Independent Annual Review of Gender Mainstreaming Report 2023

The Bhutan for life project being a 14 year financial bridge provides the country the opportunity to contribute towards its constitutional mandate of maintaining a minimum of 60% forest coverage in the country.
In the the vogue of contributing towards the country’s constitutional vision Bhutan for life have strategized various measures in all the protected areas in the country that includes national parks, nature reserves, biological corridors and wildlife sanctuaries.
While several conservation efforts are being exerted in the protected areas, the Bhutan for life project has also touched upon other universal value systems such as “ Gender Mainstreaming” and made inclusions of gender component in the project. Thus, a gender action plan for the project has been implemented in all the protected areas.
For the activities that are implemented under project, the annual independent review has been carried out for the period 2020-2023. Under the review, several key findings have been identified in the context of implementation of the gender component in the protected areas.
One of the key findings is that owing to the covid situation, most of the recommendations of the Gender action plan could not be implemented owing to the Covid -19 pandemic situations. Despite the pandemic situation, several activities that contributed towards empowering the women have been carried out in the protected areas. Women’s
participation in training and advocacy campaigns have improved, women’s savings group have been specifically formed targeting women,
skills development have been carried out in the field of culinary arts and home stay operations and management. Further women’s participation in the conservation efforts have improved compared to previous years and their standard of living has also improved with access to various energy saving devises such as access to bio gas energy, access to protected
farming and access to electricity.