Gender Goals Lag in Global Biodiversity Framework Implementation

The Missing Piece in Global Biodiversity Conservation 🌍

As the world races to protect ecosystems and reverse biodiversity loss, a critical dimension of this effort remains largely overlooked: gender equality. Despite ambitious international commitments, only one-quarter of nations have meaningfully integrated gender considerations into their biodiversity strategies. This gap represents far more than a statistical shortfall—it threatens to undermine the entire conservation movement by excluding half the global population from decision-making processes that directly affect their lives and livelihoods.

The challenge became starkly apparent at the 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP17), held in Yerevan from October 19-30, 2026. Governments convened to assess progress toward the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), the landmark roadmap adopted in 2022 to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. While the framework itself contains explicit gender commitments, the implementation reality tells a different story.

Understanding the Gender-Biodiversity Connection 💚

The relationship between gender equality and successful biodiversity conservation is neither coincidental nor marginal. Women constitute the backbone of natural resource management in many communities, yet their voices remain systematically excluded from the policy tables where conservation decisions are made.

In developing nations particularly, women manage agricultural lands, collect forest resources, and maintain traditional ecological knowledge passed down through generations. Their understanding of local ecosystems—which species thrive together, how seasons shift, which practices sustain productivity—represents invaluable scientific knowledge. Yet biodiversity policies frequently overlook this expertise in favor of external scientific approaches.

The core issue is straightforward but profound: conservation cannot succeed if it ignores or marginalizes the people most directly engaged with nature daily.

The KMGBF's Gender Targets: Ambition Meets Reality 📋

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework contains 23 targets for 2030, with gender equality explicitly addressed in two critical targets:

Target 23 mandates gender-responsive implementation throughout the framework, recognizing women's and girls' equal opportunities to contribute to conservation objectives. It specifically emphasizes equal rights and access to land, natural resources, and meaningful participation in biodiversity decision-making.

Target 22 reinforces this commitment by calling for inclusive, equitable, and gender-responsive participation. It also recognizes the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women, girls, youth, and persons with disabilities.

However, gender relevance extends far beyond these two targets. Decisions about protected areas reshape land access. Agricultural policies influence women's work and income. Ecosystem restoration projects determine who benefits from environmental improvements. Without gender-responsive approaches embedded throughout implementation, these decisions risk perpetuating existing inequalities.

The Implementation Gap: Where Commitments Falter 🔍

The assessment conducted by the CBD revealed a sobering reality: approximately 75 percent of countries have not adequately integrated gender considerations into their national biodiversity strategies. This implementation gap suggests that while international frameworks contain strong language about gender equality, translating those commitments into concrete national action remains profoundly challenging.

Meaningful gender integration requires more than symbolic inclusion. It demands:

• Genuine decision-making power for women in conservation planning and resource allocation
• Substantive participation that shapes priorities, not merely attendance at meetings
• Recognition of diverse experiences acknowledging that women's situations vary by location, livelihood, age, disability status, and social position
• Institutional commitment through dedicated budgets, staffing, and accountability mechanisms

Many conservation initiatives fall short on these dimensions. A reforestation project might recruit women to plant seedlings while excluding them from decisions about which species to restore or how harvesting benefits will be distributed. Protected area designations might include women representatives without granting them influence over management strategies. These gaps between participation and power represent a critical blind spot in global biodiversity efforts.

Bhutan's Leadership Model: Bridging the Gap 🏔️

Bhutan demonstrates how countries can meaningfully advance gender-responsive biodiversity conservation. The nation's National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) 2025 includes a dedicated national target: by 2030, ensure gender equality and implement gender-responsive approaches across all biodiversity actions.

This commitment reflects Bhutan's recognition of a fundamental reality within its own context. Women comprise 73.6 percent of the rural workforce and 52.5 percent of the agricultural workforce, yet remain significantly underrepresented in biodiversity governance structures. This contradiction—women's substantial contribution to land management paired with their exclusion from decision-making—mirrors patterns observed globally.

Bhutan's NBSAP establishes practical implementation steps:

1. Conducting gender analyses of existing biodiversity conservation programs
2. Developing integrated gender and biodiversity action plans
3. Implementing these plans with adequate resources and monitoring
4. Assessing results and adjusting approaches based on evidence

This systematic approach transforms gender from a rhetorical commitment into an operational framework with measurable outcomes. By institutionalizing gender analysis at each stage of conservation planning and implementation, Bhutan creates accountability mechanisms that ensure gender considerations shape decisions rather than merely appearing in policy documents.

The Role of Advocacy and Global Networks 🤝

Organizations like Women4Biodiversity play essential roles in bridging the gap between international frameworks and ground-level implementation. By connecting global policy advocacy with community-based initiatives, these networks demonstrate how women's participation in restoration work and resource management can be strengthened.

Advocacy organizations contribute by:

• Strengthening policy language to explicitly protect women's rights and participation
• Supporting community initiatives that amplify women's voices in conservation decisions
• Documenting evidence of how gender-responsive approaches improve conservation outcomes
• Building capacity within communities and institutions to implement gender-responsive strategies
• Creating accountability mechanisms that track progress and identify gaps

Effective advocacy recognizes that women are not a monolithic group. Their needs, priorities, and capacities differ based on location, livelihood type, age, disability status, and social standing. Gender-responsive biodiversity policy therefore requires nuanced understanding of these differences rather than one-size-fits-all approaches.

Connecting Conservation to Community Livelihoods 🌱

The intersection of gender equality and biodiversity conservation becomes most apparent when considering community livelihoods. In many regions, biodiversity-rich landscapes directly support people's economic survival. Agricultural productivity, forest resource availability, water security, and medicinal plant access all depend on healthy ecosystems.

Women's roles in maintaining these systems are substantial yet frequently undervalued. They often:

• Manage household food production and nutrition security
• Collect and process forest products for household use and income
• Maintain traditional agricultural practices that sustain biodiversity
• Transmit ecological knowledge across generations
• Organize community resource management initiatives

When conservation policies fail to incorporate gender perspectives, they risk disrupting these livelihood systems without providing adequate alternatives. Protected areas might restrict women's access to forest products without considering their economic dependence on those resources. Agricultural policies might promote practices incompatible with women's traditional knowledge systems. Restoration projects might prioritize species that don't align with community food security needs.

The Broader CBD Framework and Gender Equality 🎯

The Convention on Biological Diversity's three core objectives—conservation, sustainable use, and equitable benefit-sharing from genetic resources—all have gender dimensions. Gender equality matters across all three objectives, not just as a standalone concern.

Conservation requires understanding who depends on specific ecosystems and ensuring their participation in protection decisions. Sustainable use demands recognizing women's roles in resource management and incorporating their knowledge into sustainability frameworks. Equitable benefit-sharing necessitates ensuring women receive fair returns from conservation initiatives and genetic resource commercialization.

This interconnected understanding represents a fundamental shift from viewing gender as a peripheral concern to recognizing it as central to conservation effectiveness. When women participate meaningfully in conservation decisions, they bring knowledge, priorities, and perspectives that improve outcomes. When they're excluded, conservation efforts risk being incomplete, ineffective, or even counterproductive.

Moving From Recognition to Implementation 📊

The gap between international recognition and national implementation remains substantial. While the KMGBF provides clear direction, translating that direction into policies, budgets, and on-the-ground action requires sustained commitment from national governments.

Successful implementation requires:

• Dedicated funding for gender analysis, capacity building, and monitoring
• Institutional structures that embed gender considerations in decision-making processes
• Training and support for conservation professionals to implement gender-responsive approaches
• Community engagement that genuinely empowers local women's participation
• Regular assessment of progress with transparent reporting on outcomes
• Adaptation based on evidence about what works in specific contexts

Countries like Bhutan that have incorporated gender targets into their national biodiversity strategies demonstrate this commitment. However, such examples remain exceptions rather than the norm, highlighting the scale of the implementation challenge.

The Path Forward: Priorities for COP17 and Beyond 🚀

As governments reviewed progress at COP17, several priorities emerged for accelerating gender integration in biodiversity conservation:

First, countries must move beyond counting women's participation toward measuring women's influence and decision-making power. This requires developing new metrics that capture meaningful inclusion rather than mere attendance.

Second, national governments must allocate specific budgets for gender analysis and implementation, ensuring that gender considerations are not competing with other priorities for scarce resources.

Third, capacity-building initiatives must support conservation professionals in understanding and implementing gender-responsive approaches within their specific contexts.

Fourth, community-based organizations and women's groups must be recognized as essential partners in biodiversity conservation, with funding and decision-making power commensurate with their roles.

Fifth, monitoring and accountability systems must track gender-related outcomes alongside traditional biodiversity metrics, creating visibility for progress and gaps.

Conclusion: Gender Equality as Conservation Strategy 💫

The lag in gender integration across global biodiversity efforts represents both a significant challenge and an enormous opportunity. The challenge is clear: most countries have not yet meaningfully incorporated gender considerations into their conservation strategies, leaving women's knowledge, rights, and leadership at risk of being overlooked.

The opportunity is equally compelling: by centering gender equality in biodiversity conservation, countries can tap into women's substantial knowledge and commitment while advancing social justice alongside environmental protection. Successful conservation in the coming years will require recognizing that protecting nature and protecting women's rights are inseparable goals.

Bhutan's example demonstrates that this integration is achievable when countries make explicit commitments, establish institutional mechanisms, and allocate resources. As the world works toward the 2030 biodiversity targets, scaling up such approaches from exceptional cases to standard practice remains the critical challenge. The next phase of global biodiversity conservation must ensure that women are not just present at the table—they must help shape what's on it.