Rebeca Grynspan: Forum on Gender and the Environment

Remarks by Ms. Rebeca Grynspan
UN Under-Secretary-General and Associate Administrator of UNDP
Forum on Gender and the Environment
Network of Women Ministers and Leaders for the Environment (NWMLE)
Nairobi, Sunday, 17 February 2013

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to address this important forum.

At the outset, I would like to commend the Ministers of Environment, and the high-level officials, gathered here for your important accomplishments in your functions, and also for being part of the Network of Women Ministers and Leaders for the Environment, and for your foresight in coming together more than 10 years ago to address the critical need for concrete policies to drive sustainable development in your own countries and throughout the world.

The creation of this Network was both visionary and practical. Since its inception it has made substantial contributions toward promoting gender-responsive environmental management.

Let me also commend UNEP for housing the secretariat, for co organizing this meeting and for the collaboration we have all enjoyed in supporting the Network, together with the Global Gender and Climate alliance, IUCN, Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice, civil society and grass roots organizations, and the UN System.  

We also must congratulate UNEP on the first universal session of its governing council happening tomorrow as an achievement of Rio+20 and as recognition of UNEP’s role.

In my remarks today, I would like to convey 5 main themes:

The critical importance of gender equality and women’s empowerment for the environment and for sustainable development.   It is a defining challenge of our era not only due to its impact on women and girls themselves, but because of its impact on all men and women in the society. Research has shown that investments in women and girls, and in women empowerment, is a fundamental element in achieving the MDGs and effective development.

The need for a growing focus on the nexus between poverty, environment, and gender, and the need to make progress in the measurement and understanding of poverty, inequalities, gender and environment.

Gender equality is also smart economics and access to resources, finance and economic opportunities continues to be a central fight against inequalities so we need access and voice. Empowerment and participation on decision making cannot be overlooked.

Finally, I will briefly comment on how this Network can contribute to some of the specific areas which are for discussion later today and the opportunities that are open including what happen in the COP 18, the discussion in the post 2015 agenda, and the SDGs framework.

We need strengthened partnerships among all of us here: the UN, Governments, civil society and grass roots organizations, and the private sector. We will only achieve an ambitious, robust understanding of the World We Want – and how to get there – if we work together.

It is well established how poor people depend on the management of natural resources and the environment for their livelihoods, with estimates of around 70 per cent of. We also know that while changes in the environment affect everyone, they affect women and men differently. Women’s lives – particularly in poor, rural areas – are inextricably linked to the environment.

In many African countries, for example, women make up 70 per cent of the agricultural workforce, are responsible for managing 90 per cent of all household water and fuel-wood needs and undertake 60 per cent of all harvesting and market work.  Studies in Africa suggest that, on average, women’s workdays may be 50 per cent longer than those of men. And we know that the burden of care has increased in the face of climate change, persistent natural disasters, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. 

The lack of access to modern energy poses other problems that disproportionately impact women – such as exposure to indoor air pollution due to burning biomass for cooking and heat, which contributes to two million deaths annually, mainly in women and children - more than the number of deaths from malaria.

This heavy burden of care-related work that deprives women of time for education and income-generation has been called “time poverty.”  A lot of work has been done on time use surveys and the relationship between the care economy, paid and non-paid work, and poverty, and many of it relates to the interaction of women with the environment.

This work has provided a lot of important evidence and has been a great conceptual contribution to the debate. 

Still, we have been unable to incorporate this reality in the measurement of poverty. Income poverty still dominates the debate, even when information and data is available.  Despite much more awareness brought about by the work and dedication of so many women around the world, like the wonderful work that this network does, rarely do we see this indicators on time allocation and time poverty mainstream in the debate and as such the linkages between poverty, gender and the environment continue to be highly invisible for policy makers. 

I call today for all of us to join forces to push this agenda forward in line with our commitments in Rio.  The joint poverty and environment Initiative of UNEP and UNDP is a good and important platform for the road ahead.  We know that measurement matters and it is time for the world to advance in how we measure progress, as Rio + 20 clearly called for, but also how we measure progress in the poverty challenge, recognizing its link to gender and environment.    

The disproportionate impact of environmental challenges on women is further exacerbated by gender inequalities, including women’s lack of equal access to resources, to finance, and to opportunities to participate in decision-making. For instance, while women predominate in world food production, they own only one per cent of the world’s property and less than 10 per cent of land.  In the Human Development Report we have calculated that, on average, the world loses almost a 49.2% in the human development index due to gender inequalities in the three dimensions measured.

So, advancing gender equality is not only a core development objective, it is also smart economics.  We should not view women as passive in this discussion or as victims: women are active agents of change, successful entrepreneurs, with unique capacities to respond to environmental challenges. Through their gender-based household and community roles, they have resources, knowledge, and skills that can contribute to solutions to addressing climate change and promote a sustainable economy with a more diverse income base.

Removing the barriers that restrict women’s access to resources can increase overall productivity. Indeed, evidence shows that if women farmers were given the same access to productive resources as men, agricultural yields could increase by 20 to 30 per cent. This measure alone could reduce the number of undernourished people by 12 to 17 per cent. 

Evidence also suggests that women are also more inclined than men to choose sustainability as a lifestyle, engage in environmentally appropriate behavior, and make sustainable consumption choices. So women’s participation in decision-making is positively correlated with stronger environmental awareness and better environmental management, with important multiplier effects for the well-being of families and communities, as well as for the development of local markets.

At UNDP, we therefore strongly believe that with the right tools and support, women can be a driving force for a new model of growth that is both more equitable and more sustainable. We are committed to ensuring that gender concerns and women’s empowerment issues are systematically taken into account within environment and climate change responses and that these responses reduce, rather than exacerbate, both new and existing inequalities.

We also believe that the defining aspect of our work is to ensure that environmental challenges are not addressed in a silo. We want our interventions to support all three pillars of sustainable development – social, environmental, and economic. This underpins the “triple win” approach that UNDP advocated so strongly for at Rio+ 20. And it reinforces the need for strengthened partnerships among all of us here: the UN, Governments, civil society, and private sector. In this regard, UNDP worked closely with UN Women and other UN agencies to have a strong response in the lead up to Rio and post-Rio, by organizing a series of activities and jointly advocating for ensuring that gender equality is at the heart of the sustainable development agenda.

All in all, we want to move from a conversation that emphasizes the trade-offs to a conversation that emphasizes the triple wins of sustainable development.

Let me give you very quickly some of the work being done with many partners including this Network hosted by UNEP or the Global Gender Climate Alliance (GGCA), where we are partnering with IUCN, UNEP, WEDO, UN Women or the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice, among others, and with many civil society organizations with a strong South -South and trilateral cooperation component to foster the exchange of knowledge on gender-responsive sustainable development policy frameworks and programming:

In Africa, for example, we are providing environmental policy and programming support to more than twenty countries, including Kenya.

We are supporting regional cadres of experts in Asia and Africa that provide technical support to governments in integrating gender considerations into climate change policies and programmes and in making climate change finance mechanisms more gender responsive. 

UNDP’s Small Grants Programme and the Barefoot College of India are training poor, rural women to maintain off-grid solar panels in Africa, Asia, and the Small Island States. This initiative is providing clean energy to communities, while also empowering women and creating jobs in the green economy.

Another example is UNDP’s “Women’s Green Business Initiative” which promotes women’s employment and entrepreneurship opportunities in climate change mitigation and adaptation activities, and in the green economy.

And finally UNDP is also addressing the poverty, environment, and gender nexus by helping to provide access to mechanical power, some of which is run from clean biofuel, to poor, rural women in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Senegal. By generating electricity for lighting and refrigeration or pumping water or increasing agricultural productivity and processing, these multi-functional platforms are generating income for rural women. They have quintupled savings, raised school completion rates, improved  the girl-to-boy ratio in primary schools, and increased literacy rates - a detailed study in Burkina Faso states a 10 % increase in literacy rates in 14 villages.  The best news is that governments are the ones financing the scaling up of the project to cover an important part of the rural poor population.

As mentioned at the beginning, I would now like to briefly touch on some of the specific issues that this Forum will address later today and the opportunities that lie ahead in advancing this agenda:

Gender and climate change

Since the COP13 in Bali in 2007, UNDP and GGCA partners have led successful efforts to ensure that women’s voices and concerns are brought into global climate change policies.  The gender decision adopted at COP-18 in Doha in December was an important milestone on that journey, as it calls for increased women’s participation in UNFCCC negotiations and bodies and, for the first time, positions the issue of gender and climate change as a standing item on the agenda of sessions of the COP. 

The Network of Women Ministers and Leaders of the Environment is uniquely positioned to play a leading role in bringing forward the provisions of this landmark decision. Going forward, UNDP is willing and committed to work closely with the Network, along with partners in GGCA, and the UNFCCC Women and Gender Caucus and the UN System, to ensure that it is fully implemented.

While some progress has been made, there is still a long way to go and more will be needed in the climate finance architecture since.  It is important that we all work together to make that happen.

Gender and chemicals

When it comes to gender and chemicals, I would like to begin by congratulating this Network for its support to the recent adoption of the first legally binding treaty to curb mercury pollution.

The sound management of chemicals is essential, both for the environment and for human development. Yet people are often unaware of how exposed they are to toxic chemicals. Men and women are often exposed to differing levels of toxic chemicals – due to gender roles - and can have different health reactions when exposed – due to biological differences, But despite such gender differences, chemical health and exposure models have traditionally not been targeted by gender.  I believe this Network can play an important role in bringing the gender lens and women voices in analysing epidemiological health data.  We have published a report on Chemicals Management, the why and how of mainstreaming gender, and I hope this can be an important contribution for the work ahead.

Gender and the post-2015 development agenda

Finally, allow me to say few words about gender and the post-2015 development agenda.

Discussions around what this agenda may look like have begun in earnest. Last week, UNICEF and UN Women led a leaders discussion with the support of Denmark and Ghana on the issue of inequality – including gender inequality - and how a new framework could best address this.

This is one of eleven Thematic Consultations taking place across the world under the UN-led post-2015 consultation process, which also includes up to 100 national consultations, regional consultations, and a global dialogue.

The UN’s approach is to mobilize as many people, communities, and sectors as possible around the world, and to have their voices heard.  We need to mobilize women voices to participate in these consultations.

We all agree that gender equality itself is a driver of transformational change for sustainable development.  This must be a cornerstone of the post-2015 framework.

It is my pleasure to have this opportunity to engage with you all today, and look forward to continuing this unique partnership.

Thank you.