and benefits to communities and to women in particular, as well as the inclusion of gender in the Project Activity Summaries (PASs) which are submitted to the Project Board for approval.

This measure is to ensure that gender inclusion happens from the initial project activity design stage which will then be reported in the monitoring and evaluations for the project.

5thPIGGAREP MPR Gender 02Gender training was included in the capacity building section of the MPR programme with a presentation and open discussion on the concept of gender, followed by an analysis of gender in the energy sector and how that applies to PIGGAREP, facilitated by Ms. Koin Etuati from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC).

An example given during the training session of including gender into the PAS would be to state that any training conducted for end users of renewable energy technologies (RETs) such as solar home systems (SHS) could elaborate further and highlight that this then empowers women, as they will be the group most likely to be utilising the technologies.

"Training is a strategic interest," said Ms. Etuati. "And when you elaborate more on the strategic interest you are able to highlight, for example, the number of women who are empowered on how to maintain and operate a solar home system."

Recommendations put forth during the MPR to develop gender in all areas of the project included the development of tool kits for incorporating gender into project activities as well as the move to leverage models from the Barefoot College to train women on the use of renewable energy technologies.

The PIGGAREP is a USD 5.25 million initiative to help 11 Pacific Island Countries remove barriers to utilising renewable energy technologies (RETs). The project is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Multi Country Office in Samoa, and executed by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).

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