U.N. environment talks pressed on gender-sensitive global economic plan

Women participants at the ongoing U.N. Environment Assembly (UNEA) talks in Nairobi have called for fresh economic reforms on a global scale to give women access to land for agriculture, improved healthcare and a bigger share of funds earned from mining activities.

Oyun Sanjaasuren, President of UNEA-1, said late on Tuesday that new policies to effectively handle the challenges facing the environment, most of which affect women the most, required scaling up of policies to save more women and children who remain most vulnerable to climate change and other environmental risks.

"Climate change and biodiversity loss has crossed the limit," Oyun told participants at an event to discuss the gender links to the environment at the May 23-27 event.

"Women are more vulnerable to the environment and climate change. They need access to energy and safe water."

Helen Hakena, gender activist from Papua New Guinea's Women Major Group, who remembered witnessing fellow women die from child-birth, rape and the lack of basic healthcare for women during child-birth, said it was the mandate of the UNEA talks to ensure the protection of children.

"We would like to see UNEA II safeguard the lives of children. They must utilize this opportunity to rethink the global economic structure and ensure that money earned by governments is not used to purchase weapons of war in our country," Hakena told participants at the environment event.

U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner reaffirmed the ministers attending the conference that it would be keen to achieve a broad range of agreements on issues affecting the environment globally with key attention on some specific policy approaches on transport reforms.

"The problems we face are shifting even as we are solving others. The key thing is to keep an eye on emerging problems globally," Steiner said in response to challenges facing governments in dealing with policies that affect transport, health and the environment.

According to Steiner, most countries, including many in Africa, have encountered problems in dealing with economic and environmental challenges, key among them public transport policies.

There has been a huge debate at the Nairobi talks on how to effectively deal with the problem of climate change, especially those linked to car fumes from mostly private car owners using ageing vehicles amid the growing government investments in expanding public infrastructure.

However, gender activists say to effectively deal with the problem, the governments needed to think about a change of attitude among the youth in order to redefine the meaning of prosperity.

"We need to redefine prosperity. We cannot consume more and more, requiring a second car and a second house, these are primitive lifestyles while a third of the population in a country like Mongolia where I come from has people living nomadic lifestyles," Oyun said.

The gender rights activists emphasized the need for more public investments on women targeted at improved access to economic resources such as land, investments in traditional agriculture and helping local communities to negotiate for favourable trade and investment policies with large companies.

Hakena said it was regrettable that women in Papua New Guinea mostly received one percent of royalties from agricultural land from foreign multinationals exploiting the resources in their country. Endit