Women in Environmental Decision Making

By: Emily Michienzi

“There is a growing awareness that gender equality and women’s empowerment are prerequisites for sustainable development and a just world.”[1] Studies show that in countries where gender inequality is high, there is a correlation to increased deforestation, air pollution, and other negative environmental impacts.[2] Not only is the correlation between gender inequality and environmental degradation present, but studies show that women experience the impacts of environmental degradation differently than men.[3] For instance, in many parts of the world, women are primarily responsible for collecting drinking water and wood for fuel, which are both vital natural resources.[4] Women in the combined twenty-five Sub-Saharan African countries worked sixteen million hours every day just to collect drinking water for themselves and their families.[5] When the environment is degraded due to deforestation, air pollution, or other environmental problems, women are forced to walk farther to collect drinking water, fuelwood, and other essential natural resources.[6]

Despite the disproportionate impact of environmental degradation on women’s lives, they “frequently lack ownership and decision-making power over the natural resources on which they depend.”[7] This is problematic because “[w]ithout proactively identifying and addressing relevant gender issues, environmental projects have the potential to not only perpetuate disparities, but may even widen the gap between men and women.”[8] In addition, including women in environmental policy making can enhance desirable environmental outcomes.[9] This is because, as explained above, women in many countries are responsible for collecting vital natural resources, and thus, are more intimately aware of the environmental consequences on those necessary resources, like water and wood.[10]

One example of the power of including women and harnessing their unique perspective on environment in environmental policymaking comes from Liberia.[11] In a project designed to protect Liberia’s mangrove forests, a group called Conservation International worked with both men and women in the country to tackle the decline of the mangrove forests and overharvesting of fish simultaneously.[12] To do this, the group worked with the men, who were primarily responsible for fishing, to use different nets to prevent the overharvesting of fish in the shallow waters.[13] Simultaneously, the group worked with local women who were primarily responsible for processing the fish.[14] The group discovered that the mangrove forests were depleting because the women needed to collect incredible amounts of wood for fire in order to process the fish.[15] By incorporating the women into the policy decisions, Conservation International was able to better understand why the mangrove forests were declining and address the issue by giving women eco-stoves that used less wood, but would still allow the women to process the fish.[16]

            In 1995, the United Nations and the member states agreed to increase gender equality and women’s empowerment through gender mainstreaming.[17] Gender mainstreaming is:

[T]he process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.[18]

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) “is the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda … and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment.”[19] In 2011, the UNEP conducted an evaluation of its program to determine if it was incorporating gender mainstreaming, as required by the United Nations, into its organizational structure and each of its environmental programs.[20] The evaluation concluded that the UNEP had not fully incorporated gender mainstreaming or actively promoted gender equality and women’s empowerment in its organization or its environmental activities.[21] Although the organization found that it incorporated gender language into seventy-percent of its project documents, the UNEP concluded that it “had not yet been able to demonstrate its contribution to the promotion of gender equality in the environmental sector.”[22] While this evaluation is distressing, in the nine years since the UNEP conducted this evaluation, it worked to take steps to better promote gender mainstreaming and gender equality. For example, in 2012, the United Nations created the UN System Wide Action Plan, which “enabled gender issues to be mainstreamed systematically and measurably into all major institutional functions of the UN system entities.”[23] This program allows the UN to better evaluate its programs to ensure they are promoting gender mainstreaming and it allows for greater accountability within the UN programs.[24] The UNEP signed onto this Action Plan.[25] In addition, after the UNEP evaluation, it created a “Gender Policy,” designed to be a “complete gender mainstreaming policy statement and operational framework to guide the organization’s work in all subprogramme areas.”[26]

While it seems that leading global environmental organizations are trying to incorporate gender equality into their organizations and the programs they establish, “stark gender disparities remain … [in] decision-making power.” It is for these international environmental organizations not only to recognize that different genders are impacted by environmental problems differently but also to work to include women in positions of power where their voices are heard and they have a seat at the table where the decisions are made.

#Women #EnvironmentalDecisionMaking #EnvironmentalLaw #InternationalLaw

[1] Women’s Rights Make a Difference for the Environment and Sustainability, IUCN (March 8, 2015), https://www.iucn.org/content/women%E2%80%99s-rights-make-difference-environment-and-sustainability.

[2] Natalie Elwell & Yasmine Williams, If You Care About the Environment, You Should Care About Gender, WRI (Mar. 7, 2016), https://www.wri.org/blog/2016/03/if-you-care-about-environment-you-should-care-about-gender. 

[3] Id.

[4] Environment and Gender Equality, Irish Aid 4 (2004), https://www.irishaid.ie/media/irishaid/allwebsitemedia/20newsandpublications/publicationpdfsenglish/environment-keysheet-13-gender-equality.pdf.

[5] Lakshmi Puri, Gender Equality for the Environment: An Unfinished Agenda, SciDevNet (July 7, 2014), https://www.scidev.net/global/gender/opinion/gender-equality-environment-agenda.html?

[6] Environment and Gender Equality, supra note 4, at 2.

[7] Environment and Gender Equality, supra note 4.

[8] Natalie Elwell & Yasmine Williams, supra note 2.

[9] Id.

[10] Id.

[11] Celebrating Women’s Contribution to Global Environmental Sustainability, gef (Mar. 7, 2019), https://www.thegef.org/blog/celebrating-womens-contribution-global-environmental-sustainability.

[12] Id.

[13] Id.

[14] Id.

[15] Id.

[16] Id.

[17] Gender Equality and the Environment: Policy and Strategy, UNEP 15 (2014), file:///C:/Users/Emily/Downloads/-Gender_equality_and_the_environment__Policy_and_strategy-2015Gender_equality_and_the_environment _policy_and_strategy.pdf.pdf.

[18] Id.

[19] About UN Environment Programme, UNEP, https://www.unenvironment.org/about-un-environment (last visited Feb. 19, 2020).

[20] Gender Equality and the Environment: Policy and Strategy, supra note 17, at 21.

[21]Id.

[22] Id.

[23] Promoting UN accountability (UN-SWAP and UNCT-SWAP), UN Women, https://www.unwomen.org/en/how-we-work/un-system-coordination/promoting-un-accountability (last visited Feb. 19, 2020).

[24]Id.

[25] Policy, UNEP, https://www.unenvironment.org/explore-topics/gender/what-we-do/policy (last visited Feb. 19, 2020).

[26] Gender Equality and the Environment: A Guide to UNEP’s Work, UNEP (2015), https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream /handle/20.500.11822/7642/-Gender_equality_and_the_environment_ A_Guide_to_UNEPs_work-2016Gender_equality_and_the_environment.pdf.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y.