Women’s Land Rights and Climate Adaptation in Rural Ethiopia and Ghana

Keywords: climate change adaptation, land rights, gender, Ethiopia, Ghana, Africa
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 67

Abstract

Climate change impacts are gendered, with rural women in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, generally facing different and greater adaptation constraints than men, particularly related to control over resources. There is evidence that women may be better able to adapt to climate change if they have more secure rights to land, but with increased competition for land, there is debate over the best ways to support women’s claims to land in different contexts. For example, market processes may be the most effective or feasible means for many women to gain access to land, but there is concern over individualization of land rights, especially land held under customary or informal systems, to land registered under state-run cadastral systems. These concerns involve political aspects (i.e. erosion of customary institutions and potential institutional conflicts) environmental dimensions (i.e. fragmentation and intensification of communal, biodiverse uncultivated areas) and socio-economic aspects (i.e. privatization of common-property resources that are accessed by the poor, in particular). What does research to date reveal about relationships between women’s rights to land and their ability to adapt to climate change? Where are the gaps in knowledge? Does academic research into the land-adaptation nexus fully consider ‘gender’ or instead tend to focus on ‘women’? What forms of control over land best support adaptation (ownership, lease etc)? Based on a review of literature, this paper will attempt to answer these questions in relation to Ethiopia and Ghana.