Linking Gender to Environment in European Union Development Policies and Funding Instruments
Posted 1:49 PM by Internal Voices in Labels: 12th Edition |
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Julian Kirchher, UNEP Brussels
Within European public opinion as well as the European Union’s (EU) policy agenda, gender and environment have gained momentum: In the latest Eurobarometer, more than two-thirds of European citizens call for additional investments in renewable energies and lower carbon emissions and 59% believe gender mainstreaming must remain a political priority.
Accordingly, the European Commission (EC) integrated sustainable growth as a key target in its overarching EU-2020 strategy. It aims at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, increasing the share of renewable resources in final energy consumption to 20% and moving towards a 20% increase in energy efficiency by 2020. Furthermore, the EC adopted its comprehensive and cross-cutting 2010-2015 Roadmap for Equality between Men and Women in September 2010.
Gender and environment
As many reports of UN Women and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) acknowledge and underscore, both issues are of vital importance for a sustainable regional and global development. However, the European Commission fails to link both issues to create synergies and more effective policies – internally as well as abroad. That is a serious mistake.
In the 1960s and 1970s, social issues such as gender mainstreaming were largely disconnected from environmental policies and programmes within the United Nations. Fortunately, this changed over the years:
Women are one of the United Nations’ nine Major Groups and Stakeholders, as recognized in the Agenda 21 in 1992. Since 1980, UNEP – with the establishment of the Senior Women Advisory Group (SWAG) – integrated gender approaches in its environmental work. In 1991, UNEP organized the Global Assembly on Women and the Environment. Since then, UNEP’s Policy Series on Women and the Environment triggered a lot of interest in the often hidden interlink between gender and the environment.
Additionally, in its current 2010-2013 Medium-Term-Strategy, UNEP recognizes gender as a cross-cutting priority.
Hidden Links
But what is this interlink between gender and the environment? Is a cross-cutting and synergetic approach really necessary? As many of UNEP’s scientists point out, such an approach is indeed inevitable: Particularly in developing countries, women play an essential role in the management of natural resources, including soil, water, forests and energy. Men and women use resources differently, as they take on different roles in society. Effective strategies aiming at poverty alleviation and environmental protection must therefore pay close attention to the impact of disparities between women and men on access to resources and opportunities.
Female-lead households in Africa, for instance, are the poorest and are therefore more inclined to adapt less sustainable land use management practises compared to male-lead households who control more resources. When creating programmes to facilitate sustainable land use, one must take these differences into account and particularly address the situation of women. This has been repeatedly recognised by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and in UNEP’s strategy on land use management and soil conservation.
Furthermore, women as oftentimes the poorest and weakest part of developing societies, are particularly vulnerable to environmental degradation. Therefore, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has developed gender guidelines for emergency preparedness. These include key questions to be asked in an emergency situation to help ensure that emergency interventions will be sensitive to gender differences. Several other disaster-relief NGOs, including OXFAM, have done similar work.
In the Asia-Pacific region, an increasing number of women are now involved in environmental decision-making. NGOs and, to a lesser extent, governmental environmental agencies have women in middle-level management positions. The Asian Development Bank and UNIFEM have supported these developments. Some environmental NGOs, such as Friends of the Earth International and Both Ends, have also adopted gender policies and action plans, recognizing the importance of a gender approach to their work.
The UNEP Liaison Office to the European Union in Brussels aims at increasing policy dialogue between UNEP and European Union institutions. The current consultations on the EU multi-annual financial framework 2014-2020 offer a promising opportunity to embed the link between gender and the environment in the EU policies and instruments such as the Instrument for Stability (IfS) or the Humanitarian Aid Instrument (HAI). As the European Union remains the largest global donor of development assistance worldwide, the successful integration of such a link would have a huge levering effect and would be a major achievement for the United Nations.
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