Guatemala makes gender a priority for REDD+Since 2014, IUCN and partners have been focused on working with a wide range of local and national stakeholders in Guatemala to support the design of a gender roadmap for REDD+, which aims to incorporate gender considerations as early as possible in the design of the country’s national REDD+ strategy.

Difficult to start the conversation on gender considerations for REDD+In Guatemala, it has been an on-going challenge to get gender considerations—among the many other dimensions of REDD+—included in the development of the country’s REDD+ strategy. This was even more the case in 2015, when Guatemala’s legislative elections pulled focus away from climate change and REDD+ efforts. In the same year, authorities in the environmental sector changed several times, which led to some periods in which REDD+ processes were slowed or postponed, while waiting for

Guatemala

No. 7, August 2016

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the political situation to stabilise. With overall climate change and REDD+ processes stalled, it remained difficult to bring attention to the specific dimension of gender equality for REDD+.

Ensuring gender is included in Guatemala’s REDD+ strategy designIUCN’s REDD+ work in Guatemala has focused on supporting several policy initiatives at the national level, and stakeholder outreach at the local level (including in Guatemala’s Lachuá Ecoregion project site) to advance gender considerations in the initial design of Guatemala’s REDD+ strategy. Advancing these considerations in the early stages of strategy design was seen as the best way to ensure gender equality was not treated as an afterthought—or altogether overlooked—once the strategy was in place.

National and local REDD+ effortsbegin to incorporate gender considerations With the support of IUCN and partners, Guatemala’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN), as well as its Forest Service have re-analysed and updated their gender policies, and the country’s National Protected Areas Council (CONAP) has designed its first gender strategy. These initial steps - laid the foundation for a comprehensive gender analysis of Guatemala’s existing policies and legal frameworks, and helped to develop a roadmap for including gender considerations in its REDD+ strategy. As the lead organisation for building REDD+ in the country, MARN’s projected resources for gender equality in REDD+ send a good signal that they have taken over the process.

At the community level, IUCN and partners facilitated workshops with women leaders of indigenous and community organisations. The first workshop focused on gathering information from participants about their relationship with the forest. The second workshop delved deeper into the topics of forest management, climate change and conservation, and explored how participants envisioned linking REDD+ strategy design to these issues. A third workshop sought to validate the structure and content of a draft roadmap for including gender considerations in

Including gender considerations in REDD+ decisions supports livelihoods strategies. Photo: FEDECOVERA

the design of REDD+. IUCN also supported a workshop for technical staff of institutions and organisations involved in the REDD+ process to define indicators for the proposed gender roadmap, using the inputs from women gathered from the three previous workshops. In Guatemala’s Lachuá Ecoregion, a workshop in early 2015 helped raise awareness about gender considerations for REDD+, by exploring how various family members participate in, and benefit from, forest-related activities.

New knowledge

IUCN’s initiatives were successful in advancing gender considerations for REDD+ by engaging and connecting key actors at the national and local levels. This involved making sure that national institutions (i.e. MARN, CONAP, Forest Service) were effectively communicating with each other, as well as with stakeholders at the local level. This wasn’t always easy. It took a long time to cultivate these collaborations, as stakeholders were sometimes resistant to working with other groups that had different interests and approaches to gender and REDD+. Bringing in IUCN’s Global Gender Office to facilitate these challenges proved effective in kickstarting this work.

To fully integrate gender into climate, REDD+ and economic development strategies, IUCN and partners identified the following as priority activities for future work:

● building capacity and gender awareness for technical staff of institutions and organisations involved in REDD+, including staff of Fundalachua (a community forestry organization) in the Lachuá pilot site;

● building capacity on climate change, REDD+ and gender for communities in REDD+ priority areas; and

● Finalising a roadmap to incorporate gender considerations into the country’s national REDD+ strategy; have the roadmap validated by stakeholders and endorsed by authorities; and implement the roadmap during 2016 and 2017.

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Building capacity for gender awareness is an important part of equitible REDD+ benefit sharing. Photo: IUCN

WORLD HEADQUARTERSRue Mauverney 281196 Gland, SwitzerlandTel: +41 22 999 0000Fax: +41 22 999 0002www.iucn.org

Further reading ● IUCN (2015). ‘Making gender equality a priority in REDD+ countries’. Gland, Switzerland:

IUCN http://www.iucn.org/content/making-gender-equality-priority-redd-countries

● The REDD Desk: http://theredddesk.org/countries/guatemala#gender-equality

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Global Forest and Climate Change Programme

IUCN Forest

@IUCN_forests

iucn.org/forest

forests@iucn.org

IUCN and REDD+Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) can improve lives, protect forests and biodiversity, and mitigate climate change. Forests serve as natural storage for carbon, and deforestation is the second leading cause of carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Furthermore, more than one billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods, and tropical primary forests are particularly high in terrestrial biodiversity.

IUCN’s REDD+ work focuses on the integration of rights-based approaches as the foundation for the design and deployment of landscape, sub-national and national climate change mitigation and forest management strategies. A pro-poor orientation delivers tangible environmental, economic, social and cultural benefits to the poor. In this regard, IUCN works with partners and REDD+ stakeholders in tropical countries to ensure that by 2020, national climate change mitigation policies and initiatives have incorporated and are implementing the tenets of right-based approaches and pro-poor principles.

With support from the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), IUCN is engaged with partners in Cameroon, Ghana, Guatemala, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru and Uganda to pilot and upscale frameworks and mechanisms that support and deliver rights-based and pro-poor outcomes.