Advancing Gender-responsive Synergies Across The Rio Conventions

Recognizing the interlinkages and synergies across the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the promotion of gender equality and women’s human rights, UN Women calls upon Parties to the Rio Conventions and the Conferences of their Parties to:  

1. Address the disproportionate impacts on the rights, resources and resilience of women and girls in all their diversity caused by the interlinked crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation.  

2. Take coordinated, holistic measures to address the acceleration and intensification of climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation, which are exacerbating poverty and inequalities, including gender inequalities, putting at risk all human and non-human life on earth.  

3. Take a human rights-based and gender-responsive approach in decisions and their implementation across the Rio Conventions, including advancing and applying relevant Human Rights Council and UN General Assembly recommendations on the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.  

4. Guarantee the human rights and security of women environmental human rights defenders whose actions cut across the impacts of and solutions to climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation.  

5. Realize women’s land and resource rights and tenure security as fundamental for achieving the goals and targets of the Rio Conventions.  

6. Collaborate across the Rio Conventions to ensure women’s and girls’ full, equal and meaningful participation and leadership at decision-making tables to determine and implement decisions. Grassroots women, Indigenous women, women from local communities and youth are central to climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation challenges and solutions.  

7. Protect Indigenous women’s human rights in biodiversity and climate action, promote their full and effective participation in policy development, project design, and natural resource management, guarantee the tenure and governance of their territories, and support their practices to conserve, protect and restore biodiversity and build climate resilience.  

8. Promote gender-responsive just transitions away from economies based on the exploitation and extraction of fossil fuels and natural resources to mitigate climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation.  

9. Increase gender-responsive finance for the comprehensive and durable implementation of goals, targets, agreed plans and strategies to address climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation.  

10. Strengthen coordination among Secretariats, Parties and stakeholders of the Rio Conventions to harmonize relevant guidance and recommendations, including in negotiations processes, for gender-responsive implementation.