UNDP and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry Climate Change Directorate convened key stakeholders working on the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in Kenya to analyse the status of gender mainstreaming in climate action and discuss strengths and weaknesses of current approaches to center gender in implementing the NDCs. This workshop was held as part of the global UNDP NDC Support Programme, a partnership with the EU and governments of Germany and Spain.

Stakeholders’ capacity to apply a gender lens into climate change actions was strengthened through participation, whilst findings of an in-depth gender analysis in the context of Kenya’s NDC and the draft guidelines on gender integration into climate change actions developed under the project were shared. The analysis was carried out in three critical NDC sectors - water, energy and agriculture - and has identified various opportunities for augmenting gender integration. UNDP provided technical support to the process, involving energy, climate change and gender specialists.

Particularly avenues of improvement which were identified and discussed included:

1. development of deeper gender statistics,
2. more equal representativeness in the leadership of climate bodies,
3. more consultative climate action programme design.

Geoffrey Omedo, UNDP Kenya Environment and Resilience Unit Portfolio Analyst, opened the workshop by thanking UNDP’s partners in Government for the close relationship which has led to significant progress in both proliferating clean energy in Kenya and passing gender-responsive legislation in NDCs-related areas.

Michael Okumu, of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry Climate Change Directorate, thanked UNDP and other development partners for the long-running support in tackling climate change, and outlined the scale of the challenge facing Kenya:

“In Kenya, climate change is estimated to cost us 3% of GDP annually – this really hampers us and makes it difficult for the country to take the opportunity to give its citizens the services they require,” he said.

Mr. Okumu also outlined the timelines for endogenizing the lessons learned from the workshop, noting that the due date for submitting an updated NDC plan at the end of March of this year. This will follow a series of key stakeholder consultations, conducted at both national and county-level.

This work contributes to the UNDP NDC Support Programme, a global intervention to assist countries to meet their NDCs which contributes to the NDC Partnership; this is implemented in 25 countries (including Kenya) directly. In Kenya, through the USAID-supported Low Emission and Climate Resilient Development (LECRD) project, UNDP is undertaking diverse interventions to promote renewable energy in Kenya through a sustainable development lens, among them support to the NDC drafting process.

View photos - https://www.flickr.com/photos/undpkenya/albums/72157712898875957

Read more on the global UNDP NDC Support Programme here.
Read more on UNDP’s work to promote clean energy in Kenya through LECRD here.