Women’s participation in international environmental law: towards a genuine gender equality?

International audienceEnvironmental law promotes women’s participation to environment protection since the 1992 Rio Declaration: “Women have a vital role in environmental management and development. Their full participation is therefore essential to achieve sustainable development” (principle 20). In 2006, UNEP voted for a Gender Plan of Action, to improve gender equality in the environmental politics, as everywhere else within the United Nations system. Treaties and other soft law documents related to women’s rights consider they have an essential role to play “in the development of sustainable and ecologically sound consumption and production patterns and approaches to natural resource management” (Beijing Platform of Action, 1995, § 246).As a result, rapidly women have been recognised a particular place in biological diversity conservation and water management. The institutions of the Convention on biological diversity (Rio, 1992) and of the Convention on desertification (Paris, 1994) developed a gender mainstreaming. By strongly encouraging women’s participation, these instruments have tried to improve their enforcement and effectiveness. However, they actually promoted the traditional social functions assumed by women, and not necessarily gender equality through participation. A confusion between women and mothers rapidly emerged, taken up in other texts on waste and pollutants, such as the Convention on dangerous waste (Basel, 1989) and the Convention on persistent organic pollutants (Stockholm, 2001). They both consider women as victims, insisting on their particular vulnerability. Their place in environmental governance and expertise on pollutants is not recognized on an equal footing with that of men. In climate law, women's vulnerability is emphasised, as if their gender locks them into a role that cannot be educated and responsible actors. The perpetuation of inequalities seems to be deeply rooted, overtly or implicitly irrigating environmental governance.Gender mainstreaming, now advocated by the entire UN system and implemented by the various international conventions relating to the environment, aims to correct these shortcomings, without however fully achieving the objective of gender equality