Chapter 1 GLOBAL GENDER AND ENVIRONMENT OUTLOOK Chapter 4:


Chapter 2


We envisage a world of universal respect for human rights and human dignity, the rule of law, justice, equality and non-discrimination; of respect for race, ethnicity and cultural diversity; and of equal opportunity permitting the full realization of human potential and contributing to shared prosperity. A world which invests in its children and in which every child grows up free from violence and exploitation. A world in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality and all legal, social and economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed. A just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world in which the needs of the most vulnerable are met.


Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit, September 2015


Why the Global Gender and Environment Outlook is needed


The Global Gender and Environment Outlook (GGEO) occupies a unique space in the landscape of global as- sessments, highlighting a new framework with which to look at social and economic development. The pur- pose of the GGEO is not simply to “add women to the environment and stir”. It makes use of gender-based assessment frameworks along with the more tradition- al environmental assessment approach of the Driv- ers-Pressures-State-Impacts-Responses


(DPSIR) meth-


odology (UNEP 2012), thus requiring new questions and new methods.


Much economic growth in recent decades has been driven by the rapid expansion of natural resource use, especially in developing and emerging economies, and by the processing and consumption of fossil fuels. This has led to a concentration of environmental pressures in some parts of the world (UNEP 2016). Many environ- mental problems have been compounded by the risks and impacts of extreme weather and climate events, which disproportionately affect the world’s poorest populations (UNEP 2016; IPCC 2014).


2


The drivers of environmental change are also differ- entiated by gender. Whether environmental change is acute or slow and chronic, it has specific differentiat- ed impacts on women and girls or on men and boys. Moreover, austerity measures and public spending cuts in recent years have exacerbated gender inequalities and increasingly shifted the burden of ensuring the survival of individuals and households onto the shoul- ders of women and girls (including through their use of natural resources), adding to their unpaid domestic and care work and time poverty (UN Women 2014). Using a gender-specific approach is an appropriate way to investigate the dynamic relationships between envi- ronmental change and gender equality, as well as be-


tween environmental sustainablity and the realization of women’s rights and empowerment (Leach 2015; Seager 2014b).


Growing recognition of the impacts of human activity on the environment is taking place at the same time as global policy and advocacy efforts to achieve gender equality together with equality for class/ income, race/ ethnicity and other differences) are gaining traction. As demonstrated in the GGEO, the push for gender equal- ity is shaping a better understanding of the environ- ment, while notions of gender equality are also shaped by environmental imperatives including the need for equal access to – and sharing of – the benefits of using and protecting ecosystems and natural resources (UN Women 2014; MA 2005).


Environmental feminist movements: inspiration, activism and analysis


Path-breaking work by hundreds of scientists, research- ers, policy experts, community groups, gender advo- cates and others, particularly since the 1970s, leads to today’s focus on the gender-environment nexus. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring (Carson 1962) sparked contemporary environmental movements around the world with its analysis of the environmental hav- oc wrought by human efforts to control nature using harmful chemical technologies, especially pesticides. Her analysis provoked immediate policy responses. Her work and that of others who were inspired by it led to a ban on general use of DDT in the United States in 1972 (Seager 2014a; Kolbert 2007; Lewis 1985). This was followed by global bans on other persistent organ- ic pollutants (POPs) (BRS n.d.). Silent Spring continues to inspire environmentalists and environmental move- ments.


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