The two-day event “Empowering women as champions of the Mediterranean’s green transition”, organized by PRIMA Program within the framework of EUGreenWeek, was the occasion to share lessons learned, experiences, and success stories.
On the second day (June 6th), Prof. Enrica Caporali from Università degli Studi di Firenze presented the PRIMA project’s #NexusNess experience for capacity building and gender dimension actions.
The presentation highlighted the gender dimension and gender issues necessary for a Water, Energy, Food and Ecosystem NEXUS (WEFE Nexus) transition within the application of “Nexus Transition through Innovation Ecosystem Approach”, thanks to the contributions of Bianca Rizzo, Enrica Caporali from the University of Florence and Xenia Schneider from XPRO Consulting Limited.
The principal objective of the NEXUS-NESS project is to support a Participatory Transition towards sustainable planning and management of Resources in the agroecosystem, with particular attention to water, energy, food and ecosystems (WEFE), by applying the Responsible Research and Innovation through the RRI Roadmap™©. This RRI Roadmap aims to involve local relevant stakeholders in co-designing a common WEFE Nexus transition vision and action plan.
As women are deeply involved in daily agriculture activities, decisions on water and energy deeply affect their contribution, workload, and well-being. Thus, women empowerment and gender issues awareness are two key aspects for capacity building for fair and safe allocation of environmental and food resources. For this purpose, NEXUS-NESS developed four practical steps for integrating the gender dimension into its four Nexus Ecosystem Labs (NEL) located in Italy, Spain, Tunisia and Egypt:
- Evaluation of NEXUS-NESS Team’s knowledge and skills using the Gender Capacity Assessment Tool
- Introduction of the gender dimension (gender issues and gender equality) for increasing awareness during NEL workshops
- Organization of training activities both for NEL leaders and local stakeholders to learn gender basic concepts, discuss and consider gender issues at NEL level
- Creation of raising awareness paths on the importance to involve women in WEFE-Nexus decision-making processes.
