Ensuring that women’s perspectives are integrated into REDD+ actions can enable a more accurate analysis of the problem of forest loss: who is driving deforestation, where and how it is being driven and what underlying factors are at play. In addition, women can help to identify solutions.
Given various social, economic and cultural inequalities and legal impediments, particularly within the forest sector, women (and other marginalised groups) within many societies continue to experience ongoing exclusion that limit their ability to fully participate in, contribute to, and benefit from REDD+. It is crucial that deliberate and meaningful efforts are taken to ensure REDD+ action is inclusive, fair and gender-responsive both in policy and in practice.
Acknowledging the crucial role of gender in sustainable development, active steps have been taken within the UN-REDD Programme to systematically promote gender equality and a human rights-based approach in its work since it was launched in 2008.
To catalyze and promote a more integrated approach to gender, UN-REDD has placed gender as a crucial cross-cutting theme within strategic and reporting frameworks, across UN-REDD’s thematic areas and within its technical support at national, regional and global levels.
The programme supports UN-REDD partner countries to systematically integrate gender-responsive activities within the design, implementation and delivery of their REDD+ action, so that all stakeholders, including women, men and youth (and boys and girls, when relevant) can equitably and meaningfully engage, participate and benefit from national REDD+ processes and action.
A key best practice is the need to ensure that gender support and guidance is developed and validated using a bottom-up approach. Specific emphasis has been placed on promoting the active and equitable involvement of local and indigenous women, in order to have their knowledge inform national REDD+ action.
Assistance under the UN-REDD Programme has ranged from undertaking gender-responsive analyses and conducting awareness-raising and capacity-building on gender to promoting gender-responsive participation, monitoring and reporting. The Programme is also committed to sharing information on gender and REDD+ with development practitioners and partner countries.
In addition, a Gender Marker rating system has been introduced for UN-REDD’s technical assistance programme, which measures annually how and to what degree its outputs contribute to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women. Such a system helps to more comprehensively track and monitor gender responsiveness in Programme actions and in global knowledge management to support countries.
To assist UN-REDD partner countries, and global, regional and national teams supporting such efforts, in mainstreaming gender into the design, implementation and monitoring of REDD+ action, UN-REDD is promoting and offering technical support across the following five core workstreams:
Conduct gender-specific analyses and gender-responsive assessments, which can help establish a gender baseline, identify areas for improvement in REDD+ policy and programming as well as where gender equality and women’s empowerment can be promoted.
Increase the depth of understanding of gender equality and women’s empowerment concepts, build capacity on how to integrate them, and address the misperceptions concerning gender issues at global, regional and national levels.
Promote gender balance and integrate gender equality and women’s empowerment concepts within workshops, consultations, decision-making bodies, capacity building and training at global, regional and national levels.
Listening to the Forest in Panama. UN-REDD Programme Active Listening Process - Women’s Channel
Develop gender-responsive monitoring and reporting frameworks and allocate adequate budgets for gender-responsive activities on REDD+, including in REDD+ finance structures.
Systematize good practices on the design and implementation of gender-responsive REDD+ action and share experiences on gender between countries and regions as well as among stakeholder groups and staff.
Knowledge Exchange: “Gender: The key to unlocking transformational change in climate forest finance”
