“We’re fighting for our lands, for our water, for our lives,” said an indigenous woman from Colombia, describing her work as an environmental defender. She spoke at a December 2019 workshop on Gender, Peace and the Environment held in Bogotá, Colombia, that brought together social, environmental, and legal scholars and practitioners—including indigenous women—to discuss women, peace, and security issues.

Indigenous women and girls are making significant contributions to the parallel Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) global agendas. With their traditional knowledge of natural resource management, they can offer valuable insights on how to cope with the negative impacts of climate change. Yet, they are often the targets of violence.

Women, Peace, and Security on the Global Agenda

Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), which the Security Council adopted in 2000, was the first resolution to link women’s experiences of conflict to international peace and security. Seven related resolutions have been adopted since then. Among them, Resolution 2242 (2015) is particularly relevant, given that it was the first to recognize that climate change connects with the WPS framework.

Another key document is a joint UN report,  Women and Natural Resources: Unlocking the Peacebuilding Potential (2013). It views women’s access to natural resources as a key component of peacebuilding and conflict prevention. The 2016 UN Women report, Indigenous Women & The Women, Peace and Security Agenda, also examined these linkages. Subsequent related efforts include the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s 2017 adoption of a global Gender Action Plan (GAP), which seeks to achieve gender-responsive climate policy and action.

The role of young women and men in peace, security and environmental issues has also gained higher visibility in recent years.  Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) adopted in 2015 was the first international policy framework to recognize young people’s positive role in this field. It was followed by Resolution 2419 (2018), which stressed the need to consider young people’s views in security‑related discussions.

Several subsequent reports expand the global youth, peace, and security agenda. These include: Impacts of Climate Change on Youth, Peace and Security (2017), The Missing Peace: Independent Progress Study on Youth, Peace and Security (2018), and Young Women in Peace and Security: At the Intersection of the YPS and WPS Agendas (2018).

Environmental Defenders at Risk

The recent workshop on Gender, Peace and the Environment convened by the London School of Economics’ Centre for Women, Peace and Security and the University of Rosario’s Law School in Bogotá, Colombia, brought all of these interrelated perspectives together. Among other conclusions, the workshop acknowledged that indigenous women and girls are vital to more effective climate solutions, including building climate resilience in communities affected by violent conflict. However, their work is becoming increasingly fraught with danger. Criminal gangs, paramilitary groups, and private security forces from industries like mining, logging, dam construction, and agribusiness often target these indigenous environmental and human rights activists.

As Erika Weinthal highlighted in a recent post, although many countries have moved from conflict to peacebuilding, the world has not become safer for environmental defenders. Indigenous women are particularly vulnerable to this type of violence. Their participation in environmental activism is often seen as breaking both class and gender social norms.

In Colombia’s Cauca Valley, indigenous communities are on the frontline of the fight against violence (drug gangs, riot police) and environmental degradation (deforestation and climate change impacting water sources). The Nasa are the largest and most organized of the 20 indigenous groups in the Valley. Nasa people see their struggle as both environmental and spiritual. They fight the destruction of sacred sites in their territory, particularly lakes, wetlands and waterfalls. They have often paid for their efforts with their lives. In 2019 alone, 36 indigenous Nasa were reportedly murdered.

Another emblematic case in the Americas involves Berta Cáceres, an indigenous Lenca woman who was murdered in Honduras in 2016. As a student-activist, Berta co-founded the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) in 1993. Honduras is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in Central America. Water governance is a primary concern. Berta fought to stop the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River, which is part of the sacred ancestral territory of the Lenca indigenous community. 

Berta’s daughter, Bertha Zúniga Cáceres, has carried on her mother’s work leading COPINH. Addressing the 60th UN Commission on the Status of Women (UN CSW60) in New York only days after her mother’s death, Bertha denounced human and environmental rights violations against the Lenca and called for an immediate halt to the dam project. In 2017, Bertha survived an assassination attempt. Honduras is the deadliest country in the world for environmental activism, according to a Global Witness report. 

In 2018, partly in response to the death of Berta Cáceres, 24 Latin American and Caribbean countries signed a legally binding pact to protect the rights of environmental defenders. On December 2, 2019, seven men found guilty of killing Berta Cáceres were sentenced to between 30 and 50 years. Yet, more work is required to ensure that indigenous people not only are not assaulted for defending their rights but are not forced to fight for them in the first place.

Reasons for Hope

London School of Economic’s Keina Yoshida, one of the participants in the workshop on Gender, Peace and the Environment, reminded us of the “gender power structures, which result in violence against environmental, indigenous and women’s rights defenders such as Berta Cáceres.” Yet, as Ambassador Melanne Verveer notes in her Foreword to the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security’s report on Women and Climate Change, women are contributing to both adaptation and mitigation efforts and are creating innovative and localized solutions to build resilient communities. There is a reason for hope.