Bringing Gender to the Environmental Table: UNEP’s Global Gender Assessment

A symposium on UNEP’s Global Gender Assessment will be held on 24 April, in room 101 in Oddi, from 12.00-13.30, in cooperation of UNU-GEST, RIKK – Institute for Gender, Equality and Difference, and the interdisciplinary Environment and Natural Resources programme, at the University of Iceland. in cooperation of UNU-GEST - United Nations University Gender Equality and Studies Programme, RIKK – Institute for Gender, Equality and Difference, and the interdisciplinary Environment and Natural Resources programme, at the University of Iceland.

Participants are Joni Seager, Professor in Global Studies at Bentley University, who is the keynote speaker, Auður H. Ingólfsdóttir, Assistant Professor at the department of Social Sciences at Bifröst University, in panel and Lára Jóhannsdóttir, Assistant Professor in Environment and Natural Resources at The Faculty of Business Administration at The University of Iceland, is the moderator.

Despite earnest rhetoric about the importance of gender analysis in the environmental realm, it is in fact sidelined in most environmental assessments and policies. In a high-visibility effort to position gender more centrally in the environmental realm, the United Nations Environment Programme committed to undertake an assessment of the global environment entirely through a gender lens: the Global Gender and Environment Outlook (GGEO) was published in 2016. GGEO, which took more than two years to complete and engaged the work of almost 100 experts, is intended as both a proof of concept and as a benchmark for gendered environmental analysis and decision-making.

GGEO examines core ‘state and trends’ information about the environment – such as the gender-differentiated impacts of environmental change – and also provides new analytical frameworks that push the boundaries of environmental assessments. For example, among other approaches, GGEO examines the ways in which social constructions of masculinity and femininity are environmental drivers.

In this talk Joni will explore the main messages and innovations of GGEO – as well as the obstacles to extending gender analysis throughout environmental assessments. After the talk, Joni and Auður H. Ingólfsdóttir will discuss the report and the Icelandic context. Lára Jóhannsdóttir will moderate the discussions.

The symposium is held in English, is open to everyone and admission is free.