Gender News - November
WECF Gender in Sustainable Development Working Group
30.11.2004 |Sonja Haider
The mentioned workshop had two topics: a critical discussion on the outcomes of the UNEP Women’s Assembly: Women as a Voice for the Environment (WAVE), which took place in Nairobi in october 2004, and a review on the implementation of chapter K „Women and Environment“ in Germany.
1. WAVE:
After having heard presentations and comments of the 4 participants of WAVE, who were present in this workshop, the following discussion of the outcomes of WAVE focused on:
- a critique on the intransparent way of decision making in the conference,
- the character of an „event by invitation only“ – many active women/women´s organisations felt themselves excluded from the conference,
- the dominance of UNEP and WEDO in the course of the conference,
- the under-representation of women from the North (who did not get funding for travel expenses from UNEP),
- Public response: there was almost no information on the conference in (at least) German media,
- Lack of continuity of processes: e.g. a preparatory event for WAVE was ignored completely, as well as results of other relevant international events.
Nevertheless it was evident that the final document should be distributed among relevant German governmental institutions.
2. Beijing + 10 – Statement on the Implementation of Chapter K „Women and Environment“ in Germany:
In interesting discussions about the 6 central topics of the statement on the implementation of chapter K „Women and Environment“ in Germany (a draft version had been prepared by genanet/LIFE) the participants gave important inputs to complete the statement in a final version, that can be downloaded on the genanet homepage: www.genanet.de. This statement was signed by several German women´s organisations/networks and a German federation of environmental organisations. It will be sent to relevant German governmental and non-govermental organisations and institutions. WECF (Sascha Gabizon, director of WECF participated in the workshop) will take it on the European level.
10th session of the conference of the parties (COP) Buenos Aires, Argentina
From 6 to 17 December 2004 the so called COP 10 will take place in Buenos Aires in Argentina. A recently published document on Gender and Climate Change „A healthy climate? Gender justice and climate protection. What are we doing?“ can be downloaded on the WECF homepage. Ulrike Röhr (LIFE) will participate in Buenos Aires as official observer and keep us informed afterwards.
New (and not so new) documents, liturature and recommended websites
A very interesting homepage can be found here: Women and Life. It is the section on Women and Ecology of „Women and Life on Earth“ (WLOE), an organisation, that just celebrated its first anniversary. WLOE is a ecofeminist site that wants to „recognize and promote the experience and knowledge of women and movements, locally and world-wide, with a multi-lingual site and center for information, analysis and actions on:- PEACE and justice: countering the multiple assaults on women, children and the elderly, along with environmental destruction;
- ECOLOGY supporting production for sustainability; safe food, air and water free of chemical, genetic or atomic pollution; preventing environmental disasters through renewable energy use, conservation of energy and natural resources, sustainable transport, construction, development and lifestyles;
- GLOBAL JUSTICE opposing corporate control and cultural destruction world-wide. For social and economic justice.“
