SEMARNAT Advances Gender-Focused Environmental Policy

The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) and the Ministry of Women signed a cooperation agreement today to integrate a gender perspective into environmental policies, programs, and actions; strengthen women’s participation in decision-making; and improve protection mechanisms for women land and environmental defenders.

Alicia Bárcena, Minister, SEMARNAT, stated that this alliance marks a fundamental step toward ensuring that environmental policies are built on substantive equality and social justice. “Gender-based violence is unacceptable, and today we are in the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence because we want to achieve more just and equal societies,” she said.

The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is an international campaign held every year. It begins on Nov. 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and ends on Dec. 10, Human Rights Day. The campaign was launched by activists during the founding of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership in 1991. It is a strategy implemented by individuals and organizations around the world to demand the prevention and elimination of violence against women and girls.

Bárcena emphasized that the agreement is especially meaningful because women defend the land, serve as major protectors of forests, safeguard water, resist extractivist projects, and face threats, harassment, criminalization, and violence—violence that has even taken their lives.

In this regard, she highlighted that protecting environmental women defenders is a priority for the Government of Mexico, and that the agreement reinforces compliance with the Escazú Agreement by recognizing the fundamental role of those who safeguard natural resources. “There can be no social justice without environmental justice and without gender equality,” Bárcena said.

She also praised the work of the Ministry of Women in exposing inequalities and strengthening substantive equality across all agencies of the Federal Public Administration. “Nothing about us without us. That is a slogan that will always accompany me, because the future will be feminist or it will not be,” she added.

Citlalli Hernández, Minister, Ministry of Women, stressed that this agreement fulfills President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo’s mandate to adopt a cross-cutting vision. “Environmental issues are women’s issues; economic, cultural, and agricultural issues—all state matters—are matters that require the participation of women,” she said.

She added that women take ownership of the defense of territory, the environment, ancestral knowledge, forest stewardship, and many other actions that must be made visible, recognized, and protected.

Among the immediate commitments SEMARNAT will undertake to comply with the agreement are: creating and strengthening specific protection mechanisms for women environmental defenders in coordination with the Ministry of the Interior; integrating sex-disaggregated data into institutional statistics and reports; establishing clear protocols to prevent and sanction sexual and workplace harassment; and promoting training programs and knowledge exchanges.