First-ever Environment and Gender Index Ranks 72 Countries
First-ever Environment and Gender Index Ranks 72 Countries
Report to be Released at Global Climate Change Conference in Warsaw on 19 November
Washington D.C., 18 November 2013 (IUCN) – On 19 November at the UNFCCC COP19 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) will release the first-ever Environment and Gender Index which monitors gender equality and women’s empowerment in the environmental arena. The Index ranks 72 countries on how they are translating gender and environment mandates into national policy and planning. The strongest performers are Iceland, Netherlands and Norway. The lowest rankings went to Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen and Mauritania. The United States ranked 14 out of 72.
Major findings of the Index
include:
· Information about women’s
roles and access in environment-related sectors is not
widely collected and reported. Sex-disaggregated data with
broad country coverage in sectors such as forestry,
agriculture, water, energy, marine, disasters,
infrastructure, etc. does not exist. The discovery of this
lack of information is significant because it shows we do
not know the full story behind human dependence on the
natural world, and women are virtually invisible.
· Implementation of global
international agreements on gender and environment is
lacking in most countries.
· The global
average for women’s participation in inter-governmental
negotiations on climate change, biodiversity, and
desertification has peaked at 36 percent.
"Mozambique was the first country in the world to establish a national climate change and gender action plan,” said Ana Chichava, Deputy Minister of the Environment, Mozambique. “We are eager for the results of the EGI and expect that the information about Mozambique's performance will help guide our efforts toward gender equality and environmental protection."
Examples of
individual countries that scored well
are:
· Iceland is the
top performer in most categories, but scored lower in
performance on women in COP delegations, female managers,
senior officials, and legislators; and country-reporting on
the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the
Convention to Eliminate all Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW).
· Poland
ranks highest worldwide in ecosystem category, and lowest in
livelihood category for OECD countries.
· Costa Rica ranked
highest for governance in Latin America and Caribbean
region, lowest on women in COP delegations, and lowest for
country-reported activities.
·
Mongolia was a top performer in Asia
region, but low on women in policy-making and protection of
property rights.
·
Liberia scored in the top tier of access to
credit, land, and property (equivalent to same legal rights
as men.)
· The USA had
the highest performance on percentage of women without
anemia, and lower performance – equal to Greece and
Bangladesh – on women in policy-making
positions.
· Lebanon
had the highest percentage of women in COP delegations, and
low performance for women as legislators, managers, and
senior officials.
·
Benin ranks highest in the ecosystem
category in Africa, and lowest in gender-based education and
assets category worldwide.
·
Mozambique was the highest performer
globally on women delegates to the CBD COP11 in 2012.
“Our aim is to promote a culture of greater transparency and accountability, and to contribute to the full, effective and sustained implementation of international agreements on gender equality and women’s rights,” explained Lorena Aguilar, Global Senior Gender Advisor for IUCN. “As an independent tool outside the UN system to measure government performance, the EGI can help policymakers and civil society evaluate and set new benchmarks for government progress. The ability to compare countries and regions establishes a basis for tracking changes in performance over time, and complements existing monitoring and evaluation tools and assessments.”
The EGI is a project of IUCN, a leader on gender issues in the environmental arena, providing institutional guidance, capacity-building, and knowledge development to governments and major institutions.
For a full copy of the report or to join IUCN at the launch event in Warsaw on 19 November, please visit the website.
ENDS