By Juliana Castro Escobar and Aurelio Padovezi
This blog aims to highlight the need for a gender approach in projects seeking to leverage socio-bioeconomy.
In the face of intensifying climate change, biodiversity loss, and growing inequality, the concept of a socio-bioeconomy is gaining traction as a technological fix and a transformative path. Beyond the conventional bioeconomy, which often emphasises biotechnological innovation and bio-based industries, the socio-bioeconomy’s response to climate change integrates renewable biological resources, circular production, and sustainable livelihoods. It prioritises community well-being, biodiversity stewardship, traditional knowledge, and social justice (for more information, read our blog ‘Powering up the socio-bioeconomy through climate finance’).
Nevertheless, gender is barely at the centre of the debate or as a core category for creating innovative socio-bioeconomy projects and frameworks. However, without it, initiatives risk reproducing inequitable access to benefits and reinforcing the empowerment of some at the expense of others. Why? Because unequal power relations between men, women, and people of diverse genders shape differentiated access to biological resources, livelihoods, and production opportunities.
At E Co, we believe that bridging these gaps can unleash socioecological innovation. Applying a gender lens to socio-bioeconomy initiatives means asking: Who benefits? Who bears the costs? Whose knowledge and labour are recognised, and whose remain invisible? These questions are not only about fairness; they are about designing systems that can include broader experiences and knowledge and promote equitable benefit-sharing.
What is a gender lens?
Gender goes beyond the biological sex assigned at birth. It entails society’s set of expectations, standards, and characteristics or sociocultural norms on how men and women are supposed to act. More than a natural order of things, it is a historically, culturally, and socially created category. This implies disputing meanings, asking questions and thinking critically about what makes ‘men’ and ‘women’ in particular contexts for analysing how relationships of power related to sexual difference interact with other categories of social difference. It also intersects with other social identities such as race, age, and class. Therefore, adopting an intersectional gender approach means recognising that being an indigenous girl in a rural territory implies different opportunities and constraints than being a white urban woman.
Ecofeminist perspectives also offer powerful insights for rethinking the socio-bioeconomy. They highlight how the exploitation of nature and the marginalisation of women often stem from the same patriarchal and extractivist systems. Just as ecosystems are undervalued and treated as endlessly exploitable, so too is much of women’s labour, especially unpaid care work that sustains families and communities, and knowledge related to food, seeds, and health. From an ecofeminist view, a gender-transformative socio-bioeconomy needs to value care as a principle for organising economies, recognise women as agents of ecological and cultural knowledge, and promote solidarity-based systems over extractive ones. By doing so, it not only aims to integrate women into existing models but seeks to redefine what counts as “economic” and “productive” activity.
Why is it relevant for the socio-bioeconomy?
The socio-bioeconomy reimagines development by centring local communities, nature, and culture as the basis for economic activities. It is grounded in sustainability, circularity, and solidarity, not extraction. This includes locally led initiatives that generate livelihoods while restoring ecosystems, as agroforestry, community-led ecotourism, native seed production, and sustainable use of non-timber forest products, to name a few. It represents a paradigm shift away from the high-tech productivist model and towards a socio-biodiversity-based approach, in which economic activity is designed to promote social justice, cultural diversity, gender equality and ecological integrity.
Women are central to these activities. In some geographies, they cultivate medicinal plants, preserve native seeds, manage agroecological farms, and lead cooperatives that uphold cultural practices and environmental sustainability. But structural inequalities, such as limited access to land, credit, technical assistance, and decision-making spaces, keep many women’s contributions invisible and unsupported.
Considering gender as a key lens in the socio-bioeconomy debate is relevant because:
– Climate Change has Differentiated Impacts: women, especially in rural and indigenous contexts, are disproportionately affected by climate change in terms of health, livelihoods, and access to resources such as land, water, and financial services.
– Women are underrepresented in decision-making scenarios: Many environmental and economic governance spaces remain male-dominated, limiting women’s voices and sidelining their knowledge.
– Women can be leaders of transformation: Women play key roles in biodiversity stewardship and adaptation. From leading nurseries for tree planting to conserving medicinal plants and managing community reforestation efforts, their contributions are critical to resilience. Yet, these remain undervalued and under-supported in many contexts.
– It is key for designing fair and lasting outcomes: Integrating gender fosters ownership, shared responsibility, and more inclusive results. It strengthens social cohesion and creates deeper, more sustainable relationships between communities and ecosystems.
E Co’s experience in gender mainstreaming:
At E Co, we’ve been mainstreaming gender across climate projects with the objective of creating inclusive models for climate strategies and projects. This includes:
– Gender assessments for climate projects that allow us to understand relationships between men and women, their access to resources, activities, knowledge, skills, and the constraints they face relative to each other in a determined context.
o For example: We are currently developing the GCF Funding Proposal Package for Coastal Resilience through Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EBA) in Mozambique. As part of this process, we conducted a gender assessment that included a desktop review combined with an in-person field visit. Using gender-sensitive methodologies – such as interviews and gender-disaggregated focus groups – we found that, although women were underrepresented in many project meetings, they play a fundamental role in agricultural livelihoods in the prioritised areas. Moreover, they hold critical knowledge about highly adaptable crops that can withstand both droughts and floods in rural Mozambique. Insights such as this were included in the project’s Gender Action Plan, which has enabled the mainstreaming of gender considerations across the full Proposal
Gender Mainstreaming into project design: we integrate gender considerations into all stages of project development and implementation, and develop tools such as Gender Strategies and Gender Action Plans as tools to ensure gender mainstreaming is clearly visible in the projects and strategies we design.
o For example: We have mainstreamed gender across GCF, GEF, and Adaptation Fund projects, from the Concept Note stage through to full project design. In addition to conducting gender assessments, we have developed Gender Action Plans, strategies, and tailored trainings.
– Tailored capacity building and dissemination: We have designed and delivered training on gender mainstreaming and gender strategy development for project developers, and disseminated these through webinars, workshops, as well as online and in-person knowledge toolkits.
o For example: We have developed both in-person and online training for the Climate Finance Access Network (CFAN) advisors in the Pacific and Caribbean. A key component of these trainings focused on gender and intersectionality, including sessions on gender assessments and mainstreaming. These aimed to build advisors’ capacity on the importance of gender mainstreaming, familiarise them with key terms and methodologies for conducting gender assessments, and provide guidance on essential considerations for developing Gender Action Plans for climate projects.
Why does this matter? A paradigm shift on the global stage
What was once seen as a set of localised, community-driven practices is now gaining traction on the international stage. Under Brazil’s G20 presidency, the forum took a historic step by approving ten High-Level Principles on Bioeconomy, marking the first time the G20 addressed the bioeconomy in a multilateral agreement. These principles emphasise inclusion and equity, encouraging the recognition and participation of Indigenous peoples, local communities, and importantly, committing to promoting gender equality and the involvement of all stakeholders.
This global shift aligns with mandates from major climate funds, such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Adaptation Fund (AF), which increasingly require proposals to deliver not just incremental outcomes, but transformative, paradigm-shifting investments that tackle root causes of environmental degradation and inequality.
Integrating gender into socio-bioeconomy projects is therefore not only about fairness. It is about building systems that draw on broader knowledge, redistribute power, and generate resilience that lasts. In this sense, the socio-bioeconomy becomes more than an alternative economic model. It is a transformative pathway that recognises the central role of women and diverse genders in sustaining life, cultures, and ecosystems. By embedding gender equality and equity as core principles, we can reimagine economic development, shifting from extractive models to systems rooted in solidarity, care, and regeneration.
