Promoting Gender Equity (Mdg3)
In many parts of the world, women are at the forefront of
conservation initiatives. The famous Chipko movement of
the Indian Himalaya was led by village women concerned
about the destruction of their livelihood security by
deforestation. A number of forest protection committees or
natural resource management committees across India
(such as many community forestry initiatives in Orissa state)
are all-women, or have significant female leadership.
Numerous studies highlight that women suffer most when
resources are degraded.(13) Women have to walk much
longer distances, and face many hostile situations (for
example, when confronted with government officials in
charge of forests), to meet everyday biomass requirements.
Since they are often the primary resource collectors, longer
hours spent in collection affects health, child and family
care. The situation is much worse for single-woman
households. Absolute shortages of biomass, nutritious wild
foods, medicinal plants, and other survival resources,
therefore adds to the marginalization and impoverishment
of women, and with them of children, livestock, the elderly
and other dependants.
Community conservation efforts, where they have taken
into account these requirements, have helped improve the
status of women. In many instances women, out of sheer
desperation at the degradation of survival resources, have
been forced to take natural resource management into their
own hands. Such struggles eventually lead towards
improved status for women in the society in general. In the
case of the Chipko movement, for instance, the need to
protect forests from outside contractors as well as from their
own menfolk, contributed significantly to increased
influence for women in village matters.
Externally aided or...
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