GFC’s Gender Justice and Forests Campaign promotes actions to protect forest ecosystems and the rights of Indigenous, rural and ethnically diverse women, men, youth and elders, in all their diversity, through developing strategic and technical policies, as well as campaign activities with our member groups to mainstream gender and women’s empowerment.
Forest ecosystems are crucial to maintaining countless diverse but interconnected living systems that sustain people’s livelihoods, replenish water sources, and nurture biodiversity, which all combine to form important parts of a healthy environment. Deforestation has a direct negative impact on these dependent/connected systems because in addition to causing the destruction of biodiversity, drying of water sources, and soil erosion, it also directly impacts forest communities and the healthy subsistence of humanity in general. This in turn creates new inequalities and exacerbates existing ones, as people lose their primary means of livelihood, their territories, as well as the socio-cultural activities deeply linked to their forests. Often, Indigenous and rural women, children and elders are disproportionately affected by forest loss given their daily roles and practices that depend on healthy forest ecosystems. Ultimately, this leads to a disproportionate increase in women’s burden of work, both reproductive and productive.
Women in all their diversity experience marginalization in multiple and intersecting ways, depending on their social status, ethnicity, age, class, sexual orientation, and gender identity, amongst others. They face systemic barriers from patriarchal social norms that exclude them from decision-making to discriminatory laws and practices that prevent their access to land and forests. Extractive activities supported by a capitalist economic system that privileges GDP growth and corporations over people’s welfare and healthy ecosystems lead to the degradation of forests and the violation of women’s rights. Consequently, it is integral to analyse the gender-differentiated impacts of the drivers of deforestation and to promote women’s rights in forest conservation policies.
GFC collaborates with local women’s groups and communities to research and understand the impacts of deforestation at the community level and document community-based and women-led initiatives and solutions to halt biodiversity loss. Capacity building from local to global levels on gender-responsive forest policies and women’s rights, decision-making, and participation in forest conservation is also a key strategy of GFC. The Gender Justice and Forests Campaign advocates for women’s rights and gender-responsive forest conservation policies, and also seeks to integrate gender justice into all our other policies and GFC campaign activities.
The Global Forest Coalition is a strategic partner of Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF) in the Green Livelihoods Alliance’s “Forests for a Just Future” Programme. GFC is collaborating closely with WECF, which is engaged as a GLA technical partner on gender.
We work with the Women’s Major Group (WMG) on sustainable development as well as tracking developments at UN Environment processes.
We were a partner of the #Women2030 Programme, which promoted gender-responsive implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in 52 countries around the world under the leadership of coalition of five organisations. Follow #women2030 Facebook and Twitter
The Power of Indigenous Women in Protecting Forests and Biodiversity On the 2023 International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, the Global Forest Coalition (GFC) brought together Indigenous women leaders from Latin America for a special online event to celebrate their achievements and recognise their struggles as they advocate for the defence of their social, cultural, economic, holistic, and political world vision as an effective response to forest and biodiversity loss. In this inspirational event, we heard from Bernarda Pesoa, …
Over six months since the historic signing of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), the Global Forest Coalition and our allies are working hard to ensure the gender-responsive monitoring of…
“My struggle is to honour grandma’s struggle: every day, tirelessly, and forever. To fight against the capturing spirits of our spirits, of that which hardens us and makes us incapable of…
Please join us on Wednesday, 9 August, at 12 pm UTC for a special online event bringing together Indigenous Peoples, including Indigenous women leaders, from Latin America as we celebrate…
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Photo credit: Annie Spratt GFC regularly contributes to United Nations processes on issues like forests, biodiversity, climate change and gender in order to bring the priorities and perspectives of our…
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June 5th is World Environment Day, an occasion on which to join our efforts to the increasing global demand for strong and explicit measures to curb environmental catastrophe and the…
Photo credit: Fernando Franceschelli We regularly contribute to United Nations processes on issues like forests, biodiversity, climate change and gender in order to bring the priorities and perspectives of our…
Click here to register for the event. The latest IPCC reports paint a difficult path to 1.5C and we are already seeing the devastating effects of climate change at 1.2C…
