Women Assume Responsibility for the Environment

NAIROBI, Kenya, October 11, 2004 (ENS) - Professor Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, will be a headline speaker at the first Global Women’s Assembly on the Environment opening today in Nairobi under the title Women As the Voice for the Environment (WAVE).

Currently Kenya’s assistant minister for environment and natural resources, and a longtime advocate of democracy, environmental protection and women’s rights, Maathai will share her thoughts on the need for women's leadership in the world.

Wangari Maathai is the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (Photo courtesy Worldwide Guide to Women in Leadership)

Participants include women environment ministers, as well as indigenous, rural and urban women. They will discuss conflict and peace, environment and health, urban challenges, and global environmental change.

The crucial roles women play in conservation and sustainable development, as well as the protection of women and children who are often the first victims of poverty, environmental degradation and conflict, will be under discussion.

Capacity building, education and enhancing local-global linkages will be considered.

A major focus of the WAVE meeting will be the UN General Assembly’s upcoming review of the Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing in 1995. They will consider how democratic gender equality could improve environmental governance and provide recommendations to the UN Beijing+10 process.

“The role of women and their know-how is often undervalued and ignored. All too often they are treated as second class citizens, with fewer rights and lower status than men, wrote UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer, who will open the WAVE meeting.

In a special edition of UNEP’s magazine "Our Planet" devoted to Women, Health and Environment, published in August 2004, Toepfer wrote, “It is high time that national and international policies reflect gender differences and give far greater weight to the empowerment of women."

The WAVE meeting will run in parallel with a meeting of the Network of Women Ministers for the Environment, the second meeting of a new group formed in Helsinki, Finland in March 2002.

The Network is part of a new architecture of organizations founded to advance democracy, excellence in governance and gender equality throughout the world.

The Network operates under the auspices of the Council of Women World Leaders and the International Assembly of Women Ministers.

The Assembly includes the sitting women ministers of all portfolios who today number approximately 600 women. Former U.S. Secretary of State and Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright is the founding chair of the Assembly.

The Council of Women World Leaders located at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, was founded in 1996 by Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, former President of Iceland, and Laura Liswood, an attorney, businesswoman and author. Composed of current and former women prime ministers and presidents, it is chaired by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland.

Laura Liswood is cofounder and secretary general of the Council of Women World Leaders. Her goal of seeing a woman in the White House led to the Council's creation. (Photo courtesy Harvard Business School Bulletin)

Network ministers agree that meeting the environmental challenges facing the world requires the full participation and partnership of all – women and men. It requires equitable access to information, transparency in decision-making processes, and stakeholder analysis in order to prevent negative gender specific impacts.

Because women constitute a majority of the world’s poor and are severely under-represented in policy-making roles, the Network focuses on increasing the involvement of women in sustainable development issues.

Currently co-chaired by Rejoice Mabudafhasi, South African Deputy Minister for Environmental Affairs and Tourism, and Lena Sommestad, Swedish Minister for the Environment, the Network is founded on the belief that women bring to the table new ideas, approaches and strategies for protecting people and natural resources while practicing sustainable development.