Forest Tenure Pathways To Gender Equality

This brief synthesizes approaches and findings from gender research conducted by the CGIAR Program on Policy, Institutions, and Markets (PIM). The focus of this work is the governance of natural resources and policy and institutions for improved natural resources management. This body of research analyzes how tenure security affects sustainable management and how individuals, groups, and communities govern land, water, fish stocks, and forests. An important focus of this work involves the following questions: (1) who has what rights with respect to these resources (particularly for women and members of marginalized groups), (2) what are their roles in managing natural resources, and (3) what livelihood benefits do they receive? Without a contextualized understanding of these questions, policies and practices can inadvertently exclude women, reinforce historical practices of gender injustice, or introduce new inequalities that worsen natural resource management and poverty.

Gender relations shape women’s and men’s identities, norms, rules, and responsibilities. They influence people’s access to, use, and management of land and other natural resources, including ownership, tenure, and user rights to land and forests. A substantial body of research on these issues comes from the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM), through its Flagship 5 research theme. Flagship 5 focused on gender and social inclusion in relation to land and natural resource tenure and to landscape governance, and analyzed how tenure security affects sustainable management of land, water, fish stocks, and forests. This Food Policy Report reviews the scientific contributions from Flagship 5 to the broader wealth of related literature, including key lessons about gender from these studies with respect to outcomes and impacts on natural resource management, food security, and poverty alleviation.

Key messages The essence of gender-responsive Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) is ensuring that women and men at all levels have equal voice and influence in strategic decisions related to FLR, and that this contributes to substantive equality in outcomes for women and men.‘Free and Prior Informed Consent’, ‘fair’ and ‘just’ compensation, and impartial and effective grievance mechanisms for all those affected are critical to safeguarding the rights of local andindigenous women and men.Decisions about target areas for restoration, choice of stakeholders for FLR governance and how to include them, restoration approaches, priority species and how to monitor progress should be made following gender-inclusive participatory processes to capitalize on the knowledge and experiences of both women and men.Mechanisms and measures at various scales are required to equitably distribute benefits and costs associated with restoration for both women and men in participating communities.

What are the drivers and consequences of tenure insecurity? PIM research under Flagship 5 addressed drivers and consequences of tenure insecurity from three angles: women’s rights, individual or household rights, and collective rights (where ownership or long-term use and/or management rights have been recognized or devolved to communities to some extent). Individual and household rights focus on agricultural land; collective rights on forests, rangelands, and water; and women’s rights consider the full range of resources.