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The electronic version of this document has been prepared at the Fourth
World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
in collaboration with the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women
Secretariat.
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AS WRITTEN


Address by Ms. Elizabeth Dowdeswell
Executive Director
United Nations Environment Programme

at the Fourth World Women's Conference
Beijing, 6 September 1995


The realities of our world are harsh.

They are also complex and contradictory.

In a world of opulence, a world in which a painting by Picasso can
fetch $40 million, as many as 500,000 women die every year of
starvation and disease. In a world in which our mastery of technology
has enabled us to walk on the moon, replace a diseased heart and
store millions of bits of information on a tiny computer chip, 40,000
children die daily, the equivalent of a Hiroshima every week. It is a
world in which the technological revolution, while easing the daily
chores of people, has degraded natural resources and, threatens to
expose them to potentially dangerous chemicals from the moment of
conception to the time of death.

It is also an unfair world.

Though much of the edifice of development today stands on the backs
of women, they comprise the most vulnerable segment of the human
society. While performing two thirds of the world’s work, they earn
only ten percent of its income, own just one percent of its property,
constitute the majority of the world’s poor and, with their dependent
children, 80 percent of the world’s refugee population.

How do we begin to reconcile the world's contradictions, its
injustices, recasting them into opportunities for greater equality
and freedom for women?

This, Madame President, is the question that is uppermost in our
minds as we assemble in Beijing today.

There are no simple answers to this question, no easy solutions. But
there should be no reason for us to be pessimistic either. The
presence of so many leading figures of the international women’s
movement at this truly historical and unprecedented assembly is
evidence of women’s resolve to win economic and social equality and
of their refusal to accept poverty, disease and premature death as
the natural lot of women.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 In the last ten years, the world has been in the throes of rapid
change - a change that has transformed our economic, social and
political landscape forever. Familiar landmarks have disappeared. New
paradigms and definitions of concepts such as "security",
"development" and “peace” have emerged. Disciplines as diverse as
science, engineering, economics and law are being integrated to solve
the wide range of complex issues that we face. Along with this is the
upsurge in the global consciousness which perceives all components of
our world as being linked in important and subtle ways. Peace,
Environment and Development are seen as one entity, interlocked and
inseparable.

The World Summits at Rio on environment and development, at Cairo on
population and at Copenhagen on social development have only added to
this ferment of change. Most significantly, they have served to blur
old boundaries. With preservation of the planet Earth as their
primary focus, they have compelled us to no longer look at the world
as divided up into boxes - intonations, into ethnic groups, into
regions, but regard the fate of the Earth and the future of the human
family as inextricably linked.

For the first time, quality of life is no longer an abstraction but a
social goal. And, citizenship, reverence, stewardship, justice - the
principles around which we have totally.

Madame president,

The Platform for Action comprising the 12 Critical Areas of Concern
that this Conference hopes to finalise in the next few days is first
and foremost a document of hope. It is a plan to confront and
overcome the glaring disparities in the condition of women. Clearly,
its effective implementation will require a major shift in the
priorities of both governments and individuals and also a significant
re-deployment of human and financial resources.

It is ironical though that the issue of women and the environment
should have been positioned at the bottom of the list of these
critical areas of concern. While this could have been an oversight,
it does not in any way alter the fact that environment as an
overarching theme permeates all the other eleven critical areas of
concern for women.

Let us not forget that environmental degradation is a people’s
problem. And, that human health is directly the health of our global
environment. As we deplete our  natural resources, as we continue to
permit the extinction of species, as we continue to pollute our air
and water with toxic substances, we are imperilling the quality of
all life on earth.

A realistic analysis of environmental problems supports the
conclusion that environmental abuse is the immediate cause of many of
the major problems that we face today : the desertification plaguing
much of sub-Saharan Africa, the proliferation of chemically
contaminated water supplies, the depletion of ozone layer, the
serious deterioration of productivity of the world's agricultural
land, destruction of forests and disasters of the magnitude of
Bhopal, Chernobyl and Minimata.

Environmental degradation also encompasses the potential for
international conflict over the availability of oil and natural gas
supplies, water and other vital natural resources. The term
environmental refugees has just entered our lexicon. Environmental
degradation also includes the impoverishment of millions of people
whose livelihoods depend on the continued use of natural resources.
From a still wider perspective, environmental destruction is tied
inextricably to the enormous inequalities that characterise our world
and to the economic arrangements that have placed many nations so
deeply in debt.

Environmental degradation destroys not only the natural world but
also the social, economic and political conditions that are pre-
requisites to the survival of human rights. Those rights require
tolerance, forbearance, common decency and respect for one's fellow
beings so that all of us can live with dignity and security. Dignity
and security cannot survive long in a world that is starving,
grasping and desperate - a world where a barren and unsustaining
environment encourages and forces people to seize the bare
necessities of life by taking the possessions, their rights and even
lives of those who are less strong.

Seen in this light, the achievement of sustainable development is
inextricably bound up with the establishment of women’s equality. One
cannot be accomplished without the other. Inequities that are
detrimental to the environment and society at large are particularly
detrimental to women.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We all know that there is something distinctive and special in
women's relationship to their environment. As hewers of wood, haulers
of water and tillers of the soil, women characteristically perform
tasks which involve them in close daily interaction with the
environment. As a result, their interest in preserving the natural
resource base is more pronounced. It also gives them a deep and
extensive knowledge of natural resources deriving from their intimate
daily experience of them.

Natural resource degradation can undermine a woman’s ability to
perform her traditional roles or mean that she can fulfil them only
with increasing costs in time and energy.

In most parts of the world women are the first to notice
environmental degradation and are the first ones to suffer from it.
As forests disappear and wells dry up, they have to walk further and
further to fetch food and water. As farmers they suffer the
consequences of misuse and overuse of pesticides. As household
managers, they risk significant health hazards from indoor pollution.

Clearly, if developmental policies fail to take account of women’s
roles, they risk both having negative impacts on the natural
resources which women rely on and failing to make use of women’s
distinctive skills and knowledge.

As we strive to improve gender equality and sustain our environment,
four broad imperatives should guide our decision making

First, the development process should incorporate the particular
wisdom of women into decision-making, while meeting the needs of the
least advantaged and most vulnerable sectors of society. Women are
agents of change. In their varied responses to environmental crises,
women, through interactions and networking, are creating alternative
paths for sustain able development outside the traditional
development projects and institutions. In this connection, the
creativity and strength which local, national and international
women's groups have found in their communities' resistance to
unsustainable practices could serve as an inspiring example.

Secondly, we must recognise that poverty has a gender bias. Poverty
among women-headed households is usually deeper and more firmly
entrenched than general poverty. Therefore, poverty alleviation must
be made a priority issue. Anti-poverty strategies must focus more
explicitly on removing the special burdens and constraints that women
face. It must be understood that no long-term strategy of poverty
alleviation can succeed in the face of powerful forces that permit
the persistent erosion of the physical resources upon which the poor,
especially women depend. And, that no environmental or development
programme can make any headway without removing the day-to-day
pressures of poverty.

Thirdly, it must be acknowledged that empowerment is the catalyst to
greater participation of women in decision-making processes. For
empowerment to be meaningful, it must embrace all aspects of women’s
life: new education, new awareness and sensitisation to environmental
and gender issues, new social orientation and the transformation of
those cultural attitudes and values responsible for their
marginalization.

Women’s natural resource managing activities and economic
opportunities are constrained by their lack of control over crucial
decisions related to resource use, while insecure land or tree tenure
and rights to products limit their incentive for sound environmental
management. Enhancement of women's rights and control over resources
should be central to overall improvement in environmental management.

Fourthly, it must be realised that women do not operate in a vacuum.
Their resource management activities are not isolated from their
relations with men. Both male and female perspectives need to be
taken into account to provide the breadth of understanding required
for sustainable development.

All these measures are in the long term our best guarantee of a
system which enhances the status of women.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

At Rio, women contributed significantly to the sustainable
development debate. At the core of this process was the opportunity
for networking, to build on strategic interests and to exchange
ideas. The adoption of the chapter on women and the mainstreaming of
women’s issues throughout Agenda 21 are the outcomes upon which we
need to build.

Seen in this light, the Beijing Conference is an opportunity for
women to join other actors in devising strategies of development
which respect local positions and diverse perspectives on the social
and natural environment. First and foremost, this Conference must
create meaningful strategies for change by forging alliances across
barriers which previously would never have been bridged.

Madame President,

About a decade ago in Nairobi, the year 2000 appeared to provide a
comfortable time frame for undertaking what then seemed to be far
sighted planning regarding women and the environment. As that date
draws closer, several points are clear. We are inflicting tremendous
and constantly increasing damage on all components of the
environment, including ourselves. We are engaged in a race against
time to change our actions before the natural web that sustains human
society unravels to a irreversible degree.

No one said that either resolving the environmental crisis or
enhancing the status of women would be easy. It cannot be. It will
not be. By deciding to heal the environment and acknowledging the
role of women in conserving it, we can change the course of history.
Let us all - man, women and child -- get on with this task.