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M-REDD: Mainstreaming Gender in Policies and Laws Related to Climate Change and REDD+ in Mexico: A National, Policy-Level Initiative

The Mexico REDD+ (M-REDD) Program is a six-year project, funded by USAID, that aims at strengthening Mexico’s preparation and implementation of the national REDD+ strategy by expanding its institutional and technical capacity, giving input on financial architecture, establishing systems, piloting diverse elements of the implementation of the REDD+ mechanism—including Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) techniques—and contributing to the facilitation of the dialogue and broader public participation and transparency in the REDD+ process. Importantly, M-REDD has integrated a gender perspective from its start and implements gender-responsive strategies, including using REDD+ as an opportunity to enhance implementation of national mandates for advancing gender equality and ensuring women’s participation in REDD+ processes. The project endeavors to mainstream gender through its integration in national REDD+ public policy processes and piloting tools in field projects. This is being done by identifying tools that can make the role of women in different field activities more explicit and can be applied at different stages of implementation of field projects, such as silvopastoral ranching and conservation agriculture, in order to promote gender equality in people’s daily activities. With its recent extension, M-REDD will conclude in 2017. This case study highlights strategies for ensuring that gender considerations are understood at a national level and progressively taken into account in Mexico’s REDD+ legal and policy framework.
Brief

Cameroon, Ghana & Uganda’s Gender & REDD+ Roadmaps: A National, Policy-Level Initiative

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Cancun Agreements in 2010 and Durban Outcomes in 2011 called for REDD+ national strategies and systems for providing information on how safeguards are being addressed and respected to integrate ‘gender considerations’. In 2011, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with support from the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), and in collaboration with the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), facilitated participatory, multi-stakeholder workshops in Cameroon, Ghana, and Uganda to create Gender and REDD+ Roadmaps. The Roadmaps—the first of their kind—were produced during the first phase of the project for each country process and identified context-specific gender and REDD+ concerns, stakeholders, and concrete actions to integrate and enhance gender in REDD+ processes and initiatives. Currently, each Roadmap, as well as each country’s national REDD+ process, is in a different stage of implementation. Creation and facilitation of a Gender and REDD+ Task Force (GTF), or working group, is the most recent step to propel project outcomes forward and move closer to the project’s ultimate goal: to enhance gender mainstreaming and gender and climate change considerations into effective national REDD+ processes by ensuring women’s participation in the process.
Brief