How biodiversity affects women, and how to turn the tide

The triple planetary crisis—biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution—is putting lives and livelihoods at risk, and altering all life on Earth.

Increases in temperatures and pollution are already leading to the loss of a wide variety of living beings and their habitats, and these trends will get worse unless we take urgent action to curb the speed and impact of climate change.

These changes will affect everyone—and will have specific impacts on women and girls. Women, especially in rural communities, rely heavily on natural resources for their livelihoods, such as fishing, farming, and collecting firewood. Biodiversity loss directly threatens their subsistence by reducing access to these resources, which in turn impacts food security and income.

Those consequences and others are described in UN Women’s new data brief on gender and biodiversity. The report shows the dire future we could face—and what we must do now to mitigate its worst harms.

Biodiversity will also be at the top of the agenda at the 16th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), to be held in Cali, Colombia from 21 October to 1 November 2024.

Sylvanna Antat, Marine Research Officer with the Seychelles National Parks Authority, plays a leading role in mapping coral reefs in the waters around Mahe Island in Seychelles. The health of the coral reefs is important both ecologically and economically, as reefs are important for biodiversity, and they provide protection from coastal erosion and help mitigate storm damage. Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown

How biodiversity loss impacts women differently around the world

The exact effects of biodiversity loss on the world’s women and girls will vary based on their pre-existing vulnerabilities, marginalisation, and how much they depend on specific parts of our shared environment.

Green spaces

When forests, pastures, and other green spaces start to experience biodiversity loss, this affects the food, water, and air of those who depend on them.

This can have wide consequences for women and girls. Some 26 per cent of employed women work in agriculture, and millions more have informal responsibilities that depend on the environment, such as tilling a family plot or fetching water.

When those environments are placed under strain, families may resort to drastic measures. For example, there is a strong correlation between increasing aridity and higher child marriage rates—and child marriage often leads to adolescent pregnancies, dropping out of school, a lower lifetime income, and an overall lack of agency within and outside the home.

Biodiversity loss also exacerbates the care burdens that women already bear, particularly relating to health issues. Pollution and habitat degradation increase the spread of vector-borne diseases like malaria, and women disproportionately act as caregivers for ill members of their families and communities.

Changing oceans and water scarcity

Climate change, pollution, land use changes, and unbridled increases in water demand have resulted in the decreasing health of the world’s rivers, oceans, and other bodies of water.

Globally, women tend to reduce their own food intake when food is scarce, in favour of other household members’ nutrition. Across countries with available data, women living near water with algae blooms (often the result of agricultural runoff and the overuse of fertilizers) are more likely than other women to experience high levels of anaemia, an indicator that their intake of varied and nutritious food is insufficient.

This is particularly true for women living in the poorest households of these coastal communities, which are more likely to rely on fishing and marine harvesting for their subsistence.

Increased water scarcity also has specific impacts on women and girls. In many regions, women are responsible for collecting water and managing household food supplies. Environmental degradation significantly increases their unpaid labor and reduces their access to essential resources.

Millions of women also depend on the oceans for their livelihoods. In Senegal, for example, roughly 50 per cent of jobs in the fishing sector are held by women. But the depletion of the area’s fish stocks because of over-fishing, climate change, and other drivers, is increasing women’s poverty and food insecurity.

Political and economic power

Women are still largely excluded from decision-making in the public and private-sector organisations that have the biggest impacts on the world’s environment.

Only 16 per cent of environmental ministries are headed by women, and women are largely absent from leadership roles in ministries related to water management, fisheries, and other areas critically important environmental conservation.

And no women are CEOs at any of the world’s top fishing, forestry, agriculture, or energy firms, when examining the top 10 companies in those sectors by revenue. Many of those firms are responsible for the largest contributions to biodiversity loss around the world.

The absence of women in top leadership positions in these ministries and firms limits women’s potential to influence decision-making processes that have lasting global impacts.

What can be done?

There is one overarching response to all of these issues: gender equality.

In green spaces, men own and control more land than women, meaning that women are less able to make decisions about the use of agricultural land. However, in countries where data is available, women are more likely to limit their use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

Enhancing women’s rights to land ownership and tenure security could help keep green spaces green.

In the oceans, despite women’s reliance on coastal harvesting and clean, healthy water systems for their well-being and livelihoods, global decision-making processes overseeing the management of these important ecosystems remain largely in the hands of men.

Ensuring greater women’s representation at organisations such as the International Seabed Authority, International Association of Classification Societies, and Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf could help ensure that women’s perspectives are integrated into policies on topics including fishing, water pollution, and resource management.

In the world of power, it is essential to promote women’s engagement in environmental decision-making.

To promote the effectiveness of environmental protection systems that are beneficial to both the environment and those whose lives are most directly linked to it—and to ensure protection methods are adequately enforced among local communities and visitors—Indigenous women in particular should play key leadership roles.

Climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss affect all women, men, girls, and boys. Their consequences will be felt by everyone in different ways; and the consequences for women and girls—from higher child marriage to declining physical health—are dire.

Only by working together to save our declining ecosystems can we hope to create a healthier, fairer world for all.


Originally published by UN Women

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