Understanding gender-based violence in the context of conservation

The briefing then goes on to outline ways in which approaches to conservation can be transformed, not only to eliminate gender-based violence, but to enable healing and generate safe spaces for those affected. Indigenous women and girls, and women and girls from local communities, are often targeted and subjected to these forms of violence as a result of multiple, compounding discriminations based on their identities as women and Indigenous, minorities, and, or, other marginalised identities within power structures, which include patriarchy. This briefing is not intended to provide guidance on how to address GBV in the context of conservation, but rather aims to demonstrate the scale, significance, and systemic or institutionalised nature of the problem, and to highlight the importance of both preventing the future occurrence of GBV in the context of conservation and supporting the realisation of justice and healing for those who have experienced it.

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The relationship between GBV and environmental crises is increasingly well-understood. Research has focussed particularly on the ways that climate change and environmental degradation have driven increases in GBV through heightening existing gendered inequalities, demonstrated for example in higher rates of child marriage and domestic violence; on how GBV prevents women’s participation in environmental governance; and how Women Environmental Human Rights Defenders experience GBV as a result of their efforts. Little research has so far focussed, however, on the relationship between GBV and conservation, despite it being well (albeit anecdotally) known that GBV is a tactic used by exclusionary conservation enforcers to intimidate, divide, and dispossess communities, generating numerous human rights abuses. 

Addressing GBV in the context of conservation will remain impossible without developing better understandings of how GBV is enacted, its drivers and its consequences, through the voices and stories of survivors and those who have been affected. So far, conservation agencies have predominantly focussed on GBV as a barrier to project implementation and impact. This briefing approaches GBV rather as a manifestation of the power imbalances intrinsic to much conservation policy and practice, and as a tool used to keep those power imbalances in place.

This briefing aims to deepen the understanding of the relationship between GBV and conservation as a necessary first step in eliminating conservation related GBV. Much like other human rights abuses committed in the name of conservation – which are increasingly well-understood and recognised –GBV uses violence on women’s bodies to undermine community cohesion and wellbeing, which in turn negatively impacts the self-determination of Indigenous peoples and collective environmental governance of Indigenous peoples and local communities. Eliminating future acts of GBV and seeking justice and healing from past acts must therefore be critical to supporting the realisation of individual and collective rights.

Key Points

1. The power imbalances inherent in exclusionary conservation regimes can enable, encourage and exacerbate GBV. 

2. Discrimination against Indigenous peoples or minoritised groups, including intersectional discrimination faced by women from these groups, can drive GBV and limit perpretrators' being held to account for their actions. 

3. Survivors often face considerable barriers to justice. 

4. Failure to consider gender in conservation programming can lead to GBV.

5. Undermining peoples' or communities' connection to the traditional territories through conservation programming can lead to increases in GBV perpetrated against and within communities. 

About this briefing

In 2003, at the 5th World Parks Congress in Durban, the conservation world made commitments to return lands to Indigenous peoples that had been turned into protected areas without their consent, and to only establish new protected areas with their full consent and involvement. Those commitments have not been realised. This series offers case studies, testimony, research, and analysis from FPP and from our partners that examine the current state of play of the relationship between conservation and indigenous peoples, and local communities with collective ties to their lands. It will expose challenges and injustices linked to conservation operations, showcase practical, positive ways forward for the care of lands and ecosystems, led by Indigenous peoples and local communities themselves, and reflect on pathways to just and equitable conservation more broadly.