The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) has partnered with the international NGO Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN) to develop an innovative training course focused on how to make REDD+ forest and climate programs more gender inclusive. WOCAN recently piloted this training course in Madagascar and Cote d’Ivoire, with an emphasis on creating equitable REDD+ benefit sharing plans.

In Madagascar, a total of nine participants attended the online training course. They came from diverse professional backgrounds, including from organizations such as Madagascar’s National REDD+ Coordination Bureau (BNC), Woman in Rural Action in Madagascar (FARM), the Rural Women’s Organization, Gasy Youth Up, the Department of Environment, and the Department of Population, Social Protection and Women.

Training topics in Madagascar included:

• Making the case for gender integration in REDD+ benefit-sharing plans;
• How to integrate gender analysis in the design of benefit-sharing plans;
• How to promote gender-responsive changes in benefit-sharing plans.

Training participants in Madagascar showed interest in learning about new gender concepts such as intersectionality and changing women's positions in the workforce in order to reverse inequalities. Participants requested follow up capacity-building support at the local level, with more emphasis on building women’s leadership skills and ability to overcome resistance to equality among decision makers.

 In Cote d’Ivoire, the training was attended by 15 participants from various organizations, including the country’s national ministries of Environment and Sustainable Development (MINEDD), and Water and Forests (MINEF), REDD+ Cote d’Ivoire, and civil society organizations such as the Federation of NGO Networks and Associations of the Environment(FEREADD), the Ivorian Observatory for the Sustainable Management of Natural Resources (OI-REN), and the MALEBI Women’s Association.

Ahoulou Kouamé, Cote d’Ivoire’s REDD+ Permanent Executive Secretary, welcomed participants to the course.  “It is timely that we open this course on International Women’s Day, a day on which we celebrate the rights of women. I sincerely thank the World Bank and WOCAN for organizing this training, which so importantly focuses on including gender in REDD+ programs.”

The Cote d’Ivoire training course lasted for more than a week and combined online classes with discussions among participants on gender issues related to their specific benefit-sharing plans. This was followed by coaching with WOCAN trainers, which provided practical support to participants in reviewing their REDD+ strategic documents for better gender integration. Participants in the Cote d’Ivoire training said they preferred to focus on how to immediately and directly integrate gender equality to their programs, rather than spending time discussing broader gender concepts.

These two pilot trainings in Madagascar and Cote d’Ivoire support the ongoing work of the FCPF and BioCarbon Fund Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL) to integrate gender concerns and interests into forest and climate programs. This work seeks to enhance knowledge and understanding about REDD+ gender considerations among both government and non-government organizations, including REDD+ focal points, members of REDD+ multi-stakeholder platforms, and gender-focused organizations.