Gender

Across the world, women play an essential role in forest landscape management but are often not fully involved in decisions related to forest landscapes, nor the equitable distribution of benefits from forest resources.

The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility is committed to working with countries to design REDD+ readiness and larger-scale emissions (ER) reduction programs that ensure women are partners in the planning, operation and deployment of climate finance. This is critical not only to achieve sustainable forest management, but also to deliver important co-benefits such as improving women’s land tenure security, increasing their participation in forest governance and creating new streams of income for women.

At the fund and country level, FCPF activities aim to strengthen reporting on the gender components of initiatives and deliver evidence-based analysis and concrete actions plans tailored to national and subnational REDD+ strategies. FCPF programs seek to establish pathways that enhance and recognize women as transformational agents in the management and conservation of forests.

The FCPF supports three areas of gender-focused activities. These three areas of the FCPF’s gender-focused work support the World Bank’s Gender Strategy as well as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 5 devoted to achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.

Designing programs with gender awareness

The FCPF convenes stakeholders at the fund and country level to exchange ideas, approaches, challenges and opportunities around gender and forest landscapes, and to mobilize greater attention for gender aspects in REDD+ strategies and programs. For example, the FCPF’s Readiness Preparation Proposal (R-PP) template highlights the importance of incorporating gender considerations into REDD+ readiness.

Gender-responsive forest pilots

The FCPF is supporting gender-responsive forest pilots at the country level to understand the differences between how, why, and where men and women access, use and manage forests. The FCPF works with country programs to develop gender analysis as part of Strategic Environment and Social Assessment, with a focus on policy implementation, institutional enhancement and capacity building. Gender action plans are developed with concrete indicators for implementation and monitoring of ER programs.

Building evidence, data and knowledge on gender awareness

The FCPF uses gender analyses and action plans to address the lack of gender-disaggregated data and identify critical gender gaps that hold back the development of gender-sensitive interventions. Actions aimed at addressing gender gaps are best identified using inclusive, participatory approaches early on for effective forest landscape projects and policies.