Gender and REDD+ Updates The UN-REDD Programme is pleased to share updates on new gender and REDD+ knowledge, as well as progress made on efforts to integrate a gender approach into our work and to showcase women as agents of change in conserving and protecting forests. This information aims to help partner countries and stakeholders incorporate a gender approach into their REDD+ actions and to provide information on how a gender approach is integrated into UN-REDD Programme support.

New Gender and REDD+ Info Brief:  Promoting Transformational Change and Innovation in REDD+ Action Acknowledging the critical role that gender equality and women’s empowerment play in shaping and driving climate and human development efforts across the globe, including in REDD+ actions, the UN-REDD Programme has recently developed a new gender and REDD+ Info Brief.   While countries, jurisdictions and projects are increasingly taking steps to promote the explicit inclusion of gender and/or women’s empowerment issues in REDD+ actions, UN-REDD sees the continued and pressing need to better integrate gender-responsive activities in a more cohesive and systematic way throughout REDD+. To help in this process, the new Gender and REDD+ Info Brief offers a concise reference tool for partner countries and REDD+ stakeholders.  It provides a brief summary of its gender mainstreaming approach, as well as key entry points for integrating gender, suggested activities and good practice examples. In the face of ongoing deep-rooted gender barriers and inequalities, both state and non-state stakeholders are still charting a path forward in integrating gender in REDD+, creating conditions for the change needed to achieve sustainable development and combat climate change. The Gender and REDD+ Info Brief aims to highlight this work and to encourage others in their REDD+ efforts. The Gender and REDD+ Info Brief can be found on the UN-REDD Workspace in both English and Spanish.

A Snapshot of Gender Results from 2018 to 2020 Acknowledging the critical role of gender in REDD+, the UN-REDD Programme has been striving to systematically promote gender equality in its work since 2008. As a result of these efforts, the need was identified for a more holistic, systematic and comparable approach to measuring how gender has been integrated into UN-REDD work. In response, the UN-REDD Gender Marker Rating System was created in 2017 to track and monitor the gender responsiveness of the UN-REDD 2018-2020 Technical Assistance (TA) Programme.   Annually, UN-REDD assesses the TA Programme’s 55 outputs to establish how and to what degree they advance or contribute to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women. A three-point rating scale is used to help in this assessment and classification. The rating scale is as follows: GEN-0 (gender blind), GEN-1 (gender sensitive) and GEN-2 (gender responsive).   Although the data is still preliminary, the UN-REDD Gender Marker results for the 2020 TA programme show that its gender-responsiveness is improving. In 2020, 42% of TA outputs achieved a GEN 2 rating, compared to 22% in 2018 and 34% in 2019. There was also an increase in GEN 1 ratings. In 2020, 56% of the outputs were assigned a GEN 1 rating, compared to only 40% in 2019, and 56% in 2018. These improvements are positive, particularly given the need to adapt gender support to the realities of UN-REDD support around COVID-19 and its effects.

Making an Impact: Additional new resources and case studies showcase gender solutions in protecting forests and the climate-forest nexus Various new resources from UN-REDD and other international and non-profit organizations have also been released recently which can serve as useful tools to UN-REDD partner countries in mainstreaming gender and promoting women’s empowerment. They range in scope and cover various themes of importance to REDD+ actions, such as collective and women’s tenure rights around REDD+, value chains, payment for environmental services schemes and fighting forest fires. Some of these key resources are briefly described below: UN-REDD’s “Collective tenure rights for REDD+ implementation and sustainable development” explores the key contribution of collective tenure rights towards mitigating climate change and highlights the positive impact of secure collective tenure rights in Nepal, Peru and Tanzania. The paper emphasizes the importance of a gender responsive approach in promoting collective tenure rights and how it can help to alleviate the disproportionate burden of poverty that women face. IDB’s “Gender, Forests and Climate Change” aims to promote the integration of gender in efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, specifically within the climate-forests nexus. It provides recommendations and solutions across four topics including value chains, environmental payment schemes, firewood and biodiversity, and it showcases the UN-REDD Methodological Brief on Gender as a key tool and concrete approach to design, implementation and monitoring gender. WRI’s “On Equal Ground: Promising Practices for Realizing Women’s Rights in Collectively Held Lands” serves as a valuable guide to realizing more gender-equitable collective land tenure systems. It details case studies from five communities around the world that show promising approaches to securing equal tenure rights for women and the conditions that enabled these communities to do so. WRI’s “Beyond Title: How to Secure Land Tenure for Women” presents solutions for how the development community, policymakers and practitioners can expand the range of interventions that address the internal and external constraints women face when exercising their land rights. Pau Costa Foundation’s efforts to promote gender equality in fighting forest fires provides a range of resources and articles detailing women’s involvement in fighting forest fires, and how gender equality and equity are being tackled in forest fire management.  In addition, various case studies of women as agents of change in conserving and protecting forests have also recently been published. These examples highlight the key role women play and the value they add in protecting forests.  For more information, please visit FAO’s Podcast Series on Rural Women in Colombia (only available in Spanish) and Global Landscapes Forum’s list of 16 Women Restoring the Earth.

Recent UN-REDD Articles on Gender and Women’s Empowerment Climate resilience and women’s empowerment: Forest restoration in Northern Ghana   Fighting for women and nature: The Story of Chebet Lesan Promoting Gender in the New Normal: Results of UN-REDD’s Survey on Gender   Women and forests: mainstreaming gender into community forestry in Colombia

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This resource is made possible through support from Denmark, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the European Union. Content provided by UN-REDD Programme staff, partner countries and guests.  All images used courtesy of license holder or through Creative Commons license.