Women’s Biodiversity Outlook – 2026

Women are already shaping biodiversity futures

Across territories, ecosystems and communities, women are conserving and restoring biodiversity, sustaining food and seed systems, generating and transmitting knowledge, governing natural resources, and building collective initiatives that connect ecological regeneration with rights, livelihoods and wellbeing.

Yet much of this action remains insufficiently recognised, resourced and reflected in the systems through which biodiversity progress is measured and assessed.

The Women’s Biodiversity Outlook (WBO), a flagship publication of the CBD Women’s Caucus, brings these contributions into focus.

Drawing on 71 case studies from diverse regions, ecosystems and scales, its first edition examines how women are advancing implementation of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF), the conditions that enable or constrain their action, and what must change to advance gender-just biodiversity futures.

What the Outlook reveals

Women are advancing biodiversity action across the Global Biodiversity Framework.

From restoring ecosystems and conserving species to transforming food systems, generating biodiversity evidence and strengthening territorial governance, women’s initiatives contribute to multiple biodiversity targets simultaneously.

Women’s action is sustained through collective organisation, knowledge and agency, often despite structural barriers.

Limited access to finance, insecure land and resource rights, exclusion from decision-making, discriminatory norms and unpaid care responsibilities continue to constrain initiatives that are already delivering biodiversity outcomes.

Recognising women’s contributions is necessary, but recognition alone is not transformation.

The evidence points to the need to change how biodiversity is governed, financed, monitored and assessed, ensuring that women and their organisations have the rights, resources and institutional support to shape its future.

Five transformative shifts for gender-just biodiversity futures

The first Outlook identifies five interconnected shifts needed to advance biodiversity action towards 2030 and beyond:

1. Governance rooted in care, rights and collective responsibility.

Transform governance to uphold rights, strengthen collective institutions and ensure equitable outcomes.

2. Resources that sustain agency, autonomy and action.

Provide accessible, flexible and sustained finance and other resources that enable women to determine priorities and sustain their initiatives.

3. Evidence systems shaped by those who know and care for biodiversity.

Recognise women and communities as knowledge holders, researchers, monitors and producers of biodiversity evidence.

4. Economies that sustain biodiversity, livelihoods and wellbeing.

Support economic systems in which ecological regeneration, viable livelihoods and community wellbeing reinforce one another.

5. Biodiversity futures built through collective agency.

Strengthen women’s organisations, community institutions, networks and alliances as essential foundations for lasting change.