Gender and Climate Change Policy Brief: Gender and REDD+

Forests support the livelihoods of 1.6 billion people and 80 percent of all terrestrial biodiversity, and they help absorb up to 30 percent of carbon emissions from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. There is thus a strong ecological and socioeconomic rationale for forest conservation. REDD+ aims to address the forest-climate mitigation interface by promoting sustainable forest management, which reduces carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation while allowing developing countries, including local communities within them, to receive benefits from the carbon sequestration capacity of their forests. However, there are many hurdles that marginalized groups, especially women, still face, including a lack of rights around forest use and land tenure, which can prevent them from equitably accessing and receiving such benefits. For the global REDD+ effort to succeed in reducing carbon emissions, it has to deliver REDD+ co-benefits in the form of sustainable development, poverty reduction and gender equality—nothing less will make REDD+ effective, equitable and sustainable, and therefore successful.