The Fourth World Conference on Women
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Chapter 1. Resolution 1. Annex II - The Beijing Platform for Action
IV. Strategic Objectives and Actions
K. Women and the environment
Strategic objective K.1.
Strategic objective K.2.
Strategic objective K.3.
246. Human beings are at the centre of concern for sustainable
development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.
Women have an essential role to play in the development of sustainable and ecologically
sound consumption and production patterns and approaches to natural resource management,
as was recognized at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development and the
International Conference on Population and Development and reflected throughout Agenda 21.
Awareness of resource depletion, the degradation of natural systems and the dangers of
polluting substances has increased markedly in the past decade. These worsening conditions
are destroying fragile ecosystems and displacing communities, especially women, from
productive activities and are an increasing threat to a safe and healthy environment.
Poverty and environmental degradation are closely interrelated. While poverty results in
certain kinds of environmental stress, the major cause of the continued deterioration of
the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production,
particularly in industrialized countries, which is a matter of grave concern, aggravating
poverty and imbalances. Rising sealevels as a result of global warming cause a grave and
immediate threat to people living in island countries and coastal areas. The use of ozone-
depleting substances, such as products with chlorofluorocarbons, halons and methyl
bromides (from which plastics and foams are made), are severely affecting the atmosphere,
thus allowing excessive levels of harmful ultraviolet rays to reach the Earth's surface.
This has severe effects on people's health such as higher rates of skin cancer, eye damage
and weakened immune systems. It also has severe effects on the environment, including harm
to crops and ocean life.
247. All States and all people shall cooperate in the essential task of
eradicating poverty as an indispensable requirement for sustainable development, in order
to decrease the disparities in standards of living and better meet the needs of the
majority of the people of the world. Hurricanes, typhoons and other natural disasters and,
in addition, the destruction of resources, violence, displacements and other effects
associated with war, armed and other conflicts, the use and testing of nuclear weaponry,
and foreign occupation can also contribute to environmental degradation. The deterioration
of natural resources displaces communities, especially women, from income-generating
activities while greatly adding to unremunerated work. In both urban and rural areas,
environmental degradation results in negative effects on the health, well-being and
quality of life of the population at large, especially girls and women of all ages.
Particular attention and recognition should be given to the role and special situation of
women living in rural areas and those working in the agricultural sector, where access to
training, land, natural and productive resources, credit, development programmes and
cooperative structures can help them increase their participation in sustainable
development. Environmental risks in the home and workplace may have a disproportionate
impact on women's health because of women's different susceptibilities to the toxic
effects of various chemicals. These risks to women's health are particularly high in urban
areas, as well as in low-income areas where there is a high concentration of polluting
industrial facilities.
248. Through their management and use of natural resources, women provide
sustenance to their families and communities. As consumers and producers, caretakers of
their families and educators, women play an important role in promoting sustainable
development through their concern for the quality and sustainability of life for present
and future generations. Governments have expressed their commitment to creating a new
development paradigm that integrates environmental sustainability with gender equality and
justice within and between generations as contained in chapter 24 of Agenda 21. 19/
249. Women remain largely absent at all levels of policy formulation and
decision-making in natural resource and environmental management, conservation, protection
and rehabilitation, and their experience and skills in advocacy for and monitoring of
proper natural resource management too often remain marginalized in policy-making and
decision-making bodies, as well as in educational institutions and environment-related
agencies at the managerial level. Women are rarely trained as professional natural
resource managers with policy-making capacities, such as land-use planners,
agriculturalists, foresters, marine scientists and environmental lawyers. Even in cases
where women are trained as professional natural resource managers, they are often
underrepresented in formal institutions with policy-making capacities at the national,
regional and international levels. Often women are not equal participants in the
management of financial and corporate institutions whose decision-making most
significantly affects environmental quality. Furthermore, there are institutional
weaknesses in coordination between women's non-governmental organizations and national
institutions dealing with environmental issues, despite the recent rapid growth and
visibility of women's non-governmental organizations working on these issues at all
levels.
250. Women have often played leadership roles or taken the lead in
promoting an environmental ethic, reducing resource use, and reusing and recycling
resources to minimize waste and excessive consumption. Women can have a particularly
powerful role in influencing sustainable consumption decisions. In addition, women's
contributions to environmental management, including through grass-roots and youth
campaigns to protect the environment, have often taken place at the local level, where
decentralized action on environmental issues is most needed and decisive. Women,
especially indigenous women, have particular knowledge of ecological linkages and fragile
ecosystem management. Women in many communities provide the main labour force for
subsistence production, including production of seafood; hence, their role is crucial to
the provision of food and nutrition, the enhancement of the subsistence and informal
sectors and the preservation of the environment. In certain regions, women are generally
the most stable members of the community, as men often pursue work in distant locations,
leaving women to safeguard the natural environment and ensure adequate and sustainable
resource allocation within the household and the community.
251. The strategic actions needed for sound environmental management
require a holistic, multidisciplinary and intersectoral approach. Women's participation
and leadership are essential to every aspect of that approach. The recent United Nations
global conferences on development, as well as regional preparatory conferences for the
Fourth World Conference on Women, have all acknowledged that sustainable development
policies that do not involve women and men alike will not succeed in the long run. They
have called for the effective participation of women in the generation of knowledge and
environmental education in decision-making and management at all levels. Women's
experiences and contributions to an ecologically sound environment must therefore be
central to the agenda for the twenty-first century. Sustainable development will be an
elusive goal unless women's contribution to environmental management is recognized and
supported.
252. In addressing the lack of adequate recognition and support for
women's contribution to conservation and management of natural resources and safeguarding
the environment, Governments and other actors should promote an active and visible policy
of mainstreaming a gender perspective in all policies and programmes, including, as
appropriate, an analysis of the effects on women and men, respectively, before decisions
are taken.
Involve women actively in environmental decision-making at all levels
Actions to be taken
253. By Governments, at all levels, including municipal authorities, as
appropriate:
(a) Ensure opportunities for women, including indigenous women, to participate in
environmental decision-making at all levels, including as managers, designers and
planners, and as implementers and evaluators of environmental projects;
(b) Facilitate and increase women's access to information and education, including in the
areas of science, technology and economics, thus enhancing their knowledge, skills and
opportunities for participation in environmental decisions;
(c) Encourage, subject to national legislation and consistent with the Convention on
Biological Diversity, 35/ the effective protection and use of the knowledge, innovations
and practices of women of indigenous and local communities, including practices relating
to traditional medicines, biodiversity and indigenous technologies, and endeavour to
ensure that these are respected, maintained, promoted and preserved in an ecologically
sustainable manner, and promote their wider application with the approval and involvement
of the holders of such knowledge; in addition, safeguard the existing intellectual
property rights of these women as protected under national and international law; work
actively, where necessary, to find additional ways and means for the effective protection
and use of such knowledge, innovations and practices, subject to national legislation and
consistent with the Convention on Biological Diversity and relevant international law, and
encourage fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of such
knowledge, innovation and practices;
(d) Take appropriate measures to reduce risks to women from identified environmental
hazards at home, at work and in other environments, including appropriate application of
clean technologies, taking into account the precautionary approach agreed to in the Rio
Declaration on Environment and Development; 18/
(e) Take measures to integrate a gender perspective in the design and implementation of,
among other things, environmentally sound and sustainable resource management mechanisms,
production techniques and infrastructure development in rural and urban areas;
(f) Take measures to empower women as producers and consumers so that they can take
effective environmental actions, along with men, in their homes, communities and
workplaces;
(g) Promote the participation of local communities, particularly women, in identification
of public service needs, spatial planning and the provision and design of urban
infrastructure.
254. By Governments and international organizations and private sector
institutions, as appropriate:
(a) Take gender impact into consideration in the work of the Commission on Sustainable
Development and other appropriate United Nations bodies and in the activities of
international financial institutions;
(b) Promote the involvement of women and the incorporation of a gender perspective in the
design, approval and execution of projects funded under the Global Environment Facility
and other appropriate United Nations organizations;
(c) Encourage the design of projects in the areas of concern to the Global Environment
Facility that would benefit women and projects managed by women;
(d) Establish strategies and mechanisms to increase the proportion of women, particularly
at grass-roots levels, involved as decision makers, planners, managers, scientists and
technical advisers and as beneficiaries in the design, development and implementation of
policies and programmes for natural resource management and environmental protection and
conservation;
(e) Encourage social, economic, political and scientific institutions to address
environmental degradation and the resulting impact on women.
255. By non-governmental organizations and the private sector:
(a) Assume advocacy of environmental and natural resource management issues of concern to
women and provide information to contribute to resource mobilization for environmental
protection and conservation;
(b) Facilitate the access of women agriculturists, fishers and pastoralists to knowledge,
skills, marketing services and environmentally sound technologies to support and
strengthen their crucial roles and their expertise in resource management and the
conservation of biological diversity.
Integrate gender concerns and perspectives in policies and programmes
for sustainable development Actions to be taken
256. By Governments:
(a) Integrate women, including indigenous women, their perspectives and knowledge, on an
equal basis with men, in decision-making regarding sustainable resource management and the
development of policies and programmes for sustainable development, including in
particular those designed to address and prevent environmental degradation of the land;
(b) Evaluate policies and programmes in terms of environmental impact and women's equal
access to and use of natural resources;
(c) Ensure adequate research to assess how and to what extent women are particularly
susceptible or exposed to environmental degradation and hazards, including, as necessary,
research and data collection on specific groups of women, particularly women with low
income, indigenous women and women belonging to minorities;
(d) Integrate rural women's traditional knowledge and practices of sustainable resource
use and management in the development of environmental management and extension
programmes;
(e) Integrate the results of gender-sensitive research into mainstream policies with a
view to developing sustainable human settlements;
(f) Promote knowledge of and sponsor research on the role of women, particularly rural and
indigenous women, in food gathering and production, soil conservation, irrigation,
watershed management, sanitation, coastal zone and marine resource management, integrated
pest management, land-use planning, forest conservation and community forestry, fisheries,
natural disaster prevention, and new and renewable sources of energy, focusing
particularly on indigenous women's knowledge and experience;
(g) Develop a strategy for change to eliminate all obstacles to women's full and equal
participation in sustainable development and equal access to and control over resources;
(h) Promote the education of girls and women of all ages in science, technology, economics
and other disciplines relating to the natural environment so that they can make informed
choices and offer informed input in determining local economic, scientific and
environmental priorities for the management and appropriate use of natural and local
resources and ecosystems;
(i) Develop programmes to involve female professionals and scientists, as well as
technical, administrative and clerical workers, in environmental management, develop
training programmes for girls and women in these fields, expand opportunities for the
hiring and promotion of women in these fields and implement special measures to advance
women's expertise and participation in these activities;
(j) Identify and promote environmentally sound technologies that have been designed,
developed and improved in consultation with women and that are appropriate to both women
and men;
(k) Support the development of women's equal access to housing infrastructure, safe water,
and sustainable and affordable energy technologies, such as wind, solar, biomass and other
renewable sources, through participatory needs assessments, energy planning and policy
formulation at the local and national levels;
(l) Ensure that clean water is available and accessible to all by the year 2000 and that
environmental protection and conservation plans are designed and implemented to restore
polluted water systems and rebuild damaged watersheds.
257. By international organizations, non-governmental organizations and
private sector institutions:
(a) Involve women in the communication industries in raising awareness regarding
environmental issues, especially on the environmental and health impacts of products,
technologies and industry processes;
(b) Encourage consumers to use their purchasing power to promote the production of
environmentally safe products and encourage investment in environmentally sound and
productive agricultural, fisheries, commercial and industrial activities and technologies;
(c) Support women's consumer initiatives by promoting the marketing of organic food and
recycling facilities, product information and product labelling, including labelling of
toxic chemical and pesticide containers with language and symbols that are understood by
consumers, regardless of age and level of literacy.
Strengthen or establish mechanisms at the national, regional and
international levels to assess the impact of development and environmental policies on
women Actions to be taken
258. By Governments, regional and international organizations and
non-governmental organizations, as appropriate:
(a) Provide technical assistance to women, particularly in developing countries, in the
sectors of agriculture, fisheries, small enterprises, trade and industry to ensure the
continuing promotion of human resource development and the development of environmentally
sound technologies and of women's entrepreneurship;
(b) Develop gender-sensitive databases, information and monitoring systems and
participatory action-oriented research, methodologies and policy analyses, with the
collaboration of academic institutions and local women researchers, on the following:
(i) Knowledge and experience on the part of women concerning the management and
conservation of natural resources for incorporation in the databases and information
systems for sustainable development;
(ii) The impact on women of environmental and natural resource degradation, deriving from,
inter alia, unsustainable production and consumption patterns, drought, poor quality
water, global warming, desertification, sealevel rise, hazardous waste, natural disasters,
toxic chemicals and pesticide residues, radioactive waste, armed conflicts and its
consequences;
(iii) Analysis of the structural links between gender relations, environment and
development, with special emphasis on particular sectors, such as agriculture, industry,
fisheries, forestry, environmental health, biological diversity, climate, water resources
and sanitation;
(iv) Measures to develop and include environmental, economic, cultural, social and
gender-sensitive analyses as an essential step in the development and monitoring of
programmes and policies;
(v) Programmes to create rural and urban training, research and resource centres that will
disseminate environmentally sound technologies to women;
(c) Ensure the full compliance with relevant international obligations, including where
relevant, the Basel Convention and other conventions relating to the transboundary
movements of hazardous wastes (which include toxic wastes) and the Code of Practice of the
International Atomic Energy Agency relating to the movement of radioactive waste; enact
and enforce regulations for environmentally sound management related to safe storage and
movements; consider taking action towards the prohibition of those movements that are
unsafe and insecure; ensure the strict control and management of hazardous wastes and
radioactive waste, in accordance with relevant international and regional obligations and
eliminate the exportation of such wastes to countries that, individually or through
international agreements, prohibit their importation;
(d) Promote coordination within and among institutions to implement the Platform for
Action and chapter 24 of Agenda 21 by, inter alia, requesting the Commission on
Sustainable Development, through the Economic and Social Council, to seek input from the
Commission on the Status of Women when reviewing the implementation of Agenda 21 with
regard to women and the environment.
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