November 4 - When her West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) village experienced an eight-month drought in 2019, an artesian well built by the Indonesian government in the year before, provided a lifeline for 40-year-old housewife Baiq and dozens of others in the village.

Similarly, Central Java vegetable farmers in Susukan village also experienced the adverse impact of climate change.  Villagers used to be able to forecast the weather using the Javanese calendar ‘pranata mangsa,’ but they are no longer able to do so because changes in climate patterns have meant the village of Susukan, once known for its lush produce, has had to deal with disruptions to livelihoods. But thanks to the government’s programme on agroforestry, villagers are now able to diversify their crop to plants that could withstand longer and drier climate. Adapting to the new climate and diversifying crops will reduce amount of work needed for each harvest in the long run, which is especially important to women, who face the double burden of having to do both paid or productive work and household works.

Both the agroforestry program and the construction of the well have been made possible by the government’s gender-sensitive budgeting on Climate Change which will support vulnerable communities such as housewife Baiq in NTB and the Susukan communities in Central Java.

The gender-budget sensitive budgeting is part of the government’s larger response to the climate crisis.  Specifically, the Government of Indonesia has issued several national policies and recently published the Climate Resilience Development Policy for 2020-2045. As part of the country’s contribution to the Paris Agreement – the Government reiterated its commitment to reduce GHG emissions by 29% with national efforts and up to 41% with international assistance against the Business-as-Usual scenario, by 2030, as stated on the Nationally Determined Contribution document.

To achieve the target, and to increase transparency of public climate funding, the Ministry of Finance with support from UNDP–UNEP Poverty-Environment Action for Sustainable Development Goals (Poverty-Environment Action) launched the Climate Budget Tagging (CBT)—as a tool to identify and track the ministries’ budget allocation for climate change activities—in 2016, which has been used ever since. Over the past five years, the average climate change budget allocation has been IDR 95.2 trillion (approximately USD6.8 billion), or 4% of the national budget per year.

Since 2016, the agroforestry programme has been tagged by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in the national planning and budgeting system, as part of mitigation activities; while, artesian well programme was initially tagged by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, as part of mitigation in 2016-2017, then it had been changed into adaptation programme in 2018.

"The Ministry of Environment and Forestry fully supports efforts to accelerate gender mainstreaming, particularly in terms of integrating gender into climate change. This innovation, in the form of a Technical Guidance Document for double tagging in Climate Change and Gender, demonstrates Indonesia's unwavering commitment to mainstreaming gender in Climate Change issues."  Said Ernawati Hartono, Secretary General of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry's Gender Focal Point

But more programmes combining gender and climate change are needed to identify the impact of climate change on women. The Government's commitment to mainstreaming gender  in response to climate change is also visible through the activities of Ministries and Institutions in conducting gender-responsive climate budgeting in the State budget. With support from Poverty-Environment Action, the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection collaborated on the development of Technical Guidance for Gender Responsive Climate Budget Tagging, which will assist the technical ministries in implementing double-tagging (gender and climate change).

While climate change has disrupted the livelihoods in communities in drought-stricken West Nusa Tenggara and Central Java, the government’s strategic climate change response through gender-sensitive budgeting has provided a much-needed reprieve.

Authors: 

Debi Nathalia, Technical Associate for Public Climate Finance, Innovative Financing Lab, UNDP Indonesia. debi.nathalia@undp.org

Aghnia Dima Rochmawati, Gender and Climate Finance Officer, Innovative Financing Lab, UNDP Indonesia. aghnia.rochmawati@undp.org

Charlotte German, Gender and Development Finance Officer, Innovative Financing Lab, UNDP Indonesia. charlotte.gerrman@undp.org

Editors:

Tomi Soejipto and Ranjit Jose.