Women's network for environmental advocacy and climate resilience: a model for social innovation

Available in Spanish

In the current global context of climate change, the IPCC (2023) has reaffirmed the crucial role of Human in this phenomenon, highlighting affectations such as weather and climate extreme, which affect both nature and people in all regions of the world. In its Third National Communication, the Colombian government predicted an increase in the country’s average temperature of 0.9°C, 1.6°C and 2.14°C for the years 2040, 2070, and 2100, respectively, along with a decrease of between 10% and 40% of precipitation in a third of the country, mainly in the Andean zone (IDEAM et al., 2017).

For its part, FAO (2023) highlights the importance of women’s groups and social movements as drivers of women’s empowerment and increased resilience in the face of shocks and stresses such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. These groups not only facilitate technology adoption and improved adaptive capacity, but also foster women’s participation in climate policy processes.

National Interethnic Women’s Environmental Defense Network:

In the framework of the CGIAR initiative on National Policies and Strategies and with the support of the CGIAR Gender Impact Platform, the Bioversity Alliance and CIAT, in conjunction with Fundación Natura and the Rural Women’s Directorate of the Ministry of Agriculture, assessed the experience of the National Interethnic Women’s Network for Environmental Defense.

This network, created in 2019 with the support of Fundación Natura through Norwegian funds, has become an outstanding example of the potential of civil society to coordinate diverse actors and promote environmental conservation and climate change adaptation, while working for gender equity and peacebuilding.

Part of this research included a participatory workshop in Cali, where 19 women from the network mapped their relationships within the network, as well as with national and international actors. Thanks to this exercise, a social network analysis could be carried out with the data obtained (Table 1).

Table 1. Social network analysis metrics applied to the National Network of Interethnic Women for the Defense of the Environment.

The total network includes 69 nodes or actors, including peasant women, indigenous women, Afro-descendants, universities, ministries, NGOs, grassroots organizations, and companies. A total of 212 interactions were identified, of which each node has an average of 3 relationships with other nodes (Tables 1 and 2).

The network presents a pattern of closeness centrality (greater than 0.5) which means that there are nodes that are better or more strategically located than others. There is also a clear pattern of intermediation centrality (0.71) meaning that almost 71% of the relationships between nodes are mediated by a single or few nodes. The network also has a low density, meaning that of the 100% of possible edges between the map of nodes, only 4% of these are declared or observed. We can also observe a pattern in which fewer dynamic nodes are connected to better connected nodes (and not to nodes with low number of edges). This corresponds to the negative assortativity metric and high sign. This trend reinforces the concentration of relationships in a few nodes and the centrality of the network.

Table 2. Social network analysis metrics applied to the National Network of Interethnic Women for the Defense of the Environment by node category.

In addition, the results show that campesina women and national NGOs are the most active groups, concentrating almost 50% of the interactions (Table 2). The Natura Foundation stands out as the most influential node, with the highest number of connections and centrality in the network.

This women’s network model has proven to be effective for information dissemination and collaboration on gender and climate change issues. However, the high dependence on a central organization, in this case, Fundación Natura, represents a strength (key ally for the network) but could also represent a vulnerability in the long term.

Moving forward, it is crucial to strengthen interactions within the network by creating protocols or tools to increase its impact. It is also proposed to conduct a complementary study on women’s territorial networks to continue promoting their role as agents of change in the fight against climate change and the promotion of gender equity.

Authors:

• Fanny Cecile Howland, Research Specialist, Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT.
• Carlos Eduardo González, Senior Research Associate, Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT.

Edition:

• Angélica Urbano, PlaSA Colombia communicator, Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT.

This work is part of the CGIAR Research Initiative on National Policies and Strategies (NPS). CGIAR launched NPS with national and international partners to build policy coherence, respond to policy demands and crises, and integrate policy tools at national and subnational levels in countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. CGIAR centers participating in NPS are The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (Alliance Bioversity-CIAT), International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), International Water Management Institute (IWMI), International Potato Center (CIP), International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and WorldFish. We would like to thank all funders who supported this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund.