ARA’s Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Strategic Action Plan (GESISAP) for 2024-2029

Summary

In line with the Adaptation Research Alliance (ARA) Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) Strategy, this document comprises a GESI Strategic Action Plan (GESISAP) for the period 2024-2029. The GESISAP includes an activity framework that enables the mainstreaming of gender and social inclusion into existing and new ARA-led activities.

Prioritising gender-transformative action through informed research, knowledge sharing and capacity strengthening, the strategy is guided by the ARA GESI Strategy, which provides a GESI-specific theory of change and an operational framework for the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of GESI activities.

Informed by key recommendations from an institutional assessment of the ARA and its membership, the strategy provides guiding principles and clear, actionable outcomes, along with corresponding activities that guide the ARA’s work as an organisation and its collaboration with and by ARA members.

In addition to the Strategic Action Plan, this document outlines an implementation roadmap that provides an overview of how implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and renewal should be carried out between 2024 and 2029.

This strategy provides activities for the five-year period, recommending that the final year of implementation include an evaluation of impact and updating/renewal of the GESI Strategy. The GESISAP is complemented by the GESI Implementation Toolkit, which provides specific, practical guidance for implementing the letter and spirit of the GESISAP.

It is expected that the overall impact of the GESI Strategy will be two-fold: positioning the ARA as a leading global network for enabling GESI-informed, action-oriented adaptation research and advocacy, while also empowering the ARA membership to develop and access knowledge tools, including regional and global knowledge-sharing and capacity-strengthening events and products.

While the GESISAP provides activities that target the ARA and its membership as a global network, it is paramount that activities and the knowledge products that result from them include region-specific knowledge where and when possible, to maximise the impact and sustainability of the generated knowledge.