Women are often on the frontlines of protecting Latin America’s crucial biodiversity, from guarding rivers against pollution to keeping illegal gold miners and oil companies at bay in the Amazon rainforest.
And at the United Nations COP16 nature summit this week in Cali, Colombia, women are well represented in political leadership, too.
Colombia’s environment minister and COP16 president Susana Muhamad, along with environment ministers from Ecuador and Brazil and vice ministers from Peru, Colombia and Panama are at the negotiating table.
“When women take over, they make things happen,” said Valéria Paye, executive director at the Indigenous Fund of the Brazilian Amazon (PODÁALI).
But according to new data, of the US$28.5 billion in international government aid for women and girls between 2016 and 2020, only 1.4 per cent went to organisations working with Indigenous women, who protect many of the world’s most biodiverse areas.
“Women have often been excluded from funding because of assumptions about their capacities and doubts about their ability to manage projects,” said Omaira Bolaños, Latin America director of the Rights and Resources Initiative, which produced the report with the Women in Global South Alliance.
“However, even without financial support, they have been effectively protecting their forests,” she said at COP16.
From 2019 and 2022, the report also found there was a 2 per cent decrease in development funding for NGOs working on gender issues, with Indigenous and Afro-descendant women’s rights organisations especially missing out.
Biodiversity is diminishing at a rapid rate, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, which saw their recorded wildlife populations drop by 95 per cent between 1970 and 2020, according to a recent WWF report.
Delegates in Cali are close to agreeing ways to boost the role of Indigenous groups in biodiversity decision-making, raising hopes it will ease the way for Indigenous women to access a larger share of the pot of money allocated to nature conservation.
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Women have often been excluded from funding because of assumptions about their capacities and doubts about their ability to manage projects. However, even without financial support, they have been effectively protecting their forests.
Omaira Bolaños, Latin America director, Rights and Resources Initiative
Women and girls are disproportionately affected by climate-driven extreme weather, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss, because as carers and mothers they are often responsible for putting food on the table and fetching water.
Valeria Paye from PODÁALI, said a permanent presence for Indigenous groups within the official United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity process could help to close an historic gap in access to nature finance.
Under the current UN structure, “resources are practically inaccessible,” she said, with most of the money going to “established mega funds” such as the World Bank.
PODÁALI is part of a network of seven development funds managed by Indigenous, farming and Afro-descendant communities from Brazil’s Amazon, six of which are managed by women.
“Even though we have the structure (to manage that money), we are not able to access (it),” she said.
As the summit nears its end, the issue of nature conservation finance continues to be a stumbling block.
An additional US$163 million was pledged to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund on Monday to implement a nature protection deal agreed between nations at COP15 in Montreal in December 2022, bringing the total raised to about US$400 million.
Advocacy groups have said the pledges fall far short of the billions of dollars envisioned for the fund which aims to stop biodiversity loss by 2030.
Fight for representation
Since 2001, there has been a push at United Nations environmental summits to consider the different needs, roles and responsibilities of women in climate and nature action.
The Global Biodiversity Framework agreed in Montreal includes a target to ensure a gender focus to boost women’s participation and equality.
But there is still no plan to track progress, said Alejandra Duarte, policy and research associate at global environmental network Women4Biodiversity.
“If I don’t have data in the right social context, how am I going to implement strategies, projects, programs that address the needs of each place?” she asked at a COP16 event.
Indigenous leader Ginny Alba, the first and only Indigenous woman representing Colombia at the negotiating table as part of the Colombian delegation at COP16, wants more government and donor funding to go directly to Indigenous communities.
Less than 1 per cent of overseas aid spent on climate action, including protecting biodiversity, goes directly to Indigenous Peoples, according to a 2021 report by non-profit Rainforest Foundation Norway.
“We are putting forward that Indigenous people, and women, have all the technical skills to directly manage our own resources in our territories that we govern,” said Alba, a member of the leading Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon.
“We need to make funding more accessible to Indigenous peoples, that’s why it is important to be present in these spaces,” she said.
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