When the Floodwaters Rise: Putting Women at the Center of Climate Adaptation in Cameroon

When devastating floods struck Cameroon’s Far North region in 2024, more than 150,000 people were displaced. Homes, crops, and roads were washed away. But the impact was not felt equally. In cities like Douala and Yaoundé, women, who make most of their daily journeys on foot or by public transport, face longer detours through waterlogged streets. Poor drainage and unlit walkways don’t just slow them down; they increase risks to their safety. Darkness and isolation during floods can turn routine trips to markets, schools, or health clinics into dangerous journeys. 

This is the adaptation gap in Cameroon’s cities. Climate change is driving heavier rains, rising temperatures, and more frequent floods. Informal settlements, often located in the most vulnerable areas where nobody else wants to live, face the greatest risks due to insecure land tenure and fragile infrastructure. For women, the risks multiply: unstable housing, unsafe public spaces, and barriers to land ownership make them especially vulnerable when disaster strikes. 

The World Bank’s $200 million Sustainable Cities and Land Project aims to strengthen urban resilience, improve land management, and reduce the vulnerability of cities to climate shocks. With technical support from GCA, the project integrates gender-responsive climate adaptation measures, ensuring that infrastructure upgrades, safer public spaces, and strengthened land rights also enhance women’s capacity to cope with and recover from climate-related disasters. By integrating gender considerations into climate adaptation investments, from safer pedestrian routes to improved land rights and better protection services, the project aims to build cities where resilience and equality go hand in hand. 

Cities under Pressure 
Cameroon’s future is urban. Already, 59 percent of the population lives in cities, with that share projected to climb to 73 percent by 2050. Douala and Yaoundé together account for nearly a third of the population, over half of GDP, and most of the country’s formal jobs. 

But rapid, unplanned urban growth has left both cities dangerously exposed. In Yaoundé, weak drainage and landslides threaten entire neighborhoods, as the 2023 tragedy that killed more than 30 people showed. In Douala, mangroves and natural drainage systems have been paved over, leaving the city vulnerable to seasonal floods. For women working in the informal economy, which represents 87 percent of all jobs in Cameroon, these climate shocks do not just damage infrastructure. They erase incomes, deepen urban poverty, and compromise safety. 

This is where the World Bank’s Sustainable Cities and Land Project comes in: upgrading drainage, roads, and land systems to reduce climate risks in Douala and Yaoundé. With GCA’s early technical support, the project further integrates gender considerations into its design, ensuring that women’s resilience and safety are explicitly addressed.  

Closing the Adaptation Gap for Women 
Through a gender and climate vulnerability assessment, GCA provided analysis showing how climate shocks amplify existing gender inequalities. Using approaches like gender tagging, which systematically integrates gender considerations into investment design, GCA advised the World Bank task team and government counterparts on opportunities to enhance women’s resilience and achieve measurable gender outcomes across project components. 

Through this process, GCA’s recommendations were integrated into the World Bank project, directly shaping investments in safer infrastructure, Gender-Based Violence response systems, and women’s land rights. These became the three pillars of the project’s gender-responsive design: making streets safer for women, expanding support for survivors of violence, and securing women’s land tenure. Together, they turn climate adaptation plans into tangible improvements in women’s daily lives. 

Making Streets Safer in a Changing Climate 
Flooded streets are more than an inconvenience. For women walking to schools, clinics, or markets, poor drainage and dark, unlit pathways expose them to harassment and assault. With 44 percent of women in urban Cameroon already survivors of violence, GCA’s input was critical: the project now integrates solar lighting, raised walkways, and safer pedestrian routes alongside drainage improvements. 

Expanding Services for Survivors of Violence 
Support for gender-based violence survivors is scarce. Only 22 percent of women who experience violence seek help, often deterred by stigma, weak services, and a lack of safe spaces. Existing community centers are unhygienic, underfunded, and without beds. Responding to GCA’s analysis, the project will now establish two GBV response centers in Douala and Yaoundé — offering safe shelter, trauma-informed care, legal aid, and medical services. A new referral system will connect survivors to multi-sectoral support, while awareness campaigns and hotlines ensure women know where to turn. 

Securing Land Rights for Women 
In Douala and Yaoundé, only 24 percent of land titles belong to women, despite laws guaranteeing equal rights. Customary practices and costly, paper-based registration systems exclude most women. The project will now strengthen legal clinics, awareness campaigns, and mobile training programs to help women (particularly widows, single mothers, and female-headed households) navigate land registration. For the first time, the Land Information System will track land titles by gender, making women’s progress visible and measurable. 

Building Resilience That Lasts 
Cameroon’s development challenges are steep: over 10 million people live in poverty, climate disasters are intensifying, and displacement continues to rise.  By embedding gender considerations into a US$200 million climate resilience investment, the World Bank, with technical support from GCA, is helping ensure that project design addresses the needs of those most affected. 

When climate shocks hit, resilience starts with the people most affected. By ensuring that women are not left behind, but placed at the center, Cameroon’s cities are not just adapting to climate change; they are building a future where women’s resilience shapes the strength of entire communities. 

The ideas presented in this article aim to inspire adaptation action – they are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Global Center on Adaptation.

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