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ICRAF and FTA host first technical discussion on the development of a gender-responsive post-2020 global biodiversity framework


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Farmers, from left, Nigna Latifa (26), Dadjan Wassinatou (34) and Nacro Rainatou (31) separate the seeds from the fiber of freshly harvested cotton, under a tree in the Zorro village, Burkina Faso. Photo by Ollivier Girard/CIFOR.
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The unprecedented and accelerating loss of biodiversity is one of the greatest crises of our time. Biodiversity is the invisible infrastructure that supports the healthy functioning of our food systems, economies and communities—and it’s deteriorating at an alarming rate: 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction.

The loss of biodiversity affects us all, but pervasive gender inequalities and differentiated gender norms mean that men and women experience the impacts of biodiversity loss differently. Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), in recognition of this disparity, have committed to integrating gender considerations into the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

An Open-Ended Intersessional Working Group is charged with the development of a new framework and strategic plan that will replace the existing Strategic Plan for Biodiversity when it lapses in 2020. The first meeting of the Working Group was held at the UN Environment headquarters in Nairobi on 27-30 August 2019.

Verona Collantes, Intergovernmental Specialist at UN Women. Photo: World Agroforestry/Sheila Murithi

Prior to the event, select participants met at the World Agroforestry (ICRAF) campus for a full-day technical discussion to build consensus around the key elements of the new gender-responsive framework. The workshop, organized by UN Women and the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), was attended by 12 representatives from national governments, civil society organizations and movements, UN agencies and other international organizations.

The workshop featured two initial presentations by Verona Collantes, Intergovernmental Specialist at UN Women, and Ana Maria Paez Valencia, ICRAF’s Social Scientist and Gender Specialist. They touched on the gender dimensions of biodiversity management and the process of integrating these considerations into the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

Following the presentations, the hosts led a discussion that focused on defining the gender considerations that needed to be reflected and considered in the post-2020 biodiversity framework in terms of goals, targets and indicators, accountability mechanisms, enabling conditions and capacities.

“Waiting until there is an established structure on gender won’t work. We have the opportunity to brainstorm key messages and ideas that could be brought to attention during the upcoming discussion to engage the Working Group, and ensure the meaningful integration of gender considerations into the new framework from the start.” Verona Collantes Intergovernmental Specialist at UN Women

The discussion led to a consensus on several key messages that were presented to the Open-Ended Intersessional Working Group at the First Meeting. These key messages are summarized below.

The post-2020 global biodiversity framework must be underpinned by gender-responsive goals, targets and indicators.

Participants reviewed and discussed possible options for targets and indicators for measuring the level of gender responsiveness within the new biodiversity framework. It was agreed that specific gender-related indicators should be mainstreamed across all sets of thematic targets, in addition to the inclusion of a target that is particularly centred around gender equality:

“By 2030, governments and other relevant stakeholders (academia, private sector, international organizations and implementing entities, etc.) have put in place instruments and mechanisms to ensure, monitor and report on: i) women and girls’ engagement in decision-making in biodiversity conservation and sustainable use; ii) fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the utilization of genetic resources; and iii) differential impacts of biodiversity loss.”

Participants emphasized the need to develop gender-specific indicators that align with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators and with the three objectives of the CBD. Gender-disaggregated data collection and reporting within the framework will allow for more responsive adaptive learning throughout implementation.

There is a need to strengthen accountability when it comes to integrating gender considerations in the CBD process. 1

During the CBD’s 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CBD COP14), all Parties agreed to the decisions from COP14, which referenced guidelines for the development of gender-responsive post-2020 biodiversity framework and included the approval of a Gender Action Plan (GAP). Participants of the workshop agreed that because this was an official COP decision, it should be used as a starting point for holding Parties accountable.

Ana Maria Paez Valencia, Social Scientist and Gender Specialist, ICRAF

The workshop discussed possible mechanisms such as including gender responsiveness, or progress on gender relevant indicators as part of the voluntary peer-review process that assesses the development and implementation of national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs).

The inclusion of gender-responsive indicators for each target within the new framework should be linked to data collection and reporting mechanisms, with requirements for the inclusion of sex-disaggregated data and gender considerations in reporting templates. Moreover, participants agreed that compliance mechanisms should be facilitative, meaning that Parties who are unable or need support in implementing monitoring requirements will receive training and support.

An enabling environment is essential for mainstreaming gender considerations into the post-2020 framework.

Fundamental to the success of the post-2020 framework is the availability of sustained finance for implementation. Workshop participants underscored the importance of earmarking financial flows for gender-responsive activities and, specifically, for implementation of the CBD’s Gender Action Plan. They agreed that the plan should be revised to reflect updates within the post-2020 framework. If equipped with meaningful requirements for monitoring and reporting, the revised Gender Action Plan has the potential to become a powerful tool to guide action and hold Parties accountable.

The workshop also underscored the importance of capacity building and funding for the development of appropriate methodologies and approaches for the integration of gender considerations into relevant policy, strategy, and monitoring and evaluation frameworks. The need for capacity building applies not only to CBD processes and strategies, but to broader governmental directives, policies and strategic plans on biodiversity, at all levels of governance and implementation.

Originally published at World Agroforestry (ICRAF).

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World Agroforestry (ICRAF) is a centre of scientific and development excellence that harnesses the benefits of trees for people and the environment. Knowledge produced by ICRAF enables governments, development agencies and farmers to utilize the power of trees to make farming and livelihoods more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable at multiple scales.


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The Tamale Declaration: a regreening plan for northern Ghana


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An international workshop has called for an integrated plan to regreen the region.

The climax of the international workshop held late November 2018 in Tamale, the capital of Ghana’s Northern Region, was when the nearly 60 participants issued an urgent call for a ‘comprehensive Regreening Plan’.

The Plan would see the integration of trees with crops and livestock across northern Ghana, which they say is needed to ‘restore landscapes and improve livelihoods’ in the three regions that comprise the country’s northern belt.

Their call was addressed to all key policy-makers in Ghana’s Upper East, Upper West and Northern regions, including the Northern Development Authority, metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies, traditional authorities, and also the ministries of Land and Natural Resources, of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, and of Food and Agriculture. The workshop called on these institutions to allocate budget and incentive systems to support the Regreening Plan.

The theme of regreening is a crucial one in Ghana, which is one of eight countries in Sub-Saharan Africa involved in the ambitious Regreening Africa project, which is funded by the European Union. The aim is to reverse land degradation among 500,000 households and across 1 million hectares. In Ghana, Regreening Africa is targeting 40,000 households on 90,000 hectares of land to be restored by 2022.

As part of the Bonn Challenge, in 2015 Ghana also pledged to restore 2 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2030, in addition to two previous land-restoration pledges by the Government: the Forestry Development Master Plan launched in 1996, which aimed to plant trees on 200,000 hectares of unproductive forest land and the savannah zone by 2020; and the National Forest Plantation Strategy, which aims to rehabilitate 235,000 hectares of forest plantations and enrich planting of 100,000 hectares of under-stocked forest reserves by 2040.

Fergus Sinclair, leader of Systems Science at World Agroforestry, who led one of the sessions at the workshop, said that, ‘With such ambitious targets to meet, this multi-stakeholder workshop in Tamale — Restoring Landscapes for Resilient Livelihoods in Northern Ghana — could not have come at a more opportune time.’

A broad range of perspectives and expertise
The participants came from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and from all over Ghana, representing a broad range of perspectives, backgrounds and professions: national and regional governments; donors; international and grassroots non-governmental organizations; farmers’ organizations; and one paramount chief.

Aftermath of a fire. Photo: World Agroforestry/Gloria Adeyiga

While there was consensus about the urgent need for land restoration, it was abundantly clear that there are still major challenges to be overcome: gender relations and imbalances in decision-making powers; the nature of land and tree tenure among different ethnic groups and in different regions; policy and legislative gaps in protecting and managing trees in the landscape and the environment as a whole; negative impacts of fires; indiscriminate cutting of trees (including for charcoal production); and clearing for agriculture and mining.

Paramount Chief Bong Naaba Baba Salifu Alemnyarun of the Bongo Traditional Area expressed his concern that the power of traditional authorities to protect the environment had been whittled away over the years.

“If we, the chiefs, had all the powers like our forefathers used to do, there wouldn’t be any destruction of the environment; nobody would cut a tree [without permission],” he said.

While acknowledging the role of chiefs in enforcing rules, there was also consensus that it is important to vest powers of managing trees with farmers and ensure that regulations do not stifle their ability to benefit so that there is an incentive for regreening.

It was noted that there were bylaws to protect trees and the environment but they were not enforced, prompting a call for lawmakers from the Attorney General’s office to attend future workshops to address these issues.

Shea tree in parkland. Photo: World Agroforestry/Emilie Smith Dumont

Analysis of the causes of land degradation revealed a lack of coordination, weak political will and poor funding, legislative and policy gaps, restrictive sociocultural norms, economic barriers, and a shortage of scientific evidence. Nevertheless, they expressed determination to overcome the challenges.

After the workshop, Gloria Adeyiga, a researcher with the Forestry Research Institute who is working with the West Africa Forest-Farm Interface (WAFFI) in Ghana, said she felt optimistic about the prospects for regreening the northern region.

“The workshop highlighted some concerns I’ve always had about issues around regreening,” Adeyiga said. “But I learned that others share these concerns and that we can address them for more sustainable interventions and long-term impact.”

“The future of land restoration and improving livelihoods lies in building evidence through participatory research,” said World Agroforestry’s Emilie Smith Dumont. She has coordinated WAFFI in northern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso and is the focal point for Regreening Africa in the region.

One session presented land-restoration projects on a map of northern Ghana, revealing many separate projects with similar goals. This highlighted the need for better communication and coordination.

Patrice Savadogo, who is taking over Smith Dumont’s role next year, emphasized that restoration, ‘also depends on increasing coordination between efforts to address common bottlenecks in activities to increase tree cover. Recognizing this, as we did together at the workshop, is the first step in overcoming them.’

Aaron B. Aduna, chief basin officer for the White Volta River with the Water Resources Commission, said the workshop was excellent in its diversity of participants and in how it generated discussion.

“Looking at the calibre of people gathered here,” said Aduna, “I am optimistic that a lot will be achieved in the regreening of Ghana.”

Aduna added that it is time that people paid attention to the importance of regreening and to trees in the landscape because, he said, “If there is no forest, there is no water.”

For more information, please contact Patrice Savadogo: p.savadogo@cgiar.org

The workshop was a collaboration between Regreening Africa and the West Africa Forest-Farm Interface (WAFFI). WAFFI is led by CIFOR in collaboration with ICRAF and Tree Aid with support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry. WAFFI aims to identify practices and policy actions that improve the income and food security of smallholders in Burkina Faso and Ghana through integrated forest and tree management systems that are environmentally sound and socially equitable.

Regreening Africa is a five-year project that seeks to reverse land degradation among 500,000 households across 1 million hectares in eight countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Incorporating trees into crop land, communal land and pastoral areas can reclaim Africa’s degraded landscapes. In Ghana, the work is led by World Vision in collaboration with ICRAF and Catholic Relief Services. Partners in Regreening Africa and WAFFI include Catholic Relief Services, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), European Union, Economics of Land Degradation, International Fund for Agricultural Development, Organization for Indigenous Initiatives and Sustainability, Tree Aid, World Agroforestry, and World Vision.

This story was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the Regreening Africa project and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.


By Joan Baxter, originally published by The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).


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Sharing better, for better research


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In Nalma village, Nepal, land is used for rice fields, gardens and housing. Photo by M. Edliadi/CIFOR
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A woman walks home from the fields in Nalma, Nepal. Photo by M. Edliadi/CIFOR

For the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), a research for development (R4D) program, engaging in knowledge sharing fundamentally conditions the program’s effectiveness and impact, both in the policy environment and on the ground. Better sharing leads to better research.

That is why FTA, in recent months, has invested heavily in knowledge sharing. For us at FTA, knowledge sharing is never a one-way street, but an exchange. As we share our knowledge with stakeholders, we learn just as much, and we use that learning to set our next research priorities and better design the research that we do, to ensure greater legitimacy and relevance.

1. Knowledge sharing starts with better explaining the work we do, how we do it, with whom and for what.

FTA’s proposal for Phase 2 (2017-2022) amounts to over 500 pages. That’s the length needed to provide full details on a multimillion dollar six-year program as wide-ranging as FTA, with work from tree genetic resources to management, value chains, institutions and governance.

But not everyone can afford to spend a full week reading the whole thing. This is why we have created, with the program’s scientists, a set of brochures that explains in a nutshell the work being done and the work that we aim to develop across FTA. Six brochures have already been published and the last two will be released before the end of the year, including one on the brand new Flagship 2, which has just been rated “strong” by the Independent Science and Partner Council (ISPC) after a recent resubmission.

Read more: What is FTA?

To find the brochures, please take a look at our new webpage. We hope that in turn, resource partners will have clearer minds on what we do and what we bring on the ground, and will be even more keen to invest in FTA.

2. Knowledge sharing means engaging with key partner institutions with an aim to bridge the world of research with the world of development and people on the ground.

This means being able to understand, confront and match the various demands from development, and what research can supply and how. Three key events in September enabled us to put this into practice.

First, on Sept. 5-8 in Bern, Switzerland, FTA participated in the first International Conference on Research for Sustainable Development, in two panel sessions organized between the CGIAR and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

This provided a means to better understand Switzerland’s priorities in terms of development actions, as well as to test the interest in joint works with Swiss private sector actors on sustainable value chains and responsible finance, and on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

FTA Director Vincent Gitz speaks during the IUFRO subplenary session. Photo by Bethany Davies/CIFOR

The quality of the exchanges in Bern was very high and this provided a strong impetus for FTA to engage even more with Swiss upstream partners, in particular with universities such as the University of Bern and ETH Zurich, to downstream actors, and with SDC. As we will take this on board, this means working toward even more relevant and effective research in FTA.

Second, on Sept. 18-22 in Freiburg, Germany, more than 40 FTA scientists participated in some way in the historic International Union of Forest Research Organizations’ (IUFRO) 125th Anniversary Congress. At the congress, FTA and IUFRO cohosted a subplenary session on research priorities titled “Research for sustainable development: Forests, trees and agroforestry”. If you missed it, you will soon be able to watch it here.

The session enabled us to take the scientific forest research community out of its comfort zone, to put in question the priorities it should focus on, and look at how it should work in light of today’s development challenges. With research becoming increasingly specialized, the overarching challenge is to integrate the different dimensions of sustainable development and different objectives into the research questions, research methods and solutions we develop in practice. And to integrate research “in” development. This is easier said than done, but it will definitively serve as a guide for FTA’s internal priority setting, which will give primers to such integrated initiatives.

Read more: What are the priorities for relevant, legitimate and effective forest and tree research? Lessons from the IUFRO congress

In Nalma village, Nepal, land is used for rice fields, gardens and housing. Photo by M. Edliadi/CIFOR

Third, FTA participated in a three-day high-level conference on food security and nutrition in an era of climate change, coorganized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Government of Quebec. The conference showed Quebec’s potential in terms of supporting international development, especially in francophone areas such as West Africa. One of the highlights was the participation of First Nations and Inuit representatives.

Food security challenges for people in northern Canada are already considerable, and climate change has important impacts, as it will have for many other indigenous groups worldwide. This is testimony to the immense systemic changes that are ongoing right now because of climate change. We need to properly consider social impacts and dimensions to enable positive and durable change.

We need to embed this in our research, and in fact reconsider the way we do research: doing research with indigenous peoples and marginalized groups, and considering them not as the object of research, but including them in research as generators of knowledge in their own right. Here, engagement is a synonym for better learning and more legitimacy.

3. Knowledge sharing means engaging with policy and multistakeholder platforms.

In November and December FTA will be mobilized in three multistakeholder platforms of global importance, each dealing with one key impact area of FTA: food security and nutrition, climate change, and sustainable landscapes.

First is the 44th plenary session of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS), the highest food security governance body on the planet, which runs from Oct. 9–13. FTA is coorganizing two side events: the first focuses on feminism, forests and food security, with key Swedish partners, and the second focuses on priorities along the R4D continuum for improving the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in food security and nutrition, with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Netherlands, the Swedish International Agricultural Network Initiative (SIANI) and Tropenbos International.

FTA scientist Terry Sunderland discussed the HLPE report at the IUFRO 125th Anniversary Congress. Photo by Bethany Davies/CIFOR

And after having heavily contributed to the High Level Panel of experts (HLPE) report providing the evidence base to the CFS negotiations on Sustainable Forestry For Food Security and Nutrition, FTA will participate in the policy round table itself, alongside governments and all actors gathered at CFS. This illustrates the double role of a R4D program like FTA: feeding multistakeholder discussions and decisions with evidence and knowledge (inclusively generated), and at the same time being an active stakeholder in the implementation of solutions, alongside all partners.

Then in November, FTA is set to engage further through several events with climate actors at the Fiji-led United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP23) in Bonn, Germany. FTA will aim to provide, with partners, a focus on gender, on REDD+ and on finance for sustainable value chains.

Finally, in December, FTA will be in Bonn once again for the major global multistakeholder platform on landscapes, the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF). There FTA will aim to feed knowledge and organize discussions on forests and water, and on land restoration.

While knowledge generation remains the core of FTA’s work, we believe that it may not be effective without efficient knowledge sharing and stakeholder engagement. Such an investment is necessary for a R4D program, which aims at the uptake of solutions on the ground. It is also synergetic with the research itself. It confronts us daily with new questions, and with the various beliefs, views and expectations of stakeholders.

If we genuinely measure the implications of the feedback we receive, on the research we do and its very design, then knowledge sharing and engagement is not simply adding “feel-good moments” to research that has already been done: It is fundamental to the quality of the research that is to come.

By Vincent Gitz, FTA Director 


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