Emma Jones-Phillipson

Emma is a PlanAdapt Fellow, based in Cape Town, South Africa.

She is a gender and climate specialist, policy analyst and researcher with more than seven years’ experience providing technical assistance and developing, implementing and assessing projects and policy in least developed countries (LDCs) in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, South America and the Pacific.

Emma is passionate about integrating gender and social inclusion into environmental programming and policy, working most enthusiastically at the nexus of social justice with climate action. She has led and contributed to projects for the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Global Environment Facility (GEF), BioCarbon Fund, Climate Investment Funds (CIF) and International Development Research Centre (IDRC), on behalf of clients including several UN agencies, multilateral development banks, global and regional NGOs, and LDC country governments.

Notable recent work has included providing external support to NDC Partnership member countries to advance gender equality in their NDCs, authoring a deep dive review of gender, equity and social inclusion considerations and potential in the Biodiversity Challenge Funds scheme (Darwin Initiative, Darwin Plus and IWT Challenge Fund), project managing a gender-responsive urban flood resilience research project funded through the UK-Canada CLimate Adaptation & REsilience (CLARE) initiative, and knowledge sharing and research to enhance women’s climate leadership in programmes related to land, natural resources and ecosystem services. Emma has also led the gender mainstreaming and social inclusion components for several climate and carbon finance projects, working within project teams to align adaptation and mitigation ambitions with social co-benefits and wellbeing improvements, whilst safeguarding against perpetuating or worsening inequality.

She has contributed to numerous international reports and reviews, and her recent publications include: Gerhard M, Jones-Phillipson E, Ndeleni X (2023) Strategies for gender mainstreaming in climate finance mobilisation in southern Africa.

Emma has an MSc in Public Policy and Administration from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK and BSocSci Honours and undergraduate degrees in PPA, Politics and Economics from the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

For more info, see Emma’s LinkedIn page