Ms. Mwanahamisi Singano presented the UNFCCC’s newly named Belém Gender Action Plan, the implementing framework for the Enhanced Lima Work Programme, adopted at COP29 in 2024 (Decision 7/CP.29), with the Belém GAP itself adopted at COP30 in 2025. It’s the third iteration of the Lima Work Programme, running 2026–2034 with a mid-term review in 2029, and carries 27 activities and 98 deliverables across five priority areas. 

The gains are real: explicit recognition of structurally excluded groups, a mandate to develop guidelines protecting women environmental defenders, and gender- and age-disaggregated data built into the framework throughout. The losses are real too — foundational human rights language didn’t survive negotiation, and an intersectional lens was diluted into a reference to «multidimensional factors» rather than explicit recognition of gender-diverse people.

Most relevant to this room: Activity C.4 explicitly mandates cooperation between the Rio Conventions’ secretariats via the Joint Liaison Group and their gender focal points, including a dedicated in-session dialogue on Gender Day at each COP. Activity B.4 commits to regional and international workshops on the safety and protection of women environmental defenders. And Activity A.3 opens the door to national assessments on issues like health, violence against women, and care work in the context of gender and climate.

Journalists and civil society pressed the panel further. Ms. Josephine Matibbo challenged the near-total absence of disability from the conversation, noting that 1.6 billion people living with disabilities are rarely named alongside Indigenous people, local communities, women and youth in biodiversity texts  panelists conceded that while Target 22 of the Framework does reference persons with disabilities, the provision goes largely undiscussed and needs far more advocacy.

Ms. Christine Karan asked how citizen science and digital tools could help capture traditional knowledge without exposing it to misappropriation across borders — panelists acknowledged that how benefits should be shared in such transboundary cases remains genuinely unresolved under the Nagoya Protocol’s multilateral mechanism, though any documentation, they stressed, must rest on informed consent and return benefit to the originating community. Ms. Rita, from the Republic of Congo, asked panelists to name one concrete indicator Parties could adopt to track whether biodiversity action actually benefits women and girls.

Several questions converged on the same frustration: commitments exist on paper, but support rarely reaches the local level. Denise, of the Global Youth Biodiversity Network, asked what’s blocking predictable, gender-responsive support from reaching subnational governments; one participant pointed to Kenya’s National Gender and Equality Commission as a model other countries could replicate for civil-society oversight. Mr. Milan Juma, co-founder of Freshwater Guardians, asked panelists to name the single commitment Parties should leave the meeting with, while Mr. Abraham Juma, of the Women Reducing Adolescent Pregnancy organization in Mombasa County, wanted to know what practical entry points exist for grassroots groups implementing the Nagoya Protocol. Panelists pointed to programmes like the Global Environmental Facility’s Small Grants Programme and its Inclusive Conservation Initiative — now grown to one hundred million dollars — as real, if bureaucratically demanding, options, while acknowledging that an intermediary is nearly always involved given how these funds are negotiated between Parties.

Ms. Teshia Jn Baptiste, Senior Project Officer at CARICOM, offered a Caribbean small island developing states perspective via video. She highlighted that women across the Caribbean are scientists, researchers, farmers, natural resource managers, entrepreneurs, indigenous knowledge holders, community leaders and environmental advocates — highly visible in tertiary education, public sector leadership and international environmental negotiations including BBNJ and the CBD. The challenge is not the absence of capable women or of women’s leadership, but whether gender-responsive approaches are being applied deliberately and consistently across biodiversity planning, technical cooperation, financing, implementation and monitoring.

Ms. Jn Baptiste highlighted the CARICOM TSC Five-Year Work Plan as a concrete example of what is possible — with provisions for a regional roster of experts that could systematically include women scientists and indigenous women knowledge holders, a Caribbean-wide biodiversity data hub, regional biodiversity monitoring frameworks, and regional guidelines for gender-disaggregated data production. She also noted the CARICOM TSC Action Plan’s recognition of traditional knowledge, free, prior and informed consent, and engagement with Indigenous Peoples and local communities — creating opportunities to recognise indigenous women as partners in biodiversity governance. She was direct about what is still missing: dedicated gender expertise, weak monitoring frameworks, insufficient resources for gender analysis, and engagement with women’s organisations that is frequently ad hoc rather than systematic. Better data, she stressed, will lead to better policies and more effective interventions.

On Agenda Item 7, concerning the review of the Programme of Work on Protected Areas, Ms. Meenal Tatpati addressed one of the most contentious issues before the Convention: human rights in protected and conserved areas. She called for the renewed Programme of Work to reflect the human rights-based elements of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, particularly Target 22 and Target 3’s requirement of free, prior and informed consent in the creation or expansion of protected areas. Ms. Tatpati emphasized the need to recognize diverse governance systems, ensure the full and equal participation of women, youth, and other rights holders including Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and eliminate gender-based violence linked to protected area governance. She further urged Parties to direct dedicated finance to women, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities, and to build accountability mechanisms into the monitoring of protected area governance. «Women are key stakeholders in the way protected areas are governed across the world,» she said.

Speaking to the session’s territorial perspectives segment, Ms. Mega Ayu Lestari of the ICCA Consortium, drawing in part on her own family’s roots in Maluku, Indonesia laid out in detail the forms of knowledge that formal biodiversity reporting systems still fail to capture. She named the unpaid, unindexed labor of women who fetch water, preserve seeds, and maintain soil moisture; the technical expertise embedded in practices like gambir crafting in Sumatra and forest-based postpartum remedies; and the kinship systems — such as the Lorelindu philosophy of Mopahilolonga Katuvua, the harmony between people, nature, and the divine that resist conventional economic valuation altogether.

Ms. Mega Ayu Lestari also highlighted a hopeful development: ICCA’s new memorandum of understanding with Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment, enabling data-sharing with the national CBD focal point on the basis of free, prior and informed consent and community data sovereignty. She was equally candid about the barriers that remain — patriarchal bias, consultation spaces that leave little room for women to speak freely, and a global reality in which women shoulder over 75 percent of unpaid care labor. Her call was for governments to recognize customary and scientific knowledge as equally valid, and to invest directly in the collective, women-led initiatives already doing this work on the ground.

For the CBD Women’s Caucus, participation in the meeting reinforced the importance of ensuring that feminist perspectives remain embedded within broader biodiversity debates. As preparations continue towards COP17, the Caucus remains committed to working alongside allies to advance biodiversity governance that is equitable, rights-based and centred on the knowledge, leadership and lived experiences of  Indigenous Peoples and local communities, Women  and youth 

Ms. Marina was clear that this is not a peripheral initiative for Guatemala, but a strategic and foundational commitment one meant to ensure that decision-making no longer leaves behind the very people most engaged in biodiversity management. She closed with a call for stronger inter-institutional articulation, so that national systems genuinely reflect the collective vision the KM-GBF sets out.