Kate Wilkinson Cross

This chapter examines the political Outcome Document 'The Future We Want', adopted at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development 2012, and its incorporation of the green economy. This is because the preparatory process for the UNCSD, the conference itself and the resulting Outcome Document have received mixed reactions, particularly from civil society activists such as ecofeminists and women’s nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) with a focus on environment/development associations. By examining the Outcome Document, I will explain the extent to which this text and the incorporated aims, affirmations and objectives may have moved the concept of sustainable development and the introduction of the green economy beyond the dominant social paradigm that has been roundly criticised by feminists for helping to maintain gender inequality .

In the final chapter of this anthology, I argue that ecofeminism has the potential to reveal exploitative beliefs, values and assumptions that inform international environmental law (IEL). Drawing from my research on the representation of the environment in IEL, I outline the critical strengths of ecofeminist perspectives as an analytical framework through which to examine the assumptions that inform international responses to environmental degradation (Wilkinson Cross 2016). By doing so, I demonstrate how ecofeminist theories can offer a more grounded and encompassing perspective for the analysis of environmental law and governance.

Ecofeminists have long exposed the gendered character of human progress and its destructive impact on social and environmental commons. They contend that mainstream strategies responding to environmental crises reaffirm the subordination of women and non-human nature, while also reinforcing the power structures that sustain a white, heteronormative and masculine hegemony. While there is significant ecofeminist scholarship in gender and environment studies, there is little research to date which deconstructs international environmental law in order to explore the extent to which it maintains, reinforces or transforms understandings about human/non-human connections and their gendered nature. This article contributes to broader ecofeminist scholarship by synthesising Karen Warren’s ecofeminist ethics into an analytical framework through which to analyse international environmental law. The article develops an original analysis of how transformational international legal regimes have been in shaping the international community’s view of the environment and human/non-human interconnections. Comparing the often-ignored UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) 1994, as well as the more (in)famous UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 1992, the author evaluates to what extent these regimes engage with and respond to the underlying institutional, structural, social, and conceptual frameworks that contribute to the continued degradation of the environment. The author concludes that while these regimes have transformative potential, they both continue to affirm an ideological perspective that disembeds humanity from the environment, while at the same time commodifying nature in order to protect it.

ABSTRACT Using an ecofeminist critical analysis, this paper examines the extent to which two forest related ‘payments for ecosystem services’ (PES) schemes maintain a mainstream anti-nature and exploitative conceptualization of human/nature relationships. It does so by integrating various ecofeminist themes to analyse the two PES schemes and to assess the extent to which they can protect women and nature while marketizing and commodifying the environment. The author examines the justifications for integrating PES into a green economy, including the proposed benefits resulting from the implementation of PES, and safeguards ensuring the inclusion and participation of local communities. The author concludes that an ecofeminist examination highlights the inherently exploitative nature of PES and its continuation of the currently exploitative free market paradigm.

This paper critiques three key environmental principles, including the ‘no harm’ principle, permanent sovereignty over natural resources, and sustainable development and the liberal ideology that informs them. These principles form the normative core of global responses to environmental problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental harms. Some of these principles have proven to be very contentious because of their content and the effect on the obligations of States.
This paper starts from the view that political ideologies inform the content and meaning of environmental principles. It will examine the ideologies informing environmental principles from an ecofeminist perspective. Ecofeminism offers a nuanced and rigorous critique of the ideologies informing IEL. This is because it explores the nature of the connections between the domination of women and nature. It offers a strong critique of the exploitative and gendered conceptual frameworks which underpin the dominant and rational discourses in western society.  These are formed by a set of values, attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions that shape and mirror how an entity views itself and the world around it, and a number of different factors such as class, religion, nationality, gender, and race/ethnicity can alter the mirror in which an entity views itself.
Therefore, by analysing the underlying values, beliefs and attitudes within distinct ideologies, this paper will consider how they have shaped the content of these principles, and how they may impact the current trajectory of international law.

This paper presents my initial observations and explores how different actors argued for the inclusion and reaffirmation of indigenous rights during the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992). In December 2016, Indigenous Peoples and Local Community (IPLCs) representatives, States, and other actors participated in the joint Conference of the Parties and Meeting of the Parties (COP/MOP) to the Biodiversity Convention, Cartagena Protocol (2000) and Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing (2010). There, Parties adopted many COP/MOP decisions that directly and indirectly concerned IPLCs rights in the context of the biodiversity regime.
Informed by feminist theory, this paper examines the language used by IPLC and state actors and the extent to which they approached indigenous rights as the intersection of values, culture and place, or as objective and measurable goals for States to enforce and uphold. Feminists and other critical theorists recognise that language can reveal the implicit cultural and social values, beliefs and assumptions reflected within international law. They recognise that there are normative consequences to the symbols inherent in language and communication, which are ‘embedded within culture and nature together.’ 
Therefore, the choice of language by different actors involved in the negotiations, and the way that these actors relate values and goals to IPLC rights are worth examining. They may reveal the extent to which State actors actively engaged with the intersections between rights, culture and the environment during the 13th COP/MOP, or whether these two actors still speak in different tongues.

Key words: ecofeminism, indigenous peoples, Convention on Biological Diversity, language, observations, rights