Title: Master of Arts in Women, Children and Nature Rights in Environmental Governance

Introduction

• Women’s, Children’s and Nature’s Rights in Environmental Governance – Regional masters programme domiciled at the University of Nairobi (UoN).
• Partnership between, UoN, University of Malawi, SEARCWL University of Zimbabwe and the University of OSLO.

Context

Building on masters in Women’s Law at SEARCWL – Teaching and research on women’s rights, land, natural resources, environment (Women, Environment and Access to Resources course).
Recognition of the impact of a regional programme – contribution to discourse through robust research and publication (e.g. Water is Life); graduates influencing law, policy and practices in their countries.
Reflections from the Women’s Law masters programme inspired the WCNREG programme.

Reflections:

• Conceptual and Delivery WCN silos  – Vulnerabilities and agency perspectives there are intersectionalities between women’s, children’s and nature’s rights BUT – conceptualised individually and are taught separately.
• YET   - interplay between laws and policies that govern climate change interventions and sustainable natural resource management, and laws and policies concerning women’s rights, children’s rights and nature’s rights.
• Disproportionate impact of environmental concerns, especially the triple planetary crisis on women, children and nature HENCE the need to:
• Employ a women’s, children’s and nature’s rights lens on environmental governance
• Amplify the voices of women, children and nature in environment-related matters.
• Deconstruct agency in environmental governance to enable women, children and nature to contribute in providing solutions to environmental problems.
• Disciplinary silos – law, science, economics etc. –impacting on responses to environmental concerns.
• Growing body of int’l law relating to women, children and nature – disconnect between law and practice –
• Implementation of rights at different levels – focus on the high levels…less focus on the lower administrative levels.
• Inadequate southern/African voices on environmental governance.

WCNREG APPROACH

• Women’s (ecofeminist), children’s and nature’s rights lens in environmental governance.
• Multidisciplinary approach -  042 (Law), 022 (Humanities), 031 (Social and behavioural sciences) and 052 (Environment) of the UNESCO Standards Classification of Education and Training (ISCED-F, 2013)
• Multilevel approach to environmental governance – international, regional, national, local.
• Decolonising  environmental governance – recognition and amplifying African voices/thought in environmental governance.
• Deconstructing environmental governance to address barriers that impede enjoyment of women’s, children’s and natures rights – agency, participation.
• Greening law – analysis of laws which undermine protection of the environment and measures to address environmental concerns.

Philosophy of the Programme

WCNREG is premised on the need for the reorientation of environmental governance from an anthropocentric and androcentric perspective to an inclusive, engendered, ethical and moral approach, one that recognises the living law of communities as key to ensuring livelihood resources and rights of women, children and nature.

Justification

Needs assessment – there is a need to:

• Adopt a novel approach to investigating multiple planetary crises by situating women, children and nature at the centre of environmental governance which is critical for addressing the crisis.  
• Disrupt the prevailing existing anthropocentric and androcentric discourses in environmental governance which exclude women, children and nature rights thus failing to effectively respond to multiple planetary crises.
• Transcend a silo approach to the research and teaching of women, children and nature’s rights
• Connect the cross-cutting issues, linkages and synergies between and within women’s, children’s and nature’s rights, which are often ignored or are taught in silos and detached from practice.
• Focus on the rights that women, children, and nature have in environmental governance. Children’s rights have been largely allied to and associated with women’s rights as carers and family providers, in research and teaching on women’s access, use and ownership of natural resources.

Goal

To equip learners with grounded, multidisciplinary and transformative skills to facilitate the meaningful participation of women and children in environmental governance and the protection of the rights of nature as an essential element in the resolution of the global multiple crises.

Learning Outcomes

• Critique the current paradigms and frameworks informing environmental governance.
• Formulate alternative approaches to environmental governance which recognise and facilitate the participation of women and children; and recognise the rights of nature.
• Develop transformative jurisprudence in light of legal, policy, and theoretical implementation gaps in environmental governance.
• Carry out research that applies a combined, critical, grounded and contextual approach to the study of women, children and nature rights in environmental governance
• Apply multilevel, engendered and interdisciplinary approaches to resolve global environmental challenges and realise sustainable development goals within an African context.