New report: recognition of women-led biodiversity data vital to advance gender justice
IIED and the CBD Women’s Caucus are calling for greater recognition of the crucial role women-led and community-based organisations play in generating gender-responsive biodiversity data.
A new report produced with the CBD Women's Caucus was launched at the 6th meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity's Subsidiary Body on Implementation (Image: CBD Women's Caucus)
A new report has highlighted the ways in which women-led and community-based organisations are generating vital, gender-responsive biodiversity data through their everyday engagement with ecosystems and governance processes.
But formal decision-making spaces, such as the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), are failing to use this data when setting policies.
There is also limited evidence on how the women-led and community-based organisations engage with data, including the capacities they hold, the constraints they face and the kinds of support that would most strengthen their work.
As the sixth meeting of the CBD Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI6) convenes, parties are taking critical decisions that will shape how the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is implemented in practice.
Questions of who produces biodiversity data, how it is used, and whose knowledge counts are central to ensuring implementation is inclusive, effective and accountable. The approaching mid-term review of the Gender Plan of Action (2023-30) also brings into sharp focus assessments whether parties’ commitments to gender equality are being translated into concrete actions.
IIED, together with the CBD Women’s Caucus, conducted a global assessment to better understand how women’s organisations engaged in biodiversity conservation currently collect, manage, analyse, use and share data. The survey covered 70 women-led organisations across 33 countries, working at local, national and regional levels.
The results are compiled into a report (PDF) that calls for recognition and partnership with women’s organisations as key contributors to the global biodiversity framework implementation and accountability.
"Women’s organisations and women-led initiatives have long been documenting crucial biodiversity data rooted in traditional and community knowledge," said CBD Women's Caucus project officer Shruti Ajit.
"The real gap lies not in the absence of evidence, but in translating these efforts into influence within national and global policy spaces."
Women-led organisations are active across the data value chain
The findings show women-led and community-based organisations are not just beneficiaries of data systems, they are active producers of relevant evidence. Seventy-seven per cent of respondents engage in data communication, 70% in data use, 61% in data collection and 56% in analysis.
Crucially, the report finds that the main obstacle to policy impact is not a lack of evidence, but a lack of recognition, access and credibility in formal decision-making spaces.
The hopeful outcome is that there is a strong readiness for peer-to-peer learning and collective capacity strengthening, with 90% of respondents expressing interest in scalable approaches to strengthen gender-responsive data capabilities across regions and contexts.
"Recognising and valuing women-led, community-based data is essential to understanding gender-differentiated impacts and contributions to biodiversity conservation and to directing critical resources toward closing the most urgent gaps," added Ajit. "What is needed now is investment and access to ensure this knowledge informs biodiversity policy and decision-making at all levels."
Contact
Karen Wong Pérez ([email protected]), senior researcher, IIED's Climate Change research group
