Gender Mainstreaming Strategy and Checklist for Climate Change Mitigation / REDD+ program

Women and men, owning to their gendered responsibilities, possess unique knowledge sets about forest resources. This knowledge can be applied to achieving successful sustainable forest management. Accrediting this unique knowledge provides both legitimate recognition of their engagement in decision-making processes and equitable share of benefits. This holds enormous significance in climate change mitigation programs (such as REDD+- Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) since these programs provides benefits to stakeholders based on their recognition of regulated performance to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions Yet, the paucity of relevant tools that facilitate translating gender principles into climate change mitigation projects/REDD+ practice is evident. Development practitioners implementing those projects require better understanding about the tools that facilitate achieving development benefits to both women and men, while also reducing emissions. This document primarily serves as a practical implementation tool to mainstream gender mainstreaming into climate change mitigation/REDD+ programs. This strategy and checklist developed in the document come from the direct and practical experience of gender mainstreaming into USAID/ASIA's supported climate change mitigation project, named "Lowering Emissions in Asia Forests" that runs in 6 countries (Thailand, Lao PDR, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea) of Asia-Pacific. However, this document can be useful to implement and monitor gender issues in climate change mitigation project in other regions as well.