ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the institutional and collegial links that constitute the international ‘women, environment and development’ (women, environment and development policy frameworks and actors-WED) policy milieu, the issues and events that have called them into being and encouraged their continued vitality, and the new debates and contributions that are presently emerging from collaboration and action within this domain. In particular, the chapter highlights the contributions of an ‘expert advisory group’ that was mobilized by the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO, in New York), to provide an alternative perspective on emerging WED policy issues in preparation for the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in September 1995.1 The diverse viewpoints held-typically very strongly-by women from a variety of contexts and regions in the South and the North have generated intense and very direct internal debate, as well as a significant level of external solidarity in the face of what is perceived by many WED analysts and activists-regardless of their personal background and particular viewpoint-as a world-wide crisis of regional and gender inequity and environmental destruction.
