Addressing inequality in climate change adaptation through using Intersectionality framework as an evaluation approach.

Abstract Information: Communities in the Global South are caught in a vicious cycle of coping with climate change and implementing climate change adaptation programmes funded and designed by the Global North. The design and implementation of these programmes have resulted in inadvertent climate injustice. Although Global South communities are fully aware of their precarious condition and the negative consequences of some of the programmes that seek to help them, they have adopted a “quiet acceptance” approach. The communities have internalized the climate adaptation injustice and seem to prefer mistreatment and perpetuate their own oppression. The community’s preference for climate change adaptation has been subverted by the funders and organisations implementing climate change adaptation programmes. The circumstances in which the communities in Global South find themselves have led to adaptive preference formation - adaptive preferences refer to situations where rights violations are not seen as such by the individuals and households who experience them. This chapter will demonstrate how the use of intersectional analysis in evaluation contributes to a better understanding of the climate injustice problem and how to understand it. Intersectional analysis demands that inequalities by race, gender, class, and sexuality be considered in tandem rather than distinctly when evaluating climate change adaptation.

Relevance Statement: The World Health Organization (WHO) (2015), defines equity as “the absence of avoidable or remediable differences among groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically or geographically.” The goal of equity is to eliminate the unfair and avoidable circumstances that deprive people of their rights. Therefore, inequities generally arise when certain population groups are unfairly deprived of basic resources that are made available to other groups. A disparity is ‘unfair’ or ‘unjust’ when its cause is due to the social context, rather than biological factors. Equitable evaluation contends that conducting evaluation practices with an equity approach is more powerful, as evaluation is used as a tool for advancing equity. It emphasizes that context, culture, history and beliefs shape the nature of evaluations, specifically in the diverse and often complex African reality. Furthermore, equitable evaluation can render power to the powerless, offer a voice to the silenced and give presence to those treated as invisible. Evidence from various sources shows that inequality is prevalent in the African continent, hence the need to focus on evaluative solutions that address the structural issues that contribute to the different forms of inequality such as economic, political, and social inequality. Despite a plethora of development interventions in the African continent, a large proportion of the population in the continent is still lacking access to basic goods and services for survival. The effectiveness of developmental programmes in sub-Saharan Africa has been elusive, to the extent that minimal inroads have been made in addressing key challenges such as poverty, inequality and currently, the effects of climate change. One is forced to ask the question: Why is it that millions of people in Africa are without clean water? Why is it that millions are without food, medicine, education, or a political voice? Why is it that millions suffer from human rights abuses? The realities cut far deeper than just being poor. The paper seeks to stimulate conversations among development evaluators, commissioners of evaluations and development programme decision-makers about the role of evaluation in addressing inequality and fostering an equitable society in Africa