UNEP has a comprehensive Policy and Strategy for Gender Equality and the Environment, which guides the organisation’s efforts to promote gender equality and women's empowerment in its operations and programmatic work. All UNEP staff are encouraged to familiarise themselves with it and to refer to it as they carry out their individual tasks.
Traditionally, women and men use natural resources in different ways to perform their assigned gender roles and responsibilities. In many developing countries, women and girls are responsible for sourcing, collecting and transporting natural resources for domestic purposes. Men on the other hand typically use natural resources for commercial purposes e.g., agriculture, fishing, timber. Consequently, nature and biodiversity loss impact them differently.
As the main suppliers of water, food and energy at home and in society, women in rural areas are particularly sensitive to changes in the supply and quality of these resources. Therefore, scarcity of natural resources due to climate change, pollution and overexploitation of natural resources means that women and girls must walk longer distances to collect firewood and water and access new farmlands. Moreover, it reduces the amount of time they can spend on ‘productive’ and ‘self-improvement’ activities, such as generating an income or gaining new skills or knowledge.
Natural resource scarcity has also been linked to domestic violence, particularly intimate partner violence (IPV), child marriages, coerced transactional sex, rape and abduction. While an increase in women’s ownership of land and other natural resources increases their decision-making power over the management and conservation of resources and strengthens their status at the household level, it can also be perceived as a threat to conventional social and power structures that could increase the IPV incidences. Despite women’s significant dependency on natural resources, they have fewer opportunities to participate in natural resource management and associated information and knowledge or capacity development. Structural discrimination against women in terms of rights and access to capital limits their political participation and economic productivity. At the same time, disruptions often lead to women and men using response methods that challenge traditional gender norms. Taking advantage of these role shifts can help remove obstacles to women's empowerment and increase women's productivity in sectors that are often necessary for economic recovery. Increased justice in access to and management of natural resources can enable women to provide more effective support to their families, promote decision-making in society and combat discrimination in the use of natural resources.
Gender-based discrimination against Women Environmental Defenders
The most targeted human rights defenders are those working on land, indigenous people and environmental rights. In 2020, about 228 human rights defenders that were working on land, environmental and indigenous peoples’ rights lost their lives and 212 environmental defenders in 2019.
Environmental defenders face restrictions on rights and fundamental freedoms and live in the same social, cultural and political milieux that shape responses to human rights. However, women defenders often face additional and different risks and obstacles that are gendered, intersectional and shaped by entrenched gender stereotypes and deeply held ideas and norms about who women are and how women should be. For instance, gender-based violence is used as a weapon to silence women environmental defenders. Despite the above challenges, women environmental defenders continue to play a crucial part in advancing environmental rights.
Resources
- Global Gender and Environment Outlook (2018)
- Women and Natural Resources: Unlocking the Peacebuilding Potential (2013)
- Gender-based violence and environment linkages: The violence of inequality (2020)
- Gender and environment statistics: Unlocking information for action and measuring the SDGs (2018)
- Making Peace with Nature: A scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies (2020)
- Defending Tomorrow: The climate crisis and threats against land and environmental defenders (2020)
- Human Rights Defenders: Global Analysis
- Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders (2019)
- A/HRC/40/60: Situation of women human rights defenders
- Decades of Mangrove Forest Change: What does it mean for nature, people and the climate? (2023)
