Press Conference: Women's Demands and Priorities, UN Convention on Biodiversity - COP 17

Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for being here and welcome to the CBD Women's Caucus press conference at the COP17. As we just opened the COP17 on biodiversity, my name is Fatima Alarabi, and today I will be really happy to moderate this press conference. as CBD Women's Caucus Projects Officer working on communication and outreach. But first, I would like to share a short introduction to who is not familiar with the CBD Women's Caucus. We are the official women's constituency within the CBD. It is a self-organized global platform supporting women and girls around the world to advocate for their rights in biodiversity-related decision-making processes at all levels. It brings together more than 900 members from around the world and from diverse backgrounds. The COP17 is a key moment for us as parties stakeholders are carrying out the first global review of the global collective progress in the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the mid-term review of the Gender Power of Action. Yet, the gender-related and rights-based remain in brackets across the agenda and We are really very pleased today to have distinguished speakers who are all CBD Women's Caucus members who are going to share with us their recommendations or the CBD Women's Caucus priorities, recommendations for this COP, as well as we are going to hear from also our members about the upcoming key agenda and the engagements in this conference as well as key publications that will be launched during this during this comp. Without further ado, I will be starting with finance. I will be really happy to welcome Anna Pangrascio. from FARN and CBD Women's Caucus member who is going to share about how finance remains one of the hardest issues in the COP and what are the priorities and the recommendations of the CBD Women's Caucus through this COP to achieve gender responsive finance in this COP. Thank you.

Thank you, Fatima, and good morning, everyone. We are at a critical moment for the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework, and one thing is clear to us. Without adequate financial resources, the commitments made by governments will remain promises on paper. From the Women's Caucus, we want to address that it's not only about how much money is mobilized, It is also about who can access it, who makes the decisions about it, and who ultimately benefits from it. And in this line, we have three key messages. First, we need more predictable, adequate, and sustained public finance for biodiversity. Developed countries must deliver on their commitments, including under Article 20 of the Convention. Expanding the contributor base cannot become an excuse to weaken those obligations. We must also address the structural barriers that prevent countries from investing in biodiversity, growing debt burdens, limited fiscal space, harmful subsidies and incentives and financial flows, as well as tax injustice. And we must ensure that new financial instruments do not create additional debt or shift financial burdens onto developing countries, women, and communities. Second, biodiversity finance must reach those who are protecting and sustainably using biodiversity on the ground. Women, indigenous peoples, and local communities play essential roles in biodiversity conservation, restoration, and sustainable use. Yet their organizations continue to face enormous barriers to accessing funding. Complex procedures, restrictive eligibility requirements and short term funding models often include exclude grassroots and women led organizations. We are calling for direct, simplified, flexible and long term access to finance, together with meaningful participation and representation in the governance of financial mechanisms. Women must not simply be beneficiaries of biodiversity finance. They must have a voice in deciding how resources are allocated and used. And third, we need stronger accountability and safeguards. It is not enough to report how much funds have been mobilized or dispersed. We need to know how much actually reaches women-led organizations, who controls these resources, and what difference they make. Financial mechanisms must integrate gender equality and human rights with strong environmental and social safeguards and accessible grievance mechanisms. And critically, we need dedicated resources to implement Target 23 and the Gender Plan of Action. Gender equality cannot remain an aspiration without the means to achieve it. And I will close with the following message. Biodiversity finance cannot be considered successful simply because more funds are flowing. It must also be judged by whether it reaches those who need it, strengthens their rights and leadership, and delivers real change on the territories. That is the kind of biodiversity finance we are calling for at this COP17 in Armenia. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Anna, for sharing the recommendation. For these critical points regarding the funding and how to better do the governance of these resources. Moving from the finance to the planning, monitoring, reporting, and review, and what must be changed in this in the decision and what are the recommendations that the CBD Women's Caucus is willing to achieve during this call. I am happy to introduce a member of the board of director of the CBD Women's Caucus, Christina Egenter. You have the floor. Thank you.

Thank you, Fatima, and good morning to everybody. What is fundamental, I focus on two things, whole of society and language, and then what needs to happen next, what about after the global review. This is at the core of what we believe is essential for as women caucus to change and correct action to be more gender responsive, inclusive, and based on a whole of society principle. Whole society needs to be gender responsiveness and consideration in section C need to be at the core and consistently reflected and applied in implementation, monitoring and reporting. But this is important then to name the rights holders and stakeholders, all the partners that are implementing and contribute to the achievement of the 23 targets. This is why there is a little bit of issue with the language. If the language is actors other than national governments, as we find very often mentioned in the PMRR decision, but also across other decisions, that risk blurring all these different stakeholders that doesn't distinguish among the rights, responsibilities, needs, and roles of all these partners in a truly hollow society implementation. So the constituencies, Women Caucus, GIBBN for the youth, and IFB for indigenous people and local communities have come up with a joint proposal to replace language of actors at the national governments with major groups and other stakeholders. We believe this could be a good alternative and hopefully could be acceptable to parties. Of course, in certain paragraphs, depending on the context, it's important also to mention, in particular, indigenous people, local communities, women and youth, which we know is established language in the convention. So my colleague referred to the need for financial resources and modalities that encourage direct access and easier access for women-led initiatives. It's also to close the implementation gap, we also need to look at the full set of means of implementation and ensuring equal access to women, youth, indigenous people and others for an effective and inclusive implementation of the framework. And now what's next after the global review? Corrective action is needed. Implementation needs to be accelerated. But it's not just any implementation. We need inclusive and effective implementation. And we believe that a process like the Yerevan Pathway can enable whole society, gender responsive, and human rights-based approach implementation. ensuring that the findings of the report and many indicate the whole society and rights-based approaches are not yet fully implemented. These are part of the future and acceleration of the implementation. We also believe that dialogue spaces for interaction, not only negotiation, but getting to understand each other and the different perspectives are important and should be enabled and encouraged at multiple levels, local, national, regional, and global. This is important. We have an excellent precedent in the Kunming Dialogue that just took place last month, and that proved that partners, stakeholders, right holders, and parties can really communicate and interact and understand each other better. So this is hopefully for the Women's Caucus, the future of the Global Review. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Cristina, for raising this key point. And now, because of the matter of the time, I will move to Shruti Ajit. who is project officer within the CBD Women's Caucus, who is going to share with us about the position of the CBD Women's Caucus on Article 18 subsidiary body, as this is the first COP to discuss the modus operandi of the new subsidiary body on Article 18. My question is, how can it guarantee the leadership of the indigenous people, local communities, including women and youth. I will give the floor to Shruti to share about the key recommendations in this report. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Fatima. So, well, good morning to everyone. It's the second day. I hope everyone's bright and fresh. With regards to the modus operandi, I think it was a monumental decision that came from the last COP in Colombia about establishing a subsidiary body on Article 8j, which recognizes the traditional knowledge, innovation, practices of indigenous people, local communities, and we also have the recognition of people of African descent embodying traditional lifestyle. So this modus operandi as a discussion is critical to ensure that the role and the decision-making powers of indigenous people, local communities and people of African descent continue to remain central to this subsidiary body. And with that, I would like to highlight three critical points from the Women's Caucus. And first is about the participation and self-determination process, which is we are calling for maintaining the modalities and governance arrangements of the ad hoc working group on Article 8J, which upholds the rights to self-determination and self-governance of indigenous people, local communities and people of African descent. to their full and effective and gender-responsive participation, which must be ensured through their own governance structures with gender-balanced representation across the seven socio-cultural regions, without barriers such as party endorsement or national registration requirements. The second one is critical for us as women caucus is to ensure we recognize women's knowledge and leadership because the knowledge, innovation and practices of women and girls from indigenous people, local communities and Afro-descendant communities meaningfully informed by a diversity policy and implementation. And their perspectives must be reflected in the glossary reviews, the expert groups with gender expertise and diverse regional and community representation, while respecting their free, prior, informed consent and indigenous data sovereignty. Finally, the third one is to also ensure direct and equitable biodiversity finance, which was something that came from Anna also as part of the resource mobilization agenda, but also critical here as well. This is because that party should mobilize predictable, flexible, and long-term funding that reaches indigenous people, local communities, and Afro-descendant communities directly with and especially women and youth among them with dedicated resources for them. And that also means that national targets and transparent accountability mechanisms are essential to track this progress. So with that, I'm going to stop and pass it back to Fatima to continue the rest of the press conference.

Thank you so much, Shruti, for sharing the recommendation for this key item. And now moving to the next item, which is about the cooperation. We know how is it. It is important the coherence between the CBD convention and the other Rio convention and beyond, and how this important to ensure the implementation of the global biodiversity framework. Can you please share with us the key recommendations that the CBD Women's Caucus is asking to ensure this cooperation? Thank you so much. Over to you, Salvatrice.

Thank you so much. My name is Marie Salvatrice. I am coming from Rwanda, CBD Women's Caucus. Talking about finance, talking about implementation and also integration, working on H, it can't be possible without cooperation. What we meant to focus, we are requesting. Cooperation is about cooperation with international organization, but also cooperation with body established under other conventions. This has been adopted, but the implementation is still weak. We are requesting strengthening gender responsive cooperation and coherence across the three Rio conventions, across the UNFCCC, UNFCTD, and also the CBD. so that they can work together addressing issues of land degradation, neutrality, issues of climate change, effect of climate change, and also biodiversity loss. Those they are interconnected. You can't address one without addressing another. Cooperation is very important, starting with at high level, but top down, but also bottom up, using the focal point. Focal points should collaborate, work together, whether they are climate change, whether they are working on land, but coming together, implement things together. We are requesting also cooperation can't be possible without human rights, integration of human rights based approach. This is very important for local communities and the indigenous people in the local communities, women and youth. You know what is happening with climate change. Women are more affected. How this can be addressed in a cooperative way. We are talking about engaging all the actors. and also working with the human rights, UN human rights organization so that they can provide tools that they have been using. As the CBD Women's Caucus, we are also coming back to the one whole of government approach and one also the society approach, bringing together all the actors. Climate change involves many actors, even the private sector. CBD, they have many actors working on biodiversity. And when it comes to land, how does the work of women done by rural women, we are requesting that they can be recognized but also integrated into the decision-making. Sometimes decisions are made but without consideration of gender. We are requesting the gender-responsive approach so that this cooperation can be possible. And I can say that As women's caucus, we say that cooperation can't be possible if it's not responsive implementation of cooperation can't be possible if women are not engaged, not as numbers you are here, but who take decisions. They are engaged in decision making, but also they are engaged along the process of cooperation. There is no cooperation without human rights, without gender responsive approach. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Marie-Salvatrice, for sharing these recommendations to ensure that the cooperation is really well and effectively ensured the women and gender responsive. Now I will go to the next segment of this press conference, which is key publications that the CBD Women's Caucus with other partners is leading. I will be starting with the the handbook which is the which was the official launch of the gender response and biodiversity data a practical handbook that was yesterday but today we are going to hear from our partner and also active member of the CBD women's caucus it's in collaboration with the international Institute of for Environment and Development IIED, developed it through the Advancing Gender Justice in Biodiversity Data and Policy Initiatives. I will give the floor to Karin Wont Perez from the IIED to share about this handbook and how this handbook is a key publication for women and how it is contributing in the implementation of the global biodiversity framework. Thank you. Over to you, Karen.

Thank you, Fatima. I'm very happy to be here to talk about the a little bit, very briefly about the process of the development of the handbook and finishing with three recommendations. You will receive a QR code. that will allow you to access and share the handbook with your networks. As Fatima just shared, this handbook was developed collectively. It is a collaboration between the CBD Women's Caucus and IIED. It's a practical handbook on gender-responsive biodiversity data. And the timing of the launch, which was yesterday, is completely intentional. As countries undertake the first global review of progress, the attention now is focused on what has been achieved, where gaps remain, and how to accelerate action towards 2030. But we know that the picture of progress we see depends on the evidence we have, and that evidence in turn depends on whose knowledge is recognized, whose actors shape that knowledge and whose experience is reflected and who has opportunity to contribute. And this is the central message that we want to bring here. We hear a lot about the whole of society approach to implementation as a key condition. And what we want to advocate is that a whole of society approach to evidence is also needed. And this is precisely what the handbook seeks to support. Our work began a year ago with a global assessment, which confirmed that women's organizations already generate valuable biodiversity evidence, but face barriers to having it recognized and used. And building off this evidence, we brought together more than 100 organizations and participants from different regions in a peer-to-peer learning journey. And the resulting handbook is the result of the generous contributions of those more than 100 participants from the whole of society approach. And in this handbook, you will see practical tools, methodologies, approaches, and lessons learned to help women organizations, civil society, governments, and practitioners to generate, analyze, and use gender-responsive biodiversity evidence. As parties discuss the proposed Yerevan pathway, there is an opportunity to translate the findings of the global review into action. It is our duty to ensure that what we found in the global review translates into implementation. Moving beyond strengthening sector-segregated data, of course, we need, but most importantly or complementary, is need to advance a whole of society approach to biodiversity evidence. And we bring three messages that are important and relevant. Parties should recognize women in all their diversity, not simply as sources of information, but as partners in defining what is measured, interpreting evidence, and assessing progress. Second, It is important for partners and development, parties and development partners to invest in the capacities and relationships. Relationships is key here that make meaningful collaboration possible. Those are the conditions for a whole of society approach. And our peer learning journey show that the value of sustained exchange across sectors and has given rise an emerging community of practice among different sectors on gender and biodiversity data. Third, it is key for parties to ensure that diverse evidence-informed decisions. And this requires stronger institutional partnerships between women's organizations, national statistical offices, and biodiversity authorities, connecting evidence generating on the ground to implementation, national reporting and review, and ultimately, policy decisions. And the handbook provides practical guidance to support these efforts, while the emerging community of practice offers a space to continue learning and collaborating. So here we invite you all to use the handbook, share it with your networks, and join our emerging global community of practice on gender and biodiversity data that will enable a whole of society approach to evidence. Finally, we invite parties, funders and development partners and the private sector to partner with us in advancing a whole of society approach to how biodiversity evidence is generated, recognized and used. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Karen, for sharing about this initiative. As mentioned, please, a ScandiQR code, my colleague here is already sharing some of the stickers where you can check the full report and please share it widely with your network. And now let's move to another key report. and initiative that has been led by the CBD Women's Caucus, which is the first women's biodiversity outlook. The official launch will be during the Women Forum on 27 October 2026. and it will uh it it is drawing uh uh case studies from diverse regions ecosystems and skills it documents how women are contributing to the implementation of the King Mont global biodiversity Network and with this uh we have uh ninal tati from India who is going to share with us about this uh first wbo as we we used to call it. Please, Minal, can you please share with us about this publication and how this key documents will be a great example of the knowledge and showing the the actions and the the work of the women from the grassroots. Thank you.

Thank you, Fatima. Um so, As a lead up to this COP, which is being talked about as a stock taking COP for the KMGBF, there were several processes that were also assessing gender in the implementation of the KMGBF. And two of these processes were the midterm review of the Gender Plan of Action, a decision that was also taken with the KMGBF and Target 23. And the other is what we are talking about, which is the global report of the implementation of the KMGBF. What we saw through these processes is that gender was woefully underrepresented. There was very little reporting, and there was very little understanding of how women are contributing to biodiversity conservation. And so it was really important for us as the Women's Caucus to actually ask women to send in their case studies, their stories of how they are contributing to the conservation of biodiversity all around the world. Unfortunately, we had very little time to do it, but within a month we received 71 cases. stories of women who are biodiversity actors contributing actively to saving our planet and our biodiversity. And we are so fortunate that they send these beautiful stories to us of how they're conserving, how they're restoring ecosystems, they're saving seeds, defending their territories. And we have this beautiful publication of 71 case studies. They're talking about the initiatives that they have taken with very little resources, very little help, very little support, looking at within their communities, also outside of their communities. These are women belonging to the diversity of engagements. They are rural women, pastoralists, farmers, women from uh cities scientists we even have uh somebody who's contributed uh she's sitting right here Laura who spoke about her experience as a delegate as a woman delegate within CBD so we have these diverse experiences beautiful stories of women which are not being showcased. And so this publication for us is really, really important. And we would really like to thank all of these women who've contributed to the women's first edition of the Women's Biodiversity Outlook. And this is a complementary evidence that we are bringing to this COP to show that women are actively contributing to biodiversity conservation and that their efforts need to be supported. And they've also spoken about how they need support. What is the real critical support that is needed for women to take this forward? So they are actors who are contributing to biodiversity conservation. So we're very happy to launch this. Please come on the 27th of October in the Gender Forum, and we will have this publication ready for dissemination. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Minal. Thank you so much, Minal, and to all our speakers. I want also to take your attention also to something complementary to what what Mina shared about the first Women's Biodiversity Outlook, which is the By Her campaign. This campaign, as you can see, it's reflecting the stories, our case studies from this outlook. We picked 10 case studies where we shared about them. The illustrations are handmade illustrations. And you can see here action verb that is reflecting the actions that the women lead in, including conserving, carrying, or protecting, or discovering. Here, there is a QR code where you can scan the QR code and direct you to the reports. The official launch will be during the Women Forum, and we will be also happy to welcome you for our other engagements including the gender day during the that will be tomorrow 21st of October at the action zone we are going to have many sessions and wonderful speakers please come and join us and please don't hesitate to contact us and to to join our communication channels CBD women's caucus and if you have any question about our our recommendations, our engagements, we will be happy to welcome your question. And with that, our press conference is coming to the end. We welcome your questions through the e-mail. Thank you so much.