States must tackle gender-based discrimination to guarantee right to a healthy environment: UN expert

GENEVA (9 March 2023) – The triple planetary crisis, combined with systemic gender-based discrimination, patriarchal norms and inequality, imposes distinct and disproportionate impacts on women and girls’ human rights, including the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, a UN expert said today.

“For the full realisation of human rights, humanity must urgently create a world that is gender equitable and ecologically sustainable,” said David Boyd, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment in his report to the Human Rights Council today.

“These imperatives are so deeply interwoven that neither can be achieved without the other,” the Special Rapporteur said.

Boyd said that the climate emergency, biodiversity collapse and pervasive pollution affect everyone, everywhere, but not equally.

“For instance, ecosystem degradation increases unpaid care work and time poverty of women and girls, forcing them to travel further and repeat activities such as planting crops,” the expert said. “On the other hand, climate disasters increase the likelihood of girls dropping out of school and render girls vulnerable to child marriage because families face economic difficulties,” he said.

States must ensure that all women and girls have equal opportunities for participation in climate and environmental decision-making, the UN expert said. “Businesses also have a role to play. They must conduct human rights and environmental due diligence that is gender sensitive,” he said.

“Women and girls are powerful, transformative agents of change,” Boyd said, highlighting that by challenging patriarchy, corporate power and environmental injustices, woman and girl environmental human rights defenders do vital work. He urged States to ensure safe and enabling environments for them.

“States should redirect hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies from environmentally harmful activities to sustainable and regenerative actions led by women and girls. They should also prioritise gender-transformative climate and biodiversity finance,” the expert said.

“Only rights-based, systemic and transformative changes can achieve a just and sustainable future where everyone, including every woman and girl, enjoys the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment without discrimination,” Boyd said.