Women, biodiversity and the gender action plan of the CBD

Women, biodiversity and the gender action plan of the CBD

By Christa Wichterich, WIDE e-newsletter July and August 2008

In May, government officials from all over the world gathered in Bonn, Germany, to continue negotiations on two important UN pacts: the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and the related Cartagena Protocol. Both the agreements are the leading UN policies for ecological governance covering environmental, economic and social aspects. The CBD debates centred on the question of access and benefit sharing of genetic resources and the conservation of biological diversity, while the negotiations of the Cartagena Protocol presently focus on questions of liability in case of contamination due to internationally transferred or traded genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

NGOs organised a parallel ´Planet Diversity´ as a forum for voices and expertise from civil society from the global South and North. Their intention was to put the knowledge, rights and survival needs of local communities, indigenous people, small-scale farmers, fisherfolk and pastoralists at the centre of an ecosystem approach which aims at conservation and the sustainable use of biodiversity.

In two workshops on Women, Diversity and Agriculture, participants from different continents stressed the significant role of women in the preservation of biodiversity, guarding seeds and maintaining food sovereignty, as well as in developing local knowledge systems. They contested the monocultures in the fields and in minds. Industrial agriculture, privatisation and commodification of land and genetic resources by big corporations deplete and destroy biodiversity as a livelihood resource of the local communities that had collectively developed and owned them for generations. Biopiracy, genetic modification andpatenting undermine their right to use local resources and theirtraditional knowledge. Therefore, the women contrasted the imposed development model of an "economy of money" with their own "economy based on diversity, dignity, cultural identity and, above all, life", saying "GMOs, agrofuels and monocultures are only oriented to the accumulation of money, not to resolve the true necessities of communities." They concluded that they do not want to become part of this profit-making mainstream.

In one of the women´s workshops this perspective was confronted with the rationale of the CBD, when Maria Aminata Khan, the ´gender focal point´ in the CBD secretariat proudly presented the Gender Plan of Action under the CBD. After one year of lobbying ­and after some resistance ­ the action plan has been officially accepted as a reference document. It recognises women´s knowledge and their role in management and conservation of resources. Thus it is a sign of progress in terms of the visibility and recognition of women, their skills, work and knowledge.

The overall goal of the gender action plan is to integrate women and allow them to participate in the CBD mechanisms and governance. Gender mainstreaming is highlighted as a "primary methodology for integrating a gender approach into any development or environmental effort". This methodology is used as a tool box in a logical target-oriented framework for the policy, organisational, constituency and delivery spheres.

However, the gender action plan does not reveal its understanding of ´gender perspective´. What does the ´objective of gender equality´ mean? Or ´recognition of gender specific needs and interests´? Is it a tool to combat discrimination against women in the CBD process? Another fundamental question is whose gender perspective is it? The perspective of small-scale farmers or of big landowners; of indigenous peoples or commercial traders? As a merely technical instrument aiming at integration and participation of gender, the action plan is a kind of empty vessel ­ on the one hand detached from the real life of women and men and the micro-economic level of resource use and livelihood, and on the other hand unrelated to the specific content of the governance regime negotiated under the CBD.

What happens if women do not want to participate in negotiations about and enforcement of ´benefit sharing´ because they consider local resources their own common property? What if they do not want their livelihood resources and their knowledge to be integrated into the mainstream of commercialisation and patenting? What if they want to change the mainstream instead of participating in it? Does the strategy of gender mainstreaming leave space for an alternative concept and for needs, rights and interests that are not compliant with the mainstream?

The gender action plan did not offer answers to the questions about survival, food sovereignty, and traditional intellectual property to the participants of the Women and Biodiversity workshop in Bonn, Germany. They concluded that biodiversity should not be "hidden away in gene banks, not privatised and commercialised as patents, not locked up in museums or nature reserves. ...We want to live diversity."

About the Author:

Christa Wichterich is an independed researcher and journalist as well as a WIDE member.