The comprehensive land use plan can be a potent tool to address the potential adverse impacts of climate change such as flooding. The comprehensive land use planning process is traditionally been considered as a neutral undertaking. The policy statement in the Philippine Climate Change Act of 2009 presented a noteworthy research opportunity to carefully understand how a comprehensive land use plan can be made gender-sensitive to increase the climate-risk resiliency of the local government units especially since the existing frameworks for gender mainstreaming did not comprehensively consider climate change and its gender dimensions. To explore how climate change, women concerns, and participation can be mainstreamed in the comprehensive land use planning process, this study used the Municipality of Cabiao, Province of Nueva Ecija as a case study. The dynamics of the current process and planning environment in the Municipality of Cabiao were assessed and the various entry points in the process wherein flooding in the context of climate change and gender concerns can be mainstreamed were identified. In the study's illustration of the impacts of flooding on the local community, it was confirmed that women are made more vulnerable to the impacts of flooding due to the roles that they perform which are intimately related to the natural environment. Likewise, their access to and control over important resources have made them more vulnerable to climate change. The comprehensive land use plan is expected to remedy the adverse impacts of flooding in the locality. As such, the study recommended that several reforms be made in both the process and the document. The comprehensive land use plan should reduce, if not totally eliminate, the adverse effects of flooding to the natural environment as the disruptions in the latter affect existing roles that are performed by women. These disruptions are what make women vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Gamboa, MAM
Building a climate-adaptive locality through a gender sensitive comprehensive land use plan
Asia Life Sciences