The forest landscape restoration (FLR) approach is a forward-looking and dynamic approach that strengthens landscape resilience while creating opportunities to optimise ecosystem goods and services to meet livelihood needs. The equitable and active involvement of all stakeholders in FLR decision making, goal setting and implementation is fundamental.

Many forest landscape projects around the world do not address gender gaps sufficiently. As a result, interventions may lead to outcomes that are not only inequitable, but also unsustainable. In response, the World Bank Group (WBG), Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN) and others, in partnership with civil society organizations, local and national governments, are increasingly supporting interventions that explicitly target gender-related inequalities.

The residents of the Ganges and Mekong River deltas face serious challenges from rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion, pollution from upstream sources, growing populations, and infrastructure that no longer works as planned. In both deltas, scientists working for nearly two decades with communities, local governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have demonstrated the potential to overcome these challenges and substantially improve people’s livelihoods.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides a conceptual framework of 17 goals and 169 targets. An abundance of interlinkages exists between them. Land targets are core to achieving most of the SDGs including poverty eradication, food security, gender equality and empowerment of women, adequate housing and urban development, mitigating and adapting to climate change, reducing and preventing land degradation, and fostering peace and stability for prosperity.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), in partnership with the Ugandan Ministry of Water and Environment, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), as well as local governments and civil society organizations, have been working to address many of the climate-related issues in the Sanzara community by employing Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) with an integrated Ecosystem-Based Adaptation (EBA) approach to maximize community climate resilience.

Licuri is a highly valuable tree species, both to local ecosystems and in traditional cultural uses, with a clear commercial niche. Its productive and sustainable uses are directly linked to ecosystem conservation and women’s empowerment—which is being further developed to great success. Project partners are working together to increase the mechanization of the licuri harvesting and production process, aiming to lessen the time-burden on women and enhance their livelihood potential.

In Armenia, the forestry sector and forest restoration policy development and decision making in natural resources management processes have been shaped as a result of women’s historical every day practices—which are also often drivers of deforestation and degradation—and yet women’s direct participation in these matters is frequently neglected. Forests in Armenia are state property and the management system is top-down, meaning that decisions are made at the government level and passed down through a hierarchy of power.

Drawing on feminist and development literature, this paper suggests several important lessons and considerations for building equitable approaches to REDD+. Specifically, we illustrate the conceptual and practical significance of women’s participation for achieving the goals of REDD+as well as the limits and opportunities for gendering participation in REDD+.

Authors: Larson, A.M.; Dokken, T.; Duchelle, A.E.; Atmadja, S.; Resosudarmo, I.A.P.; Cronklet

Authors: Colfer, C.J.P.; Sijapati Basnett, B.; Elias, M.

From July 17 to August 7, 2019, the Land Portal Foundation, the African Land Policy Center, GIZ and Transparency International Chapters in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda co-facilitated the dialogue Land Corruption in Africa addressing the role of traditional leaders in customary land administration, forced evictions as a form of land corruption and its Impact on women’s land rights and an analysis of alternative dispute resolution systems in addressing land corruption.

In Africa, agriculture is the most important sector in national economies. About 80 per cent of the active population works in agriculture. Further, apart from few exceptions, agriculture makes up more than 50 percent of gross national product. Nevertheless, Africa remains the only region in the world in which agricultural production declined between 1970 and 1980, when the growth rate was less than 2 per cent and moreover the gross national product (GNP) per head is one of the lowest in the world.