Women and girls will be disproportionately affected by the rapid rate of climate change over the next decade (UNFPA 2021). Access to sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) can help build resilience to the effects of the climate emergency. There is a great need for gender sensitive climate policies and innovative programming that recognise the link between quality SRHR and resilience.
The UKAC ASPIRE resilience framework was developed, based on resilience thinking built from food security and conflict response programming. The UKAC ASPIRE framework conceptualises building resilience in terms of absorptive, anticipatory and adaptive capacities to cope with stressors and shocks. The framework responds to individual contexts using the target locations of Niger and Madagascar, both severely affected by desertification, drought and coastal erosion as a result of climate change.
The framework situates SRHR within strategies to build resilience. It is intended to assist with planning, development, and evaluation of UKAC ASPIRE programmes but has the potential to be transferred to other programmes and contexts. The framework takes as its unit of analysis; ‘who’ is at risk of the shock or stressor, be it an individual, household, community or even a health system and then breaks down resilience into three interrelated capacities drawing on literature on resilience to natural disasters: ability to absorb, anticipate, and/or adapt. The framework represents a resilience approach that can be applied to understand the factors that are creating vulnerability in a particular context as well as the factors that may increase or build resilience.
