Men and women relate to the environment in different ways, and environmental changes have different impacts on their lives. Women play a critical role in sustaining communities and managing natural resources, but their contributions are often undervalued and neglected.

Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls, and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviors, and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl, or boy, as well as relationships with each other [1]. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time. The Gender Cluster works to advance gender and social equality at the nexus of environment, development, and sustainability. Women and girls experience the greatest impacts of climate change, which amplifies existing gender inequalities and poses unique threats to their livelihoods, health, and safety. Environmental change has specific, differentiated impacts on women and girls or on men and boys [2]. Using a gender-specific approach to examine these complex linkages (which may be referred to as the “gender-and-environment nexus”) is therefore an appropriate way to investigate the dynamic relationships between environmental change and gender equality, as well as between impacts on sustainability and the realization of women’s rights and empowerment. Gender mainstreaming is a process that ensures that women and men have equal access to opportunities, rewards, and society's valued resources. Nigeria signed and ratified, without reservations, practically all international and regional instruments designed to guarantee the human rights of every citizen. However, certain human-made socio-cultural factors constrain the process and make it an arduous task in Nigeria. Mainstreaming gender is a strategy that should be everybody’s business because it is in everyone’s interest. Thus, gender mainstreaming is clearly an amoral imperative meant to promote prosperity and well-being for all. It is not an option for a few men in power” (Orisaremi 2022).

Climate change is a planetary phenomenon that will impact all people, but its effects are being shaped by pervasive and entrenched gender inequality. Heat waves, droughts, rising sea levels, and extreme storms disproportionately affect women. Climate change is not gender-neutral. It affects men and women differently, with profound adverse effects on women due to existing social inequalities. Because climate change exacerbates these inequalities, it is therefore the vulnerable groups within societies that suffer the most from its negative impacts. The energy challenge in Nigeria overlaps with issues such as gender and poverty. The gendered division of labor usually means that women are responsible for most domestic tasks, and subsequently, women and children are worst affected by the health impacts of smoke inhalation with firewood or charcoal for cooking [3]. With 69 percent of households in Nigeria using solid fuels as their primary source of domestic energy for cooking, women and children are at a particularly high risk of disease from exposure to household air pollution (World Health Organization).

Although the women would prefer safer and cleaner energy, it might still be sometime before there is a deliberate and permanent move towards that reality. Providing renewable and clean means of cooking for rural and urban women will help reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere and improve health. The gender dimension of climate change and the transition towards a low-carbon economy must be highlighted. The impacts of climate change are different for women and men, with women likely to bear the more significant burden of poverty and unfair participation. Women's voices must be heard, and their priorities must be supported as part of this transition.

Significantly, the effects of climate change on human society and the ability to mitigate and adapt to them are impacted by social factors such as gender. Gender-sensitive assessments and gender-responsive interventions have the potential to enhance health and provide more effective climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Main policy vectors to leverage the gender-environment nexus

Gender equity is hinged on mutual respect, identification, and encouragement of the potentials of everyone, and equal opportunities given to each person irrespective of gender for the realization of those potentials, which should be harnessed for sustainable development in the country. Gender roles were clear, though in Nigeria, being a patriarchal society, women were rated lower than men, so as such, they should be seen and not heard. The woman was truly marginalized, and even to date, in Igboland, a woman cannot talk in the council of elders, even in matters that threaten her being. Nigerian women scholars have not been left out, as they have been vibrant in their postulations of concepts that they each believe best express their ideals of gender equality. One thing that is worthy of note in the Nigerian women's perspective on feminism is that they obtrusively or inadvertently preach complementary relationships between the genders.

These women understand that there are gender roles based on cultural background but advocate the emancipation and empowerment of women to varying degrees. Education is a human right that should be bestowed on human beings exclusively by reason of being human [4-7]. Consequently, one finds that uneducated and poor women in the rural community suffer as much subordination as educated and rich women in the urban center." Another worrisome aspect of this cultural marginalization of women in Nigeria, as observed earlier, is its deep-rooted nature in the Nigerian system [8]. Increasing female participation in the work force and the development of female human capital will not only help to reduce poverty at the household level, but it will also radically enhance national security. [9] Rightly observed that this subordination of women by our culture knows no boundaries or barriers and is not dependent on the “social, educational, or economic status of the Nigerian women, [10,11] opines that gender constitutes one of the determinants of how poverty is experienced and of wealth creation. Rights and entitlements of men and women to opportunities, resources, and decision-making are based more on socio-cultural norms than on human rights or the respective development capabilities of men and women.

Figure 2: Graphical notation of Nigerian women in various sectors.

Source: Field survey 2015.

Figure 3: Graphical notation on reasons why women should not be equal with men.

Source: Field survey 2015

Nigerian women in various sectors

Civil Servants 45%

Business Sector 40%

Political Sectors 25%

Military 30%

Full house wives 10%

Reasons why women should not be equal with men

Cultural belief 60%

Religious belief 50%

Law and Custom 15%

Pride and neglect of duty and responsibility 55%

Religious belief why there can’t be gender equality

Christian Male 60%

Christian Female 40%

Muslim Male 95%

Muslim Female 5%

Women’s Empowerment in Biodiversity

The 2030 Agenda recognizes that sustainable development will only be possible if all women and girls are empowered to have control over and make decisions about all aspects of their lives, and barriers to their equality are eliminated. To enhance women's meaningful participation in conservation, practitioners must recognize and build upon women's influence and social networks to facilitate knowledge exchange and problem solving across the wider community. Simultaneously, they are fostered by social and institutional organizations and norms that are congruent with and supportive of these biocultural goals [12, Toledo & Barrera-Bassols, 2008]. Rural women who do not own land face limitations in deciding how to manage it, which is a disadvantage in terms of short- and long-term planning for more biodiverse and climate-resilient agriculture. Because women conceive ecosystems and landscapes differently than men (due to their relationship with them through their productive and care activities), they are more inclined to implement biodiverse production systems [13]. Based on complex, biodiverse, and locally adapted designs, indigenous peoples have developed sophisticated knowledge systems and domesticated and protected biological diversity [14]. Such traditional knowledge is one of the most important pillars of agroecological practice [15]. Among men and women in the region, biodiversity is closely connected to development, access to resources, income-generating activities, food, and essential household products. From this perspective, the disciplines of biodiversity and gender overlap and are indeed intrinsically linked.

Counselling on Women’s Empowerment and Biodiversity

Educated women tend to have smaller families and enjoy a higher standard of living. They are more likely to send their children to school, creating a circle of education and poverty reduction (Hill and King, 1995); thus, the women, the family, and society are their beneficiaries of women's education. On the contrary, Umezulike (2012) emphasizes that some parents see giving their daughters too much education as a waste because the girl would marry and become more useful to their husbands and their relations. Counseling this group of persons will also reduce the crime rate and assist professional counseling programs in the creation of curricula and educational experiences. Further, the female child could get pregnant while in school, thereby ending her education and thereby wasting the parents’ resources.

The counselor places these opposing views on a balance to assess the advantages and disadvantages. He goes on to counsel the parent on the immense benefits to be derived from women’s education, despite all odds. Not only this, the counselor emphasizes the serious disadvantages of early marriage and the attendant untold suffering for the girl child, as well as the strong need for a child to have a solid economic future. The woman is being empowered for poverty alleviation through vocational and technical education where she is trained on commercial ventures, computer skills, etc. that she can use to keep herself gainfully self-employed to combat unemployment and poverty. Relevant literature shows that guidance and counseling can assist women entrepreneurs to improve their performance in their businesses. The counselor stresses the need for women not to sit at home and wait for their husbands to bring home the pay packet. They should also be usefully engaged in activities that will help develop their homes. A counselor always discourages discrimination on the basis of gender and advocates equal opportunities for all. The constitution of Nigeria is explicit on fundamental rights and is against gender discrimination. Counseling services must be institutionalized for all constituents; regular faculty doubling up as counselors, part-time arrangements, and so on, which are widely prevalent, must be eschewed in favor of well-trained full-time counselors [4].

The obstacles to making the many connections among gender, climate change, and security are both analytical and political. In analytical terms, all of these issue areas-gender inequalities, climate change developments, and security problems-are multidimensional and complex. Data problems add to the challenge. Bringing any two of these issues together for an interactive analysis compounds the degree of difficulty. In all of this, it is essential to remember that gender is not just about the vulnerabilities of women but also about the proclivities of men. Much more attention needs to be paid to how ideas about masculinity and male behavior shape gender relations, the environment, and security problems. Gender inequalities, climate change problems, and violent conflicts are all man-made disasters-literally. The analysis of the gender-environment nexus highlights the need for an integrated approach to gender equality and sustainability that, on the one hand, takes into account the specific needs, preferences, and well-being of women and, on the other hand, ensures their involvement in decision-making.

Recommendation

The Gender Plan of Action recommends a number of actions be taken by the Convention on Biological Diversity in the realm of gender equality and biodiversity. There are some specific conditions that may prevent the comprehensive mainstreaming of gender equality in the Convention on Biological Diversity and other conditions that would facilitate the success of gender mainstreaming. Both sets of conditions are outlined below to inform the implementation of the present plan of action.

• Design gender-responsive digital policies.
• Promote access to technology and skills.
• Gender preconceptions and cultural norms.
• Fight against cyber violence against women and girls.
• More women into the technology sector.

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