Biodiversity and livelihood opportunities for ethnic minority women

The project focuses on conducting research and delivering capacity-building programmes to ethnic minority women and communities to support their adoption of nature-based solutions (NBS) to enhance biodiversity conservation. It intends to provide technical support to cooperatives enterprises women’s organizations to strengthen ethnic minority women’s access to financial services and trainings that promote biodiversity-friendly and climate-resilient agricultural practice in forest buffer zones. This project aims to: (a) strengthen the conservation of high value forests in Ha Giang and Dak Lak provinces; (b) promote sustainability of the use of biodiversity in the buffer zones of these forests via climate-smart agricultural production; and (c) improve the capacities of public and private actors in developing and implementing biodiversity policies. Project activities include: (1) defining and supporting the adoption of nature-based solutions to improve agriculture and forestry production and climate-resilient agricultural practice in forest buffer zones by ethnic minority women and local communities; (2) providing gender-sensitive technical assistance to forest protection committees and community-based conservation groups; (3) providing a training program on sustainable business management for ethnic minority women entrepreneurs and cooperatives to strengthen ethnic minority women’s access to financial services; and (4) implementing awareness raising and training on gender equality and positive masculinity to increase women’s participation in biodiversity decision-making process.

The expected outcomes of this project include: (1) Increased adoption by ethnic minority women and their communities of gender-responsive nature-based solutions (NBS) supporting the ecological integrity of High conservation value forests (HCVF) for biodiversity and climate change adaptation; (2) Increased sustainable use of HCVF biodiversity by ethnic minority women vulnerable to climate change; and (3) Strengthened influence of ethnic minority women on policies and programs of HCVFs strategic for biodiversity and climate change adaptation.