Gender Partnership members at the Seventh GEF Assembly. Photo credit: Global Environment Facility
The GEF Gender Partnership, established by the Global Environment Facility in 2016, has been instrumental in solidifying the foundations for advancing gender equality through and across the projects and programs we fund. For International Women’s Day, we are highlighting the unique perspectives of selected members of this Partnership, which includes representatives from each of the GEF’s 18 implementing agencies as well as the international environmental conventions it serves.
Maude Veyret-Picot
Technical Officer – Regional Lead for Africa and the Near East, GEF Coordination Unit
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
The GEF Gender Partnership is well-positioned to ensure that the Global Environment Facility’s portfolio of projects is gender-transformative and contributes to women’s empowerment. To support the GGP, there is a need for a systematic collection and codification of evidence, best practices and lessons learned, and develop solid metrics to measure gender equality results. One way to kickstart such an effort is through a GEF-funded global project aimed at supporting the implementation of the gender equality objectives and targets of the Rio Conventions, and deliver global environmental benefits consistent with GEF priorities. FAO stands ready to be at the forefront of such an effort, in collaboration with the GGP.
Helio Hara
Communication, Marketing, and Gender Lead
Brazilian Biodiversity Fund (FUNBIO)
Diversity contributes to a more dynamic, healthy, and balanced planet. By providing a space for conveying messages, voices, and ideas from different experiences, the GEF Gender Partnership has become for me a hub for inspiration and action. In the next few months, I do hope we can work on a storytelling workshop to help the GEF Gender Partnership showcase powerful stories of women's empowerment across the world, and in major conferences such as the three Rio Conventions’ Conferences of the Parties, which are happening back-to-back this year.
Ian Kissoon
Senior Director
Juliana Rios-Amaya
Manager, Environmental and Social Management Framework
Conservation International (CI-GEF and GCF Agencies)
The GEF Gender Partnership provides key opportunities to exchange knowledge and experiences on how to advance gender-responsive actions into Global Environment Facility-funded projects. It is also a space in which GEF agencies get to exchange ideas and identify common needs, not only with other agencies, but also with civil society representatives. Going forward, we really want to contribute actively to creating space, foremost, among Integrated Programs teams, that will facilitate exchange of experiences, lessons, and challenges in advancing gender equality and in making real improvements in women’s lived realities on the ground.
Jackie Siles
Senior Gender Program Manager, Human Rights in Conservation Team
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
IUCN is proud to be a member of the GEF Gender Partnership and looks forward to seeing the community be more intentional in using an intersectional approach and help uncover and address some of the most pressing human rights challenges that we face as we deliver on global environmental benefits in communities that we serve. IUCN is excited to partner with the GEF Gender Partnership as it develops gender and environmental programming tools with and for Indigenous Peoples and local communities - tools and guidance that also develop capacities to improve gender-based violence prevention, response, and mitigation. All of these to help improve safeguards for environmental initiatives and strengthen human rights.
