Welcome to Women4Biodiversity, an organisation dedicated to championing the rights of women and girls to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. We believe a sustainable and just future can only be achieved when environmental well-being goes hand-in-hand with gender equality and women’s empowerment.
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Our mission is to advocate for more coherent and inclusive processes that prioritize human rights, gender equality, and women’s empowerment in environmental protection. We firmly believe that ‘living in harmony with nature’ is only achievable when women and girls’ invaluable roles and contributions are fully acknowledged and integrated into conservation strategies.
At Women4Biodiversity, we advocate for gender equality and women’s empowerment across all aspects of biodiversity conservation, including sustainable use, access, and benefit-sharing efforts. By promoting gender-sensitive policies, fostering women’s leadership, and amplifying their voices in decision-making processes, we strive to create a more inclusive, equitable, and effective approach to environmental sustainability. Our work involves building synergies around the work of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and other multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs).
Join us in our mission to create a world where women and girls are equal partners in protecting and preserving our planet for generations to come.
Read more below to find out how we engage and amplify women’s voices in biodiversity conservation spaces.
© Litzia Galvan / W4B
Soutenir la restauration dirigée par des femmes
Dans le cadre du projet Building Resilience and Weaving Gender-responsive Approaches to Biodiversity Governance, Women4Biodiversity soutient actuellement six sites de restauration en Asie, en Afrique, en Amérique latine et dans le Pacifique. The project aims to strengthen gender-responsive ecosystem restoration approaches and integrate them into national goals and international commitments through research and documentation of women-led ecosystem restoration in the restoration sites in Argentina, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Kenya, Myanmar and the Solomon Islands. The project follows a three-year practice to-policy roadmap. It is implemented with the funding support of Sida through SwedBio at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
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Aside from providing financial support, Women4Biodiversity also supports the restoration site partners through various workshops and trainings, recognising and amplifying their achievements and challenges through publications and social media, and helping them participate in various CBD meetings to familiarize themselves with the CBD processes to help reflect in their work.
Défendre les droits des femmes
Nous nous engageons à faire entendre la voix des femmes et des jeunes filles lors de divers forums internationaux sur la conservation de la biodiversité, en défendant leurs droits à participer activement aux efforts de conservation de la biodiversité et à en bénéficier. Through our advocacy work, we engage policymakers at the global level, bringing to light the experiences and perspectives of women and girls from local communities around the world. We provide an in-depth analysis of the multi-dimensional challenges they face in conservation, including gender-based discrimination, limited access to resources, and unequal participation in decision-making processes.
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Additionally, we celebrate the innovative solutions that women and girls contribute to biodiversity conservation. From grassroots initiatives to community-led projects, we highlight the impactful work of women and girls in finding sustainable solutions to environmental challenges.
By bridging the gap between local experiences and global policymaking, we strive to ensure that the rights and contributions of women and girls are recognized and valued in biodiversity conservation.
© Brikko Iyanev Dumas / W4B
© Neelam Pandey / W4B
Renforcer les capacités
Nous nous engageons à promouvoir une approche de la conservation fondée sur les droits, afin de garantir un avenir égal et durable pour tous. Nous offrons des conseils d’experts et des formations sur l’intégration de la dimension de genre dans les politiques de biodiversité, en donnant aux femmes et aux organisations de défense des droits des femmes les moyens de participer activement aux efforts de conservation. Through our specialized training modules, we equip participants with the knowledge and tools they need to integrate gender considerations into biodiversity policies and practices effectively.
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Our training sessions cover a wide range of topics, including gender analysis in conservation, gender-responsive planning and implementation, and strategies for promoting women’s participation and leadership in decision-making processes.
Through the training, we are working to mainstream gender into biodiversity policies and practices.
Find out more about the training that we offer.
Sensibilisation et partage des connaissances
Through our webinars and online events, we want to foster a deeper understanding of the CBD processes. We provide a platform for experts, practitioners, and stakeholders to share insights, best practices, and lessons learned in integrating human rights and gender considerations into biodiversity conservation efforts via these virtual and sometimes on-site events at various CBD meetings. These knowledge-sharing sessions facilitate dialogue, collaboration, and capacity-building among a diverse range of participants, ultimately contributing to more effective and inclusive conservation strategies.
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En plus de nos événements virtuels, nous nous engageons à sensibiliser le public par le biais de divers supports de sensibilisation, notamment les médias sociaux, les rapports, les podcasts et les bulletins d’information. Grâce à ces canaux, nous diffusons des informations, partageons des exemples de réussite et soulignons l’importance de l’intégration des droits de l’homme et de l’égalité des sexes dans la conservation de la biodiversité. Nous visons à atteindre un large public, y compris les décideurs politiques, les praticiens, les chercheurs, les organisations de la société civile et le grand public, afin de promouvoir une meilleure compréhension et une meilleure action sur ces questions cruciales.
© Aung Chan Thar / W4B
Ryan Dhika Nugraha / W4B
Collectifs de plaidoyer au niveau mondial
Forts d’un riche héritage en matière d’établissement et d’orientation d’alliances avec des organisations féministes, axées sur le genre et les droits de la femme, nous jouons un rôle central dans les discussions politiques multilatérales. By fostering collaboration and cooperation among diverse stakeholders, we strive to amplify the voices of women and ensure their meaningful participation in decision-making processes at all levels.
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In addition to our advocacy work, we are dedicated to fostering action and sharing knowledge at the intersection of various issues. From addressing the disproportionate impacts of environmental degradation on women to promoting gender-responsive approaches in biodiversity conservation, we advocate for holistic solutions that prioritize both human rights and environmental sustainability. With this in mind, we are actively participating in advocacy initiatives on a global scale.
From 2018 to 2023, Women4Biodiversity served as the convener and facilitator of the Women’s Caucus, a vital platform aimed at fostering engagement and enhancing the capacity of women’s rights organizations and other stakeholders to actively participate in the CBD.
Women4Biodiversity is also a part of global coalitions such as the Women’s Major Group (WMG), an official participant in the United Nations processes on Sustainable Development (SDGs) that facilitates womens and civil society’s active participation in UN’s policy space, and Women & Gender Constituency (WGC), a platform that links civil society and non-governmental organizations with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat.
Vision and Mission
Women4Biodiversity advocates for a right to a healthy environment for all. We believe that ‘living in harmony with nature’ needs to take into account the roles and contributions of women and girls to achieve transformative change. This requires addressing gender equity and women’s empowerment and recognizing women’s institutions and their agencies as a way to achieve environmental benefits and gender justice. Our work is building synergies around the work of the three Rio Conventions – the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and other international multilateral environmental agreements to provide direction for more coherent and inclusive processes while ensuring their proper implementation.
Approche
Women4Biodiversity supports and advances diversity in all its programs, including in its leadership, partnerships and policy advocacy. We believe that addressing the environmental challenges requires narrowing the gender gaps at all levels of engagement – from the local to the global. We are advocates for recognizing women’s human rights to address gender inequality and strive to provide gender-responsive approaches to the right to a healthy environment and securing it for future generations for a just and transformative sustainable development and environmental security.
Goals
Amplifying women’s voices for a sustainable future: By providing space for women’s experiences, knowledge, innovations and practices together to build a platform of collective actions.
Empowering women to bring change: By advancing women’s empowerment through skills sharing to equip them with expertise to assert their rights as decision-makers, advocates and leaders, in particular to issues related to biodiversity conservation and sustainable use and development.
Building gender-just solutions: By advocating for environmental policies, plans and practices that are gender-responsive as well as environmentally, socially and culturally fair, and implemented effectively at all levels of engagement.
Bridging the gap between science and policy: By highlighting the importance of gender considerations in environmental decision-making and identifying areas where action is needed to build synergies across global environmental conventions.
Focus Areas
Women4Biodiversity is dedicated to championing gender equality and women’s empowerment in biodiversity conservation and combating land desertification. Our focus areas encompass promoting women’s active participation and leadership in conservation efforts, advocating for gender-responsive policies and practices, and fostering inclusive approaches that recognize the valuable contributions of women and girls to biodiversity preservation and land restoration initiatives.
© Brikko Iyanev Dumas / W4B
Biodiversity
Biodiversity encompasses the variation among living organisms across terrestrial, marine, and aquatic ecosystems, spanning diversity within and between species and ecosystems (CBD, 1992). Beyond its ecological importance, biodiversity provides essential social, economic, and cultural benefits. Women are pivotal in managing natural resources at the family and community levels, yet they are disproportionately affected by environmental degradation. Despite their significant contributions, women often face barriers to land ownership and access to financial resources. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) recognized the importance of gender equality and adopted its Gender Plan of Action in 2008, reaffirmed in 2014 with the 2015-2020 Gender Plan of Action. This plan outlines actions to mainstream gender considerations across policy, organizational, and delivery spheres to ensure a more equitable and effective approach to biodiversity conservation.
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Land desertification
Women’s traditional roles in drylands, such as collecting water and growing food, are vital for natural resource management and food security. However, as men increasingly migrate to urban areas, women often take on new responsibilities on farms. Despite their crucial roles, women face obstacles in accessing and controlling land and agricultural support services. Less than 20% of landholders worldwide are women, yet they make up 43% of the agricultural labor force. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) recognizes women as agents of change and has implemented a Gender Action Plan to achieve gender equality in decision-making and implementation processes.
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© Sujan Sarkar / W4B
International Gender-Environment Policy Framework
International policy frameworks have recognized the essential connections between women’s rights and environmental issues, highlighting the importance of addressing gender and environmental linkages. These frameworks include human rights, environmental, sustainable development, and women’s rights agreements, mandates, and global priorities. However, the challenge lies in translating this recognition into action.
Below is an outline of key components of the international policy landscape that underscore the critical interconnections between gender and the environment, emphasizing the importance of promoting gender equality within the environmental sector.
CEDAW (1979)
Gender equality is a human right that is enshrined in a number of declarations and conventions, including the legally binding Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). CEDAW is often considered the international bill of rights for women and is fundamental to advancing gender equality. Signatory governments are bound to take action to promote and protect the rights of women; they agree to include the principle of equality in legislation and ensure it is operationalised throughout their country. In Article 14, special attention is paid to discrimination against rural women, toward ensuring their access and benefits to rural benefit.
BPfA (1995)
The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) includes women and the environment as one of the 12 critical areas for action and encourages governments to collect data on the impact of environmental degradation on women, as well as develop gender-sensitive databases (United Nations, 1995). BPfA is still considered the most comprehensive set of guidelines for the development of gender statistics at the national, regional and global levels (United Nations, 2016).
Agenda 21 (1992)
The 1992 Earth Summit, or UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), marked a pivotal moment embedding gender equality considerations in environmental decision-making on the global stage. Women have a vital role in environmental management and development. Their full participation is therefore essential to achieve sustainable development. The Rio Declaration recognised the important role of women in environmental management and development, and Agenda 21 called for, among many other things, sex-disaggregated data and gender-sensitive databases (United Nations Sustainable Development, 1992). While not legally binding, Agenda 21 (UNSD, 1992) was for decades considered the blueprint for sustainable development, shaping national planning, donor investment and programming across the environmental sphere. Agenda 21 built upon previous plans and platforms that promoted women’s empowerment and gender equality concerning crucial issues such as land ownership, resource stewardship, education and employment. Moreover, two of the three Rio Conventions (below), i.e. those derived from UNCED, included gender considerations.
CBD (1993)
The first of the three Rio Conventions, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has preamble text as well as many subsequent decisions of Parties that include gender considerations. In 2008, Parties to the CBD adopted a Gender Plan of Action, making it the first Multilateral l Environmental Agreement (MEA) to do so. It was recently updated for the period 2015-2020. CBD has integrated actions to enhance the monitoring framework and indicator system for gender mainstreaming in the Secretariat and at national level (CBD, n.d.).
UNCCD (1996)
Similarly, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) recognised women’s important role and participation in combatting desertification and mitigating the effects of drought. Parties have integrated gender into their decisions and evolved a Gender Action Plan—the latest version of which (September 2017) aiming to accompany implementation of the UNCCD 1830-2020 strategic framework (UNCCD, 2017).
UNFCCC (1994)
Once void of social considerations in its Convention text and related decisions by Parties, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) now has implementation informed by more than 50 decisions on gender equality made over recent years, including the Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWPG) and, in 2017, a first-ever Gender Action Plan (GAP) (Burns and Patouris, 2014; UNFCCC 2017). Among priority areas, the GAP includes a focus to strengthen monitoring and reporting of implementation of gender-related mandates under the Convention.
BRS (1989, 1998, 2001, respectively; synergy 2008)
The Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions (BRS) are designed to help protect human health and the environment from the negative effects of hazardous pollutants. Marking a first concerted step in advancing gender equality as a key issue across the three Conventions, a Gender Task Team was established in 2012 to mainstream gender across the BRS Secretariat and to support the work of Parties and stakeholders. A BRS Gender Action Plan (BRS-GAP) (BRS, 2016), developed in 2013 and updated in 2016, serves as the guiding framework to ensure gender is an integral part of implementation (BRS, n.d.). Baseline information was collected toward this end in 2017 (Gilligan & Sabater, 2017; IUCN, 2017b).
MDGs (2000)
The efforts to mainstream gender equality across the development sector have also been significant in the past decades. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) marked a milestone at the global and national level with the creation of measurable and internationally agreed gender goals and indicators. However, these indicators were siloed, and gender considerations were not integrated throughout all the different goals.
SDGs (2015)
Building on lessons learned while implementing the agreements made at the Earth Summit, as well as the MDGs, the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, with its 17 SDGs, recognise that the natural world and its life-giving services must be urgently protected in order to fulfil the needs of nine billion people by 2050. Gender is a standalone SDG goal (#5) in addition to being a cross-cutting issue across the other 16 goals. (Sustainable Development Goals Fund, n.d.).
Sendai Framework (2015-2030)
The Sendai Framework for Action for Disaster Risk Reduction calls for stronger women’s leadership and participation in disaster risk reduction (DRR). This recognition provides a new opportunity to strengthen the capacities of gender machineries, women’s organisations and women at regional, national and community levels to shape how DRR and climate change are implemented in the coming 15 years (UNISDR, n.d.).
