GI-ESCR participated in conference to share women’s experiences in the defence of the right to a healthy environment
GI-ESCR was invited to share its insights on renewable energy and gender justice in a conference convened by the Faculty of Political Science of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) on “Women in Defence of the Right to a Healthy Environment”. The event was part of a series of conferences on gender equality aiming to build capacities in the field for professors, students, and other interested audiences.
During the event, Programme Officer on Climate and Environmental Justice, Alejandra Lozano shared a brief background on the recognition of the right to a healthy environment to explain the interlinkages between environmental protection and human rights. During her intervention, she provided a few examples to illustrate how abuses to the right to a healthy environment often compound with multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination against women resulting in gender-differentiated impacts that affect women’s and girls’ livelihoods, health, safety, and possibilities to overcome structural conditions of inequality. Alejandra highlighted that the right to a healthy environment can be abused not only by the direct implications of environmental degradation but also by the measures commonly articulated to address environmental concerns without women’s meaningful and effective participation.
In this light, GI-ESCR contributed to the discussion describing how the transition to efficient, clean renewable energy is critical to avert the climate emergency and realize the right to a healthy environment. However, also underscored that this global energy transformation cannot be carried out at the expense of the protection, respect, and realization of other fundamental rights, including women’s right to participate in decision-making. Thus, for the energy transition and other critical climate and environmental policies to be rights-compliant and effective, they need to adopt gender equality objectives and ensure women’s contributions, experiences, and voices are adequately considered in energy policy and project development.
In the conference, Liliana Avila from the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) and Georgina Caire from the Centre on Studies in Public Administration of UNAM also participated providing their insights based on their own work and research on gender and environmental protection.
The event contributed to strengthening GI-ESCR’s activities aimed at building capacities and the dissemination of the research and briefing papers developed on the climate, gender, and energy nexus. It furthermore helped raise awareness with broader audiences on the environmental and human rights dimensions of climate policy and action.
