Climate Resilience and Gender Equality: ESG BROADCAST shares key takeaways.
Rwanda’s Transforming Eastern Province through Adaptation (TREPA) project, funded by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and led by the IUCN. The six-year initiative is on a mission to restore 60,000 hectares of drought-degraded land into climate-resilient ecosystems. The project’s central tenet is its gender-responsive design, deliberately placing women at the forefront of restoration efforts, shifting away from traditional norms where men historically dominated these technical roles.
The project recognizes that women, who primarily manage household fields and ensure food security, possess essential, firsthand knowledge of land vulnerabilities and degradation patterns. By actively including them in technical activities, leadership, and decision-making, TREPA ensures that restoration plans are locally rooted and sustainable. Women are receiving training in nursery preparation, agroforestry, and soil management, translating technical skills into tangible economic opportunities.
Women’s cooperatives have rapidly emerged as the core of TREPA’s restoration economy. These groups manage seedling nurseries, generating a steady income stream from sales, land preparation services, and restoration contracts. This new financial independence enables women to contribute more significantly to household needs, including school fees and family nutrition, directly impacting multiple Sustainable Development Goals.
The implementation of fruit trees, such as avocados, and diversified agroforestry systems further strengthens this economic and social impact. These initiatives directly improve family nutrition and reduce household expenditure on food. Furthermore, the promotion of clean and efficient cooking stoves, supported by the project, significantly cuts the time women and children must spend collecting firewood, freeing up hours for education or other productive work. This reduction in reliance on biomass fuel also contributes to lower deforestation rates, enhancing the long-term success of the land restoration.
Beyond economic benefits, TREPA is redefining social dynamics. Women are increasingly taking up leadership positions in landscape committees and community resource management structures. Their amplified voices now directly influence critical decisions, such as where to plant trees and how to maintain water infrastructure. This demonstrates that holistic restoration thrives when guided by inclusive, gender-responsive governance. The TREPA model showcases that land restoration efforts must be twinned with social empowerment to be truly successful and scalable.
Strategic significance lies in the TREPA model’s proof-of-concept for how the ‘S’ and ‘E’ components of ESG can be integrated to drive market resilience. For investors and development finance institutions, the model provides an applicable, measurable framework for deploying capital toward both climate adaptation and gender equality. The success of women-led, climate-smart agriculture increases food security, creates reliable green value chains, and offers a strong incentive for long-term community protection of restored assets, thus lowering business and compliance risk in climate-vulnerable markets.
