International financial institutions (IFIs) consider gender and climate change to be two key cross-cutting themes to be consistently integrated in investment projects, programmes and technical assistance packages. However, there is a lack of evidence bringing together these two cross-cutting themes in the context of private sector investments, an area that the EBRD sought to explore on the basis of its existing portfolio of investments and tried-and-tested operational model.
In Tajikistan several initiatives, investments and technical assistance activities were undertaken with the support of the Climate Investment Funds’ Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (CIF PPCR), which aims to establish foundations for gender-responsive climate-resilient development supported by the private sector. In this case, specific vulnerabilities (of women) to climate shocks as a specific socio-economic group as well as potential opportunities for gender transformational change were taken into consideration. A number of private sector-focused climate resilience investments with associated technical assistance components were implemented under the Tajikistan PPCR. These efforts gave rise to a number of questions concerning both direct and indirect benefits for individual women and men, women and men-led businesses, and female and maleheaded households.
All these initiatives focus on innovating, engaging with stakeholders and providing clear policy signals indicating that the private sector is a critical partner in achieving climate-resilient development that does not fall short of gender co-benefits. As these emerging good practices had not been evaluated before, the CIF-funded Evaluation and Learning Activity analysed how gender considerations and gender-related activities have been integrated into the implementation, monitoring and evaluation phases of PPCR investments in Tajikistan. This yielded important lessons to inform future work in this area, which are presented in this note.
