Yet education as a primary solution seems to come up a lot in university classrooms when discussing sustainability challenges. If people only knew what microplastics did in the ocean, they would choose reusable packaging and natural fibers; If people only knew the implications of buying conventional, non-organic produce, they would choose local and organic; If people only knew the unethical and environmentally degrading effects of the meat, eggs and cheese they love, they would change! 

It’s not so simple. What changes behavior is much deeper than knowledge. Behavior change can be a complex equation of esteem, culture, support, prioritization and, particularly, access: choice is a prerequisite to change, and a lot of people don’t have access to an equivalent alternative, or REAL choice, in their lives (e.g. where they shop, what they eat, the clothes they wear, how they heat their homes). 

Consider Maslow’s hierarchy: in order to self-actualize, a person’s basic needs for food, water, shelter, security and healthy social relationships need to first be satisfied. Then consider that a third of the global population doesn’t have access to a basic necessity: safe drinking water. And it’s estimated every 6th or 7th person on Earth has a mental or substance abuse disorder. That can make just getting through a day a challenge, let alone choosing to up your game in a collective effort to save the world as we know it. Truth is, a lot of people are struggling to meet their basic and mental needs, and unless reducing their ecological footprint is going to immediately provide relief, it may be unrealistic to expect them to change their ways even should they ‘know better.’

Beyond statistics and surveys, most of the people I know do have their basic needs met and are of relatively healthy mind. Yet, they are also too busy hustling at their jobs and/or raising their kids and/or managing their health to allocate even a little bandwidth to minimizing their ecological footprint or responding at all to what’s being called a global ecological collapse. If asked, (and I do ask), of course they care. Of course they would want to help…if it weren’t for their sick in-laws or unexpected car repair or low self-esteem remedied only by the short bursts of endorphins triggered when buying material things they know they don’t actually need—but which feel so good to buy. 

People’s lives are inflated by a myriad of both externally and internally imposed demands that are seemingly more immediate than reducing their ecological footprint, despite their level of education. I value education and agree that education can be the first step in making positive changes, individually and as a community. I am also aware it is a privilege to have the opportunity to reflect on the ecological significance of my personal existence, and it is naive to believe that everyone else would too if only they knew.

I do not mean to dismiss the meaningfulness of education altogether. There is one approach to education that studies show to be an essential component to building a sustainable future: the education of women, especially young girls. While being powerful agents of change, women around the world are oppressed by gender inequality, wage discrimination, sexual suppression, gender roles and gender violence. In 2012, there were 65 million girls denied education globally and today two-thirds of the 792 million illiterate adults in the world are women.[i] There are 32 million fewer girls are in primary school than boys.[ii] But evidence shows that women with increased access to education improve their personal health and well-being, that of their families and, by extension, their communities—well-being beyond physiological health, but also mental, social and environmental.

To break it down briefly, (because really this could be an entirely separate article), educated women have increased earning potential. According to the World Bank, for every extra year of primary education a girl receives, her wage increases an average of 10-20%. Women reinvest an average of 90% of their income directly back into their families, supporting their families’ health and well-being and, by extension, that of their local community.[iii] Educated women are more than twice as likely to send their children to school,[iv] and these educated children of educated mothers become educated citizens who are more inclined to show greater concern about the well-being of the environment, use water more efficiently, build and maintain renewable energy infrastructure, and recycle. More educated communities are more likely to make their neighborhoods safer, more sustainable, and more resilient. [v]

It can be helpful to understand things from a systems-thinking perspective, how different components of a system interact with each other. In doing so, we can identify leverage points within the system to maximize the impact of our effort (system inputs). So, as I wrote, people’s lives are inflated by a myriad of both externally and internally imposed demands that are seemingly more immediate than reducing their ecological footprint…However, when we focus on educating girls and women as an input to a complex global system, we leverage the investment of education by focusing on a group of people that, when educated, can directly ease many of these imposed demands, thus supporting enormous strides toward a sustainable future on multiple levels, including health, social justice and equality, economic, environmental, and the list goes on.

[i] EFA Global Monitoring Report

[ii] Education First: An Initiative of the United Nations Secretary General, 2012

[iii] United Nations Sustainable Development Report

[iv] UNICEF, 2010

[v] United Nations Sustainable Development Report

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<< Climate Change is not an academic subject, it´s a matter of life and death.>>
– Henry Puna

In the early morning hours of the 18^th November 2017, the climate change COP 23 in Bonn came to an end after two weeks of negotiations, discussions and debates. The conference didn’t result in tremendous progress but met the overall expectations. Progress in implementing the Paris Agreement was achieved and next steps towards the coal phase-out were undertaken. Bonn was a necessary step on the way to Katowice next year where the members of the parties will come together again.

One main outcome of COP 23 consists of the further elaboration of the Paris Agreement’s Rule Book. Clear and consistent standards were needed regarding measuring and reporting CO₂ emissions as well as advances in climate protection on the national level within all participating nations. Aiming for the prevention or at least for slowing down the global heating, a draft of around 200 pages was presented. This document will be finalized and adopted at COP 24.

Despite the disappointing German position concerning the withdrawal from coal use, the initiation of the global “Powering Past Coal Alliance” was a great step towards a coal free future. Under leadership of Canada and the UK, more than two dozen countries, provinces, states and cities agreed on the phasing-out of the climate killer within the next decades. Germany might follow in 2018. Its role as a financial supporter of climate protection is very important but others took over political leadership.

Contrasting Americas official position, positive signals came from other US representatives including civil society members, companies, states and cities: “We are still in!” – a clear message and support to keep the spirit of Paris alive in Bonn.

Further achievements are the adoption of the Gender Action Plan, the development of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform and the launch of the Ocean Pathway Partnership. In order to promote and stimulate the process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue, the Talanoa Dialogue was initiated. This facilitative exchange encourages action in climate mitigation by bringing together science, industry and the civil society.

Apart from the negotiation processes in the Bula (Fijian for “hello”) Zone, the organization of the climate conference in Bonn in two zones, also provided room and opportunities for showcasing projects and examples of implementation. Countries, industry and civil society presented a wide spectrum of climate action solutions in hundreds of events in the Bonn Zone.

The COP 23 was characterized by the shared general consensus to get active in climate policy. That is a strong signal but a lot of work remains until more groundbreaking decisions will have to be made in Poland next year. From our perspective as scientists, the statement of His Excellency Mr. Henry Puna, Prime Minister of Cook Islands, should provide motivation and be seen as a mandate: “Climate Change is not an academic subject, it´s a matter of life and death.”

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Event Date: Monday 14th November , 2017

Location: German Pavillion, Bonn Zone, Freizeitpark Rheinaue

Tuesday of the second week of COP 23 was Gender Day, focusing on side events that highlight women’s role in environmental movements and on indigenous women and their fight for representation in the environmental community. Every day at COP 23 had at least one talk about gender in this field but Gender Day was meant to specifically emphasize this topic, including a Gender Market Place where NGOs and other organizations focused on women and gender in environmental fields came together in one of the meeting halls to hand out flyers and share information.

Gender Day Relevance

There were several themes that came up during these Gender-themed side events. One was the importance of women being included (or rather failing to be included) on panels. Noele Nabulivou, in a panel titled “Behind Goal 13:Women Leading the Climate Agenda”, spoke of her personal protest of “manels”, male-only panels, and “wanels”, white-technical panels, as a matter of the lack of representation of diversity in the environmental field. She and several other women emphasized the role that women, particularly indigenous women, play as stewards of their environments and how that so often fails to be represented at the larger, international level. The voices that get projected are largely male and largely white. This is a systemic problem in a lot of the governments and institutions present at COP. This became evident by the fact that these gender-focused events continuously brought up the uniqueness and importance of majority-female panels here and in other realms of their professional lives. There were speakers encouraging women to seek out female networks, to lift one another up and create space for one another. There were others challenging the notion of “female empowerment”, claiming that to feel patronizing, that women indeed have power, it need not be given to them. Others mentioned the finalization of the Gender Action Plan, finally approved at the COP 23 to be more mindful of gender-specific environmental policies and programs but criticized the reluctance to fully adopt this protocol.

Some of the most powerful speakers were the indigenous women from many different countries, from Peru to Kenya to Canada (..)

(…) sharing their stories of how they hold up their communities, raise their families, feed their families and act as environmental stewards. They share how climate change is making these jobs even more difficult.

From Fiji to Peru 

As Fiji hosted the presidency of COP 23, one could feel the urgency and upset coming from the Fijian women who proclaimed:

<< Our lives are non-negotiable >>

In a consortium with other Pacific Island Communities, these women have come with a united front to call out the developed countries who have colonized their land, exploited their natural resources, and contributed most largely to climate change while their homelands disproportionately feel the negative effects. It is undeniable that these small island states face urgent threat from sea level rising and intensified natural disasters and those women and children will be especially vulnerable to this. The women from ONAMIAP, a group of indigenous women in Peru, pointed to the necessity Land titles, legal access and rights. They are fighting for legal security of their ancestral lands, where they have been cultivating and preserving local biodiversity for generations.

By the end of Gender Day, it became clear that many women on the forefront of environmental movements in their communities feel underrepresented at best and entirely dismissed or ignored at worst. Having one day in the entire conference just simply isn’t enough. Who we choose to let in these negotiation rooms, sit on the panels, speak for their countries matters. Who we acknowledge as those in positions of power and knowledge and solutions is important.

The motto of “leave no one behind” has circulated the conference a lot. This includes women and indigenous voices. This means calling out the current power structure that has blatantly disadvantaged them thus far. We, as environmental scientists, lawyers, policy makers, government officials, as neighbors, need to acknowledge the power-biases that take place in our field. Inclusion and visibility of indigenous knowledge and the efforts of women are integral to a just transition to a “1.5 degree world”.

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Organised by CARE International (Sven Harmeling), Center for International Environmental Law – CIEL (Sebastian Duyck), Women’s Environment and Development Organization – WEDO (Bridget Burns)

The Guaranteeing Rights & Gender Equality side event, organized by CARE International, invited a panel of four speakers to debate about human rights as well as gender implications and action strategies for including these priorities within the achievement of Paris goals.

The first to introduce her perspective on the issue was Noelene Nabuliron from Fiji. She saw potential in relying on increasing transparency and accountability to track progress towards equity. Communications, as an essential part for reporting on indices of transformation, were proposed by her.

“With all these strategies, the process would also have to placed in the wider context of a country’s culture and tradition, to understand deviations among nations.”
– Noelene Nabuliron from Fiji

She rounded off her speech by highlighting current problems, such as work of women that is not accounted for, the underlying systemic injustice, and the excessive and extractive production and consumption as major causes of inequality. She concluded with: “Nothing about us, without us.”

Her speech was followed by that of Sebastian Duych from the Center for International Environmental Law, who shifted the focus to the human rights legal perspective. The preamble of the Paris Agreement, he pointed out, can be seen as a very inspiring underlying message. Therefore, he pleaded to ensure that the spirit of the preamble should serve to influence all enforcement mechanisms when discussed during the negotiations and not just the technicalities.

Duych likewise urged states to inform about their status quo on equity at the community level. As a concluding remark, he stressed that only with an advancement of obligations toward including concrete measures to ensure human rights could real progress be expected.

After him, Bridget Burns from the Women’s Environment and Development Organization took the microphone and elaborated on the status of gender and the Paris Agreement. She proposed that gender should not only include women, but also all other sexes. With that she also stressed the recession of development in engagement of women in delegations and the disparity between policy and practice.

Five main claims were brought forward by Burns:
1. Gender responsive climate policy
2. More sex and gender disaggregated data and analysis
3. Meet goal of gender balance
4. 100% gender-responsive climate finance
5. Financing the gender action plan.

She underpinned her speech with the statement : “No gender equality on a dead planet.”

Lastly, “CARE International” closed off the session with a perspective on agriculture and women’s roles, which is not treated with adequate recognition at present. Land ownership and extreme events are striking the most vulnerable the hardest.

All in all, the side event was very helpful in filtering concrete actions and procedures out of the Paris Agreement. Besides the will to do something about inequalities in the world, all speakers demanded increasing action and a shift in focus on concrete plans. The “Gender Action Plan” can only be a first step in the right direction.

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In 1992, during the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro, a 12 year old girl gave a speech “for all the generation to come,” telling the present leaders:

“ We are your own children.
You are deciding what kind of world we will grow up in …
Are we even on your list of priorities? “

Similarly, today’s opening ceremony started with a procession of kids with signs that read: “Save the world”. They performed a song entitled “I am an island”, stressing our connectedness.

The exiting COP president gave the first speech, underlying the cost of not acting and how ambition, solidarity, and action are the principles the COPs are based upon. The priority, he said, are the young people–and history will remember us for what will be able to deliver.

The new COP23 Fijian president was then given the seat, and as is tradition, a kava ceremony was performed and offered to the Minister of Environment, Barbara Hendricks.

As observers, we were not permitted to enter the open ceremony, but we watched it by screen in a room close by. Despite the fact that today’s attendance was lower than expected, the rooms and the halls felt filled with people (with women and men apparently equally represented) from all ethnic groups.

I participated in different press briefings, which bitterly discussed the delusion of the USA’s withdrawal. Despite this, US cities, municipalities and citizens are still acting and supporting the Paris Agreement. The power of change is in all of us.

In the final speech I attended, a young girl, together with other children, filed a lawsuit against Trump to reduce the carbon input, asking:

“… not to leave a mess for young people to clean up.”

She stressed again that the work being done here is for the future generations.

I came out of this first day of meeting motivated to engage more for our planet’s future, both as a “young research” and, maybe even moreso, as a woman.

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IPBES Chair Sir Robert Walton released the following statement:
“The issue of gender is of paramount importance to IPBES, but we still have a long way to go to get balanced representation. I encourage all governments to nominate women to all IPBES structures and activities.”

While there clearly is a great deal of work remaining to better promote and elevate gender equality, one thing is certain: the work of IPBES would not be possible without the superb contributions and leadership of women.

The future is female!

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