This year's World Environment Day theme, "Together we can beat plastic pollution", must be powered by women's leadership and solutions.
Since the first World Conference on Women in Mexico City, 50 years ago, women have championed the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as central to delivering on gender equality, decent livelihoods, and well-being.
On World Environment Day, UN Women joins the global call to beat plastic pollution and tackle the triple planetary crisis-climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution-with urgency and inclusion.
Plastic pollution is eroding systems, livelihoods, and health-disproportionately harming women and girls who work in informal sectors such as fisheries and tourism, and who rely on natural resources for their daily survival. For these women and girls, plastic pollution is not an abstract threat-it is a daily reality. It contaminates their water, undermines their work, and compromises their health.
In the face of these rising environmental threats, women are turning adversity into action-and leading the way toward sustainability. In Rwanda, a national ban on plastic bags set a global benchmark, with women spearheading alternatives, developing reusable packaging and establishing local recycling hubs. This is not an isolated example-it is a strategic, community-led intervention that directly accelerates our drive to end poverty and deliver on gender equality.
As we mark 30 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, governments must honour their commitments to ensure women's full and equal participation in environmental governance. With COP30 [UN Climate Change Conference - Belém] on the horizon, that pledge must move from principle to practice. Yet today, women hold only 15 per cent of environment minister roles worldwide.
The right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is inseparable from the drive for gender equality. It's time to go beyond protecting women and girls from environmental harm-they must be empowered to lead the solutions.
