Mai Ndombe REDD+ and Gender Equity: Bridging Global Standards with Local Contexts

In the villages around the Mai Ndombe REDD+ project, men dominate the leadership roles. They chair committees, negotiate with project partners, and make decisions about environmental resources. Women, meanwhile, have often been present but rarely involved. This adherence to patriarchal  norms is a daily challenge in the pursuit of gender equity.

At Inunu village, at the Southern part of lake Mai Ndombe, a village meeting bringing together men and women was recently held. Even though there were no seating restrictions, the sitting arrangements that naturally developed were quite revealing about how patriarchal the community is. The front was overly occupied by male attendees while women chose to remain behind. Some women would whisper their views to a male relative so that they could transmit them to the room. 

It’s clear that men have historically held authority in these communities. The Mai-Ndombe REDD+ project has had to come up with ways of to make women’s voices heard,  so it created grassroots spaces where they can speak without fear of being dismissed. The spaces are known as Organisation de base (OB).

Currently there are 16 OBs, exclusively composed of women from local villages, that train women in agricultural process, gain support for cooperatives that give women economic leverage, and promote community dialogues where men are encouraged to listen rather than dominate conversations. Yet progress is slow, and the team acknowledges that equity cannot be measured only by the number of women in the meetings.

Other gender equity efforts have worked to improve women’s daily lives by investing in their sustainable agriculture.  Last year, the women of Mai Ndombe were highly successful in selling their agricultural products at a farmer’s market organized for International Women’s Day.  This market attracted over a thousand buyers from across Mai-Ndombe. Marilyn Elembe Mwako, the facilitator and supervisor of these grassroots organizations, explained that this event was an opportunity not only to celebrate women by showcasing their work, but also to  center women’s key role in the community of Mai Ndombe.  

The challenge of achieving gender equity can inadvertently be compounded by the expectations of internationally established frameworks.  Gender equity is a pillar of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and projects like the Mai Ndombe REDD+ are often evaluated against indicators designed in New York or Geneva. But those metrics can feel alien in rural Congo.

Western frameworks tend to assume that empowerment looks the same everywhere. But here, women already play critical roles in managing households, farming, and informal decision-making. If we ignore that, we risk imposing a model of progress that doesn’t fit the local context.

Observers say this approach is vital. “Equity is not about quotas alone,” notes a Kinshasa-based researcher. “It’s about shifting power in ways that communities themselves find meaningful. That takes time, and it requires humility from outsiders who think they know what progress should look like.”

In Mai Ndombe, the path toward gender equity is uneven, contested, and deeply contextual. But for those working on the Mai-Ndombe REDD+ project, that complexity is not a barrier; it is the very path forward for true sustainable development.