Building resilience by empowering women and girls: highlights from ARA micro-grants

Women and girls are often more exposed to the impacts of climate change, not because of inherent vulnerability but because they tend to have less access to resources, decision-making, and power. Without deliberate attention to gender equality and social inclusion (GESI), adaptation efforts risk reinforcing these inequalities. From the outset, ARA has treated GESI as a core principle, reflected in its 2023 Grassroots Action Research Micro-grants programme, where these issues emerged strongly across projects and nine recipients received additional support to deepen their work. The brief summarised here draws on these experiences, highlighting how locally led adaptation research can challenge existing power dynamics, surface underrepresented voices, and identify both the barriers and practical actions needed to design more effective and inclusive interventions.

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