With women gathering much of the world’s firewood and water and active in farming, their input on protecting biodiversity is crucial, officials say
Women – who gather much of the world’s wood and water, and carry out a large share of its farming – have too little say in how land is used, one key reason countries are failing to halt rapid losses of nature, environmental officials said on Tuesday.
Giving women a bigger voice in decision-making “is essential to achieve our biodiversity goals”, said David Cooper, deputy executive director of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
The United Nations released a sobering update on global efforts to protect forests, plants, wildlife, fish and other forms of nature, noting that none of the 2020 goals countries set themselves a decade ago had been fully met.
“The capacity of ecosystems to provide the essential services on which societies depend continues to decline,” with women and poor communities worst-affected, the report noted. Read more…
