There is an increasing demand from the national government and even from the international institutions to consider gender in all the decision- and policy-making processes in both state and non-state institutions. The same tone of policy pronouncements are observed in relation to current laws that are meant to address environmental concerns, foremost of which is the Philippine Climate Change Act of 2009. The law requires incorporation of gender-sensitive, pro-children and pro-poor perspective in all climate change and renewable energy efforts, plans, and programs. Prior to this, several guidelines have been issued by the Philippine Government that aim to facilitate the mainstreaming of gender in various development planning activities. However, with the recent climate change considerations, these existing guidelines are inadequate to fully address the gender issues and concerns as a result of the various disasters attributable to climate change.
The comprehensive land use plan can be a potent tool to address the potential adverse impacts of climate change such as flooding. The comprehensive land use planning process is traditionally been considered as a neutral undertaking. The policy statement in the Philippine Climate Change Act of 2009 presented a noteworthy research opportunity to carefully understand how a comprehensive land use plan can be made gender-sensitive to increase the climate-risk resilience of the local government units especially since the existing frameworks for gender mainstreaming did not comprehensively consider climate change and its gender dimensions.
The study explored how climate change, women concerns, and participation can be mainstreamed in the comprehensive land use planning process of the Municipality of Cabiao, Province of Nueva Ecija.