Chapter 3 GLOBAL GENDER AND ENVIRONMENT OUTLOOK Chapter 1


Chapter 4:


Key Messages •


Chapter 2


Gender-and-environment approaches are essential for sustainable, equitable and just management of natural resources and ecosystems.


• Business-as-usual approaches are proving disastrous for people and the planet alike. For a sustainable, equitable and just future it is essential to adopt gender-and-environment approaches.


• Until recently, gender and the environment were treated in separate silos.


• While the gender-and-environment nexus is increasingly acknowledged in international agreements and national policy documents, implementation and follow-through have so far been weak or absent.


• Gender equality cannot be measured by women’s and men’s “presence” alone. Presence does not necessarily mean participation nor does it imply influence: the nature of people’s participation is what makes their presence meaningful or not.


• A transformative agenda recognizes gender equality as a driver of social change, leading to more people- smart environmental policies.


It is not “development” if it is not inclusive, equitable and sustainable


More than 20 years have passed since the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing laid out an expansive vision and body of commitments for achieving gender equality, women’s empowerment and sustainable development (UN 1995). In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, governments reaffirmed the Beijing Platform for Action as a foundation for sustainable development and made a commitment to integrate gender perspectives in sustainable development policies and programmes (UN 2015a).


The 2030 Agenda expresses universal, indivisible and rights-based ambitions to “leave no one behind”. It places women’s rights at the centre of transformative change, and above all at the centre of the pursuit of sustainable development in its three dimensions – economic, social and environmental (UNFCCC 2015). Responding


to the challenges of an increasingly


“globalized” world, the goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda are applicable in developed and developing countries. Gender equality considerations are reflected in an integrated way throughout the


Sustainable


Development Goals (SDGs) (Figure 3.1) and are identified as critical to their achievement.


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The 2030 Agenda holds out the promise of shifting current trends and dynamics away from business- as-usual in regard to gender and the environment. However, even in a document as visionary as the


2030 Agenda, explicit links between gender and the environment are weak: in the environmentally specific SDG goals women are mentioned in only one target (“13.b, Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing States, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities”); in the targets under Goal 5 (“Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”), environment is not mentioned at all.


Gender-and-environment policies: While the gender-and-environment nexus is increasingly acknowledged in international agreements and national policy documents, implementation and follow-through need to be strengthened. The extent and gravity of environmental crises globally require a decisive move away from business-as-usual approaches.


Global drivers and trends – including, importantly, gender norms -- establish the overarching context of life on the planet. The forces that create environmental unsustainability are often also responsible for gender (and other social) inequality. Environmental decisions and decision-makers are gendered. This is true at macro as well as micro levels, including in regard to


individual decision-making. Systems of political


power and economic systems are shaped by cultural norms in which gender presumptions are embedded. While greater gender equality will not magically solve all environmental problems (and environmental sustainability would not automatically ensure greater gender equity), there are strong ideological synergies between forces of equity – or inequity – in both realms.


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