We’ve witnessed firsthand how values increase for nature and communities when we bring those hardest hit by our planetary emergencies to the front-and-centre of decision making and benefits-sharing. It's no coincidence that the greatest wins in our portfolio of work for people, nature and climate have been led by Indigenous Peoples, women, youth, local communities and other marginalized groups. 

Despite being disproportionately impacted by environmental and economic shocks, women, children, youth, people living with disability and other groups are often marginalized from making decisions about natural resource management, climate change adaptation and other issues that directly shape their daily lives. That's why our GEDSI approach is rooted in the understanding that systemic inequalities are at the heart of many environmental issues. 

Our work across the Pacific and throughout the world has shown that inclusion in the decision-making processes leads to more comprehensive and effective conservation outcomes, while strengthening community resilience. 

Our GEDSI work looks like seeking Free, Prior and Informed Consent, conducting gender analysis, co-designing benefits linked to recovery efforts, ensuring gender diversity, equity, centering inclusion as an end goal across our projects, understanding community needs, conducting regular consultations, promoting transparent land governance and access to information, ensuring no harm, factoring intersectionality, while widening spaces for meaningful participation and representation, to name a few actions.

Our initiatives include...

• Increasing staff capacity through organizational strategies that mainstream GEDSI across our operations and programmes through training and awareness workshops.
• Strengthening integration of GEDSI priorities, approaches and outcomes across large regional programmes to enhance inclusion and equity and strengthen conservation and climate change outcomes.
• Sucessfully establishing GEDSI collaborations with key stakeholders including governments, the private sector, local communities, among others. 
• Enhancing disability inclusion by destigmatizing disability, effectively strengthening support at the community level through GEDSI awareness, focus group discussions and collaborations with national organisations representing persons with disabilities. 
• Increasing sustainable finance and impact investment to advance social equity, address climate change and halt biodiversity loss by promoting the use of disaggregated data across sectors and ensuring sufficient budget allocation to address the needs of gender equality by applying GEDSI principles.
• Widening market access by connecting sustainable value chains from Indigenous women-led community enterprises with international markets and financial mechanisms through more inclsuive and equitable pathways. 
• Identifying gaps and needs to improve gender equality and social inclusion in Pacific fisheries across supply chains.