Framework and methods for integrating gender in REDD (+)

Gender & Environmental Change ConferenceIIED, London

Dr. Delia C. CatacutanICRAF-Vietnam

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Our challenge

• There is lack of tools to elicit and understand gender-specific preferences over REDD benefits, and the distribution of those benefits.• REDD implementers often do not have time

to apply available tools.• Gender equity is not an explicit goal of REDD.

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Equity Framework• Equity framework promoted by McDermott et al (2012)

• 3 dimensions of framework: Distributive equity—the costs of REDD are not

disproportionately passed on to women; benefits are proportionately distributed to women and men.

Procedural equity---procedures that facilitates inclusiveness and fairness in the REDD process;

Contextual equity-- overall capacity of men and women to participate and capture program benefits, e.g., information, knowledge, networks, land, technology, culture, rights.

Together, they describe the substantive content of equity.

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Meta-order equity questions• Target of equity---equity for whom? At what

scale?• Goal of equity----ignore equity? Do no harm?

Ensure that women are not worse off? advance equity?

• Parameters of equity---conflicting views of equity prevailing in societies and cultural contexts.

Project

Dimensions of equity

Distributive Procedural Contextual

RUPES, Indonesia

Women’s participation conform to traditional gender roles; Women not enlisted as co-signatories on HKm contracts; Women’s representation on management board token

Women were consulted and their views were sought

Contextual barriers to women’s participation identified

REALU/REDD+, Vietnam

  Separate consultation with women to ensure their voice in program design

Contextual barriers to women’s participation identified

RUPES, Philippines

Women’s participation conforms traditional gender roles

Women were consulted Contextual barriers to women’s participation identified

PRESA, Tanzania

Threats to women’s land rights

No special procedures to identify women who might be disadvantaged

Social context, women’s resource rights situation not assessed adequately

PRESA, Kenya

Women’s bids honored & women awarded contracts

Special care to invite women to PES auctions 

Barriers to women’s participation identified and incorporated into procedures

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Some methods used• Structured Decision-Making (SDM)--- an organized, inclusive and

transparent approach to understanding complex problems and generating and evaluating creative alternatives (Vietnam).

• Modified REDD Game---elicits preferences over payment or benefits to a hypothetical village when they were conditional on the quality outcomes of a hypothetical forest of 500 hectares (Vietnam).

• Role Play Game (RPG)—players assume roles or characters, and take control of their real-life roles/characters in a fictional setting. RPG was used to observe and document the behaviours of men and women toward land use decision-making in rubber agroforest landscapes and its implications to REDD+ (Indonesia).

• Gender purposive conservation auctions—an economic approach that uses a discriminatory price to determining the cost of environmental service provision (Kenya).

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Sample result in Bac Kan province, Northwest Vietnam---a UN-REDD pilot

• High poverty • Heavily forested• Mountainous• ICRAF’s REALU demonstration site;

pilot payment scheme for agroforestry and farmer-managed natural forest regeneration

33%

33%

33%

Women

17%

33%

50%

Men

Cash

LURC

Cash for infrastructure

Cash for agricultural services

Benefit type

Sample result of RPG application in Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia

Women from both the upland and lowland villages approached land use change in a more dynamic way than men from the same villages, reacting more positively to external investors proposing logging or oil palm conversion.

Contrary to expectations and gender stereotypes, the increased involvement of women in landscape-level decision making may serve to increase emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in the area, thus posing further challenges to emission reduction efforts.

Villamor et al. 2013

Sample result in Kenya

• Women’s bids where lower than men.• 55% of contracts were awarded to women;

they were helped to implement the contracts through training and support on tree-planting and care.

Key messages

• While the distributional and procedural equity dimensions of a REDD+ project fall within the scope and control of its proponents, the capacity to achieve distributional and procedural equity is conditioned by context, which is not amenable to control.

• Nonetheless, achieving procedural equity through gender transformative approaches engenders distributive equity and alleviates contextual inequity.

• Identification of inequity ensures deployment of procedural measures that facilitates equitable distribution of outcomes.

• REDD benefits and distribution should be gender-specific.

• One-off or recurrent carbon payments (2USD/ton) do not make sense. Paying 2USD/ton + differential incentive may be attractive to men and women.

• Governments and partners pursuing REDD need to be explicit about incorporating gender as a goal at the onset.

Thank you for your attention

For more information, please contact: D. C. CATACUTAN@CGIAR.ORG