Model Forests and Gender
Forests are one of our planet’s most valuable resources in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. Although tremendous progress has been made towards restoring and conserving the world’s forests, these ecosystems remain on the decline. Increasingly, conservation and restoration initiatives are prioritising the voices of local communities when addressing deforestation and land degradation; however, significant barriers remain which hinder the full participation of women. To effectively leverage forests to meet the goals of the Rio Conventions and related global goals, we must address the gender imbalance between those who have decision-making power in forest management and those who are impacted by those decisions. Model Forests present valuable strategies and replicable models which can ensure forests are managed in ways that are gender-responsive, participatory, and rooted in equity.
This technical brief—prepared for the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nation Framework Convention of Climate Change (COP30)—provides background on the connections between forests and gender, then presents lessons and a case study from the International Model Forest Network (IMFN). As countries, communities, civil society, and the private work to address gender inequality in natural resource management, it is essential to carry forward these lessons from Model Forests, translating them across contexts and scales. Through mainstreaming of gender-responsive approaches like those demonstrated in Model Forests, forest management and governance can be strengthened globally, leading to better outcomes for people, biodiversity, ecosystems, and climate.
This publication has been produced with financial support from the Government of Canada’s Global Forest Leadership Program and through the International Model Forest Network (IMFN) Secretariat's IMFN Climate initiative.
Citizen science, also called community science, is a common term for a wide range of participatory…
