Liberia?s past development history recorded the unequal participation of gender in the decision making processes about development activities at both the national and local levels. During these periods the marginalization of women in decision making processes was at the peak.. With the global recognition of the rights of women and the efforts to ensure women?s participation, the Government of Liberia in her efforts to introduce reforms in the country, created the space for gender through the establishment of the Ministry of Gender and Development as a sign of recognition of the fact that the development of any nation rests in the hands of all sectoral population with women and children making up a huge percentage. The lack of or low representation, participation and involvement of women in these reforms processes especially in some main forest institutions such as Community Forestry Development Committees (CFDCs) has been a challenge as the laws are not clear on how this will be done.

As the forest sector of Liberia experiences the introduction of activities that are intended for commercial, conservation and community uses such as the Voluntary Partnership Agreement / Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (VPA/FLEGT) and the Reduce Emission to Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+/Climate Change and Biodiversity Conservation), the country will be faced with the challenge of ensuring that all of these are implemented in a way that they will complement each other and equitably benefit all sectoral groups that make up the forest populations. The need to increase the capacity of the most marginalized groups to participate in decision making processes about these issues that will have impact on their livelihoods is a priority.

This project will focus on the capacity development of women to adequately contribute to the advancement of strategies to promote the conservation of biodiversity thereby saving the forest and water from activities that are degrading and deforesting. It seeks to provide skills and opportunities for women to discuss and analyse alternatives for sustaining and improving their livelihood and at the same time increase their access to information about adaptation and mitigation mechanism to ensure sustainable land use. The project will also work with women in two districts to collectively identify livelihood and income generating activities by providing seed funds to implemented activities identified by them

This project is linked to the SGF themes of Biodiversity Conservation