What is GEDSI and why does it matter for wildlife conservation?

GEDSI is an acronym used widely across international development and, increasingly, in conservation. Each element names a different dimension of exclusion that conservation work must actively address.

Gender equality is concerned with ensuring that people of all genders have equal rights, opportunities, and representation in conservation work. This means more than having women in the room. It means examining whether women have equal influence over decisions, equal access to resources and benefits, and whether conservation activities affect women and men, and people of diverse gender identities, differently - and addressing those differences.

Disability asks conservation teams to consider whether people with disabilities can participate meaningfully in conservation planning, implementation, and monitoring, and whether the benefits and burdens of conservation are distributed equitably across people with and without disabilities.

Social inclusion is the broadest element and encompasses the full range of groups that face structural exclusion from decision-making and resource access. In conservation contexts this commonly includes Indigenous Peoples and local communities, ethnic and religious minorities, youth, elderly people, and people living in poverty. Social inclusion requires more than symbolic representation. It requires examining and addressing the power imbalances, language barriers, logistical constraints, and historical injustices that prevent certain groups from participating on equal terms.

Together, GEDSI reflects a recognition that conservation takes place within societies shaped by deep inequalities, and that projects which ignore those inequalities, however well-intentioned, risk replicating or deepening them.

The case for GEDSI in conservation is not primarily a moral one, although the moral case is strong. It is a practical one. Conservation projects that fail to apply GEDSI principles produce weaker results. The evidence for this comes from decades of experience working with communities around the world, and from the growing body of research on what makes conservation effective and sustainable.

When conservation activities restrict communities' access to resources they have managed for generations, including traditional fishing grounds, forest products, sacred sites. Without their meaningful participation in that decision, those communities are less likely to support conservation objectives and more likely to seek alternative ways to meet their needs. The knowledge systems and stewardship practices that communities have developed over generations are weakened or lost. Conflict, resistance, and project failure follow.

When women are excluded from conservation planning, projects miss the knowledge, perspectives, and leadership that women bring. In many landscapes, women are primary users of the forest products, water sources, and agricultural land that conservation activities affect. Designing solutions without them produces plans that do not work in practice.

When people with disabilities are overlooked, they are often among the groups most vulnerable to the negative effects of conservation activities, and among those least able to seek redress.

This distinction matters because GEDSI cannot be achieved through a document. It has to be enacted in the daily decisions that conservation teams make: who is invited to a community meeting, how that meeting is designed, whose voices are heard and recorded, how benefits are distributed, how effects on different groups are monitored, and how the team responds when its work causes unintended harm to a marginalised group.

A GEDSI policy describes intent. Practice requires skill. A team that has committed to gender equality in a policy document but does not know how to facilitate a meeting that gives women equal airtime, or how to disaggregate monitoring data by gender, or how to identify whether a proposed protected area will disproportionately affect women's livelihoods, is not practising GEDSI. It is performing it.

The most common failure mode is treating GEDSI as a compliance requirement - a box to tick in a donor report - rather than as a set of skills and habits that have to be developed and applied across every stage of conservation work. This is why GEDSI training matters. Understanding the concept is the starting point. Being able to apply it in a stakeholder workshop, a planning session, a monitoring framework, or a community consent process requires specific, practised capability.

GEDSI is not a standalone activity. It is a lens that has to be applied across the full arc of conservation work, from the first assessment of the situation through to monitoring, reporting, and adaptive management. The following sections show what that looks like in practice across seven core conservation processes.

GEDSI-sensitive facilitation means designing meetings that give all groups equal airtime, not just the most powerful or vocal. It means separating women and men into different discussion groups where cultural dynamics would otherwise suppress women's contributions. It means providing materials in multiple languages and formats, including icon-based materials for mixed-literacy groups. It means arranging accessible venues and adjusting meeting times so that people who would otherwise be excluded (people with disabilities, nomadic herders, women with caregiving responsibilities) can participate. And it means actively naming and disrupting the power dynamics that determine whose voices are heard and whose are recorded.

WildTeam's courses are built on the same best practice foundations described throughout this article. GEDSI is not a separate module. It is threaded through the methodology that the courses teach.

The Project Management for Wildlife Conservation course covers how to manage projects in a way that is ethical, effective, and accountable to all those affected - including the marginalised groups that GEDSI focuses on. It includes guidance on managing risks to affected communities, applying the do-no-harm principle, and building human well-being results into project reporting.

The Project Planning for Wildlife Conservation course teaches the strategic planning methodology that underpins GEDSI-responsive conservation design: identifying the right groups, understanding the influences that drive their behaviour, and building plans that listen to the people rather than imposing external solutions.

The Stakeholder Engagement for Wildlife Conservation course teaches how to identify and engage the full range of stakeholders, including those without power or government recognition, and how to enable the involvement of groups that would otherwise be excluded.

The Monitoring and Evaluation for Wildlife Conservation course includes guidance on protecting participants, facing up to failure, and incorporating human well-being results - all of which are essential to GEDSI-compliant M&E.

Sources: WWF Pacific GEDSI Mainstreaming programme; IUCN Advancing Gender in the Environment (AGENT); Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework Targets 22 and 23 (CBD, 2022); Global Centre on Biodiversity and Climate, Embedding GEDSI (2025); Ocean Grants GEDSI Spotlight (2026); WildTeam best practices: Ethical Decision-Making, Human Rights-Based Approach, Stakeholder Engagement, Project Planning, Facilitation, FPIC, and Monitoring and Evaluation for Wildlife Conservation (all 2026).