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Module
1 EXERCISE

In your small groups, take the same environmental issue from your country that you used
above. Identify drivers, pressures, state (and trends), impacts and responses. Discuss which
9-12 December, 2013 Discuss what specific impacts on ecosystem services and human well-being are most
of the drivers and pressures are at the national level and which are at the global level.

relevant for the environmental issue of concern.

Experience has shown that the entire IEA process requires training accompanied by resources to build
capacity in order to improve the skills to develop and use environmental information for decision
making. Increased capacity through learning-by-doing can be considered a concrete objective and
benefit of a participatory IEA process.

There is also a need for gender mainstreaming in the process and products. This has been addressed

by Seager and Hartmann (2005), who show that gender mainstreaming is best understood as a
continuous process of infusing both the institutional culture and the programmatic and analytical
efforts of agencies with gendered perspectives. They illustrate best practices, assess successes and
failures, review four areas of gendered environmental research (i.e., water, poverty, security/ conflict,
and vulnerability/disaster) and review the treatment of gender in GEO.

Discussion Question

What are the important gender aspects of the environmental issue discussed above? Think,
for example, about whether some of the drivers have a particular gender differentiation, and
whether men and women are differentially exposed to the impacts.

16 The GEO Approach to Integrated Environmental Assessment