Draft Platform for Action
K. [Lack of adequate recognition and support for] [Promote] [women's contribution to managing natural resources and safeguarding the environment] [Women and the environment]
Strategic objective K.1. Involve women actively in environmental decision-making at all levels
Actions to be taken
253. By Governments, at all levels, including municipal authorities, as appropriate:
(a) [Ensure] opportunities for women, including indigenous women, to participate in environmental decision-making at all levels, including as managers, designers and planners, and as implementers and evaluators of environmental projects;
(b) Facilitate and increase women's access to information and education, including in the areas of science, technology and economics, thus enhancing their knowledge, skills and opportunities for participation in environmental decisions;
(c) [Encourage, through national legislation and subject to it, indigenous women's traditional knowledge, innovations, practices and skills, including those concerning traditional medicines, biodiversity and indigenous technologies, ensure that they are protected and improved and are respected, preserved and maintained, as envisaged in the Convention on Biological Diversity, 28/ safeguard their intellectual property rights and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of such knowledge;]
(d) Take appropriate measures to reduce risks to women from identified environmental hazards at home, at work and in other environments, including appropriate application of clean technologies, taking into account the precautionary approach agreed to in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development;
(e) Take measures to integrate [women's concerns and] a gender perspective in the design and implementation of, among other things, environmentally sound and sustainable [energy and] resource management mechanisms, production techniques and infrastructure development in rural and urban areas;
(f) [Take measures to empower women as consumers to take effective environmental actions in their homes, communities and workplaces;]
(g) Promote the participation of local communities, particularly women, in identification of public service needs, spatial planning and the provision and design of urban infrastructure.
254. By Governments and international organizations and private sector institutions, as appropriate:
(a) Take gender impact into consideration in the work of the Commission on Sustainable Development and other appropriate United Nations bodies and in the activities of international financial institutions;
(b) Promote the involvement of women and the incorporation of a gender perspective in the design, approval and execution of projects funded under the Global Environment Facility and other appropriate United Nations organizations;
(c) Encourage the design of projects in the areas of concern to the Global Environment Facility that would benefit women and projects managed by women;
(d) Establish strategies and mechanisms to increase the proportion of women, particularly at grass-roots levels, involved as decision makers, planners, managers, scientists and technical advisers and as beneficiaries in the design, development and implementation of policies and programmes for natural resource management and environmental protection and conservation;
(e) Encourage social, economic, political and scientific institutions to address environmental degradation and the resulting impact on women.
255. By non-governmental organizations and the private sector:
(a) Assume advocacy of environmental and natural resource management issues of concern to women and provide information to contribute to resource mobilization for environmental protection and conservation;
(b) Facilitate the access of women agriculturists, fishers and pastoralists to knowledge, skills, marketing services and environmentally sound technologies to support and strengthen their crucial roles and their expertise in resource management and the conservation of biological diversity.
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