FinEquity Blog

Building Women’s Climate Resilience: What Can Financial Service Providers Do?

Three young women smiling at the camera in an agricultural setting in Kenya.

Climate change is limiting women’s ability to earn, live, and prosper across nearly every region on earth. Inclusive financial services have the potential to help women increase their resiliency in the face of changing climate in many low and middle-income countries —a priority highlighted in FinEquity’s 2023 Global Consultation.

FinEquity’s 2024 annual convening provided a space to take stock of some of the innovations that Financial Service Providers (FSPs) are developing to help women adapt to climate change . It was also a moment to assess the significant knowledge gaps to fill in order to understand what financial services women need most in the face of a changing climate, what delivery models work, and how to measure the resilience built through access to finance. To start filling some of these knowledge gaps, and learn from work being done across geographies, FinEquity explored three cases where organizations in its community are adapting their financial inclusion interventions to help women adapt and build resilience to climate shocks.

Artisanal pond in Telpaneca, Nicaragua.  Photo:  Courtesy MEDA Technolinks+
  • The Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) Technolinks+ (TL+) project worked to increase sustainable and gender-inclusive agricultural productivity of smallholders in Northern Nicaragua (30% of them women). This case study highlights how using a market systems approach and integrating gender norms change in program design leads to increasing women’s access to financial services and uptake of climate-smart technology.
  • The Village Enterprise Kenya West Pokot project has adapted to economic inclusion to help women build climate-resilient livelihoods. The program supports climate-adaptive livelihoods and access to climate-smart technologies while actively encouraging savings and offering access to emergency credit. This case study explores how these adaptions have fostered an increase in production, income levels, and nutrition for women in the program.
  • The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is implementing a multi-pronged strategy using financial and non-financial tools to help female members address the impacts of climate event shocks such as extreme heat, droughts, floods, and cyclones. SEWA’s interventions include parametric insurance, contingency lines of credit, and “wrap around services”. This example sheds light on these innovations and how SEWA works closely with its members on iterative product design.

Over the next few weeks, FinEquity is hosting a blog series highlighting these cases and others, to show how organizations in the Community of Practice are thinking about improving women’s resilience to climate events through inclusive finance, analyzing some recent trends, and providing some recommendations for those supporting innovators on this journey.

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