Green economic recovery in terms of effective gender equality

The COVID-19 pandemic showed that humanity was surprised with low defenses to face the subsequent health and socioeconomic crises. The primary foundations for building resilience — of ecosystem health, climate balance, and effective gender equality — were weakened and had not received sufficient attention. We are witnessing, then, a kind of perfect storm in which a triple interconnected crisis is configured, which is the result of human actions and omissions. It is our responsibility to face them, and this requires a multidimensional, integrated approach, with a long-term perspective, and from a green economic recovery. for our region of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Precisely, the UNDP Regional Human Development Report (2021) highlights that the green economy will boost our collective capacity to take decisive climate measures, to protect and restore the natural environment, and it becomes a path to face the double inequality trap persistently high and low productivity that our region suffers, as it traces a new and daring growth path.

This trajectory will lead us to break with the planetary and social imbalance in the Anthropocene era, which demands the reduction of a) emissions derived from the production and consumption of energy based on fossil fuels - coal, oil, and gas - and their replacement by renewable energies, and b) the degradation of natural resources eliminating their exploitation indiscriminate, for example, oil exploitation, open-pit mining, unsustainable fishing, hunting and commercialization of wildlife. Investing in nature generates economic growth that pays, and it pays well.

But these bets cannot be made without considering women in their diversity. In our region, women depend on natural resources and energy, which makes them essential agents of conservation for their knowledge, specific and ancestral knowledge, and they develop multiple sustainable productive activities; however, they face an uneven and historical playing field, which today is leaving them even further behind.

Restoring the balance of power between women and men in the green economy

The green economy must have an intrinsic premise of reversing the historical and structural inequalities experienced by women in their wide diversity while ensuring their economic, social, and economic empowerment. environmental with effective and durable tools. Failure to do so becomes a threat and reduces the catalytic effect that generates gender equality. This implies restoring the balance of power relations for women in a) Decision-making spaces in the global, national, and local spheres until reaching parity and representativeness in environmental agendas; b) Access and control of natural and economic green resources and their derived benefits; c) Access, participation, and permanence within the new generation of green jobs, which are decent and well paid, and which promote key sectors; d) Access to financial and credit opportunities of their current and future sustainable activities, that takes into consideration the land tenure gap of women; e) Access and control of technological resources and green innovation; and, f) The equal distribution of care, to reverse the burden that women have and that limits their access to the green economy.

Additionally, restoring power to women within a green and inclusive recovery requires universal access to comprehensive social protection; green cities free from violence, sexual harassment, and femicide; combat discriminatory gender social norms; direct access to financing for women's groups and organizations; ensure food security for women in the face of disasters; accelerate compliance with international environmental commitments and integrate the gender perspective into national policies; ensure that initiatives are gender-responsive and incorporate intersectionality, interculturality, and intergenerational. And, following Latin American ecofeminisms, that has at its center the ethical perspective based on the universalization of the care of nature, from a more horizontal and more plural perspective of thought, which starts from a deep recognition of rural women, of the original peoples, who are depositories of historical and ancestral knowledge.

The role of UNDP in LAC for a green and inclusive economy

In recent years in the Latin American and Caribbean region, we have implemented a series of initiatives at different levels —political, institutional, programmatic— that show that it is possible to implement gender environmental initiatives. -responsive and build better for the future.

Demonstrative examples of gender-responsive initiatives in the green economy that we have developed at UNDP Costa Rica with our national partners include the Huella del Futuro Campaign that ensures reforestation through green jobs for rural women and the REDD + Results-Based Payments Program, which will improve and expand forestry law, climate action and conservation with green jobs for women and indigenous peoples, the Bio-business Platform, which promotes companies that make sustainable use of biodiversity, of which 44.9% are led by women.

We need a transformative change that breaks the planetary and social imbalance, and ensure a more prosperous destiny for current and future generations, with effective gender equality and hand in hand with the conservation of nature and the construction of resilience in the face of the crisis. climatic. This is the way.