Environment

Environmental issues are cross-sectional issues, and environmental issues are today issues of the consumer behaviour of women and men, especially in industrialised nations. What has become clear since the Rio environmental conference in 1992 is that environmental contamination results from patterns of production and consumption.

In AGENDA 21, in the international community of nations has undertaken to deal in a sustained way with the natural resources of our environment. Chapter 24 of the AGENDA stresses the joint role of women in the utilisation of ecological systems and protecting the environment at national and international level. Sustained and just development of the natural bases of life should go hand in hand with the creation of gender justice in global, national and regional action plans.
Serious discrimination against women exists especially in access to land, drinking water, education and other resources. Sustained development and gender equality cannot be separated, and this includes the necessity to improve the protection of children and their opportunities for development.

The German Federal Environmental Office is required under Chapter 24 of AGENDA 21 to undertake the task of integrating gender aspects into scientific and academic practice, scientific support for environmental policy and media work, the basis of all of which is the guiding principle of sustainability. Women and men have not participated to the same extent and in the same way in the origination of environmental problems. They are affected in different ways by the impact of environmental policy measures. Women’s experience, skills and aims are different from those of men. Women must be seen and heard more and enabled to bring their independent competence and voice more to bear in processes for deciding and shaping environmental policy.


There are several gender aspects which are often important for environmental policy.