Images credit: Conservation International
From 1 September to 4 September 2025, the first Ecosystem Restoration Integrated Program (ERIP) Annual Conference brought together governments, practitioners, and technical experts in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The Ecosystem Restoration Integrated Program (ERIP) is a six-year, $200 million global initiative, led by Conservation International (CI) and funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in 20 countries, across Asia, Africa and Latin America. This program supports the restoration of diverse ecosystems, such as forests, mangroves, wetlands, peatlands and grasslands in Angola, Brazil, Cambodia, Chad, DR Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Mozambique, Nepal, Peru, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
To implement ERIP, CI has partnered with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), World Bank, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). This includes national governments that are implementing partners from the 20 participating countries. The program further collaborates closely with a network of non-governmental organisations like the World Resources Institute (WRI), Alliance for Restoration of Natural Resources (ANR Alliance) and the Conservation Strategy Fund, to develop training programs, build technical and institutional capacity, and create tools that help countries design and implement effective restoration strategies.
Strongly aligned with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the program champions global restoration commitments through policy, finance, capacity building, and international cooperation. ERIP’s mission is to restore ecosystems and support local communities reliant on these services by building a network of partnerships, integrating innovation with traditional knowledge, and empowering youth, women, Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities (IPs and LCs).
Rubina presents ‘Restore Her Rights’ case studies and talks about gender equity in restoration. Image credit: Conservation International
The ERIP Conference
Held over four days, the conference exuded high energy, especially with 70 participants from across the globe. John Lotspeich, CI’s Vice President for Restoration, set the tone for the conference, marking the significance of the program and the quality of discussions that followed. For ERIP, this conference was not just a milestone; it stood as a movement — one that is championed by national and global partners.
In the lightning session, each ERIP country shared their projects, including its national context, restoration targets, current approaches, challenges, learning areas and collaboration spaces. Across continents, despite having distinct project implementation techniques, the focus of restoration strategies outlines similarities. The aim for country projects is to improve livelihoods, benefit sharing across diverse ecosystems, safeguarding water resources, resilience, carbon financing, supporting smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples’ and vulnerable populations, and ensuring restoration is sustainable beyond the project lifecycle.
In continuation with ERIP’s goals, participants also engaged in the ‘Knowledge Design’ session, which helped them identify key project priorities and challenges. During this session, participants co-created ideas, designed knowledge products and identified ways to collaborate. Likewise, the policy session examined how this program will support countries in strengthening policies for ecosystem restoration. It further discussed linking national efforts to global initiatives like the Great Green Wall and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
Participants visited Phnom Kulen National Park, Prey Thom community, Popel community, and Chob Tasok community on the third day. The park covers 62,000 hectares and is home to over 1,000 cultural sites. It is also a crucial water catchment area, considering it has a reservoir. While conservation is strict, it was spotlighted that the livelihoods of local communities need to be supported alongside achieving ecological goals. Additionally, there needs to be sustained economic strategies for local communities, as tourism is easily impacted despite being a major livelihood option.
On the final day, project partners explored restoration economics, approaches and monitoring. This included discussions around Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR), freshwater management, gender integration and financing models such as cost-benefit analysis, restoration calculator, payment for ecosystem services (PES) and private sector engagement.
The discussions undertaken in these four days emphasised the technical and ecological complexity of restoring 1.8 million hectares of land across 20 countries. Yet, despite the promise of these conversations, one dimension remained primarily at the margins – gender equality.
Image credits: Conservation International (CI) and Rubina Pradhan, Women4Biodiversity
Restoration is Not Gender-Neutral
The conference highlighted impressive innovations in restoration economics, geospatial monitoring tools, financing and investment tools and community-based approaches. But when gender came up, it was usually framed as cross-cutting or a safeguard, rather than as a transformative lens that shapes how restoration is designed, financed, and implemented.
While we are the generation restoration, conservation and ecosystem restoration must take centre-stage. However, ecosystem degradation and climate impacts do not affect us equally. For women, and within this dimension, Indigenous women, pastoralist communities, or even women farmers, restoration is deeply intertwined with food security, water access, and survival. Sidelining this reality risks reinforcing the very inequalities that leave women, Indigenous Peoples’ and marginalised communities more vulnerable to climate shocks.
Mrinalini Rai, the Founder and Director of Women4Biodiversity, emphasised that gender integration is crucial to achieving environmental and social outcomes, and that international commitments on gender and human rights are essential to integrate at the national level. Her intervention was one of the few moments where gender was raised explicitly, and it underscored the gap between global commitments and actual practice on the ground.
Whose Knowledge Counts?
The conference featured sessions on innovative interventions, ecological practices and community-led approaches. However, women’s roles and Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ knowledge systems continue to remain in the margins. From a feminist perspective, therefore, we ask: whose knowledge counts when we talk about best practices? If we continue to privilege technical fixes and external expertise, we risk sidelining the custodians of land and water whose daily lives embody restoration. Women4Biodiversity, during the ERIP Clinics session, spotlighted the significance of mainstreaming gender and community-led restoration as strategies to promote ownership and sustainability of restoration efforts. While we were given a space to have gendered voices heard, it continued to be a parallel thread, as most of the technical discussions remained gender blind.
Mrinalini Rai during her session on gender and restoration. Image credit: Conservation International (CI)
Moving Beyond Tokenism
While gender was officially listed as a core theme of ERIP, it was overshadowed by more technical priorities like finance, monitoring, and policy design during the conference. To move forward, ERIP and its partners must go beyond treating gender as a checkbox and instead:
- Embed women’s leadership at every level, from community governance structures to regional policy platforms.
- Value care and relational work, such as seed saving, water sharing, and intergenerational teaching as essential restoration practices.
- Fund gender-transformative approaches and not just safeguard measures. Without resourcing, the rhetoric of inclusion will remain symbolic.
A Call to Rebalance
The inaugural ERIP conference was a milestone in building collaboration and setting the technical foundation for restoration. But if the next six years are to deliver not only on hectares restored but also on justice and equity, gender cannot remain an afterthought.
Restoration is not just about preserving ecology; it is about people, power, and rights. From a feminist lens, restoring ecosystems must also mean restoring balance in who leads, decides, and benefits.
The next ERIP gathering presents an opportunity to shift gears: to centre women, Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities not as ‘beneficiaries’ but as co-creators of restoration futures. Anything less will fall short of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration vision and the 30×30 agenda.
