PART 1 •
Introduction
|
"All regions of the world are affected by
accelerated resource depletion and environmental degradation,
due to drought, desertification, deforestation, natural
disasters, and polluting substances. Awareness of these
disasters has increased markedly in the past decade. Women,
however, are still largely absent from public decision-making
in environmental management, protection, and conservation
while being critical actors at the grassroots level.
The draft Platform argues that women,
particularly indigenous women, have pivotal roles in
environmental conservation. It identifies a linkage between
poverty and deteriorating natural environments and states that
the strategic actions needed for sound environmental
management requires a holistic, multidisciplinary, and
inter-sectional approach.
The
proposed actions are designed to promote the involvement of
women in environmental decision-making at all levels and to
ensure the integration of women's needs, concerns, and
perspectives in policies and programs for environmental and
sustainable development.
In most
developing countries, women are responsible for obtaining
water and fuel and in managing household consumption. As a
result, they are especially concerned with the quality and
sustainability of the environment.
Yet, because women are largely absent from decision-making,
environmental policies often do not take into account the
close links between their daily lives and the
environment.
-
Women account for half of the food production in
developing countries. In some African countries, they have
to walk 10 kilometres or more to fetch water and
fuel
-
Much of the soil conservation in East Africa over
the past decades has been carried out by
women.
-
In India, women provide 75 per cent of the labour
for transplanting and weeding rice, 60 per cent for
harvesting, and 33 per cent for
threshing."
(Source: Women's
Contribution to Managing Natural Resources and Safeguarding
the Environment - Notes from the Fourth UN World Conference on
Women, 1995. Press releases from the United Nations
Information Centre in Sydney for Australia, New Zealand, and
the South Pacific) |
1. Aim and purpose of
guidelines
To our
knowledge, guidelines for the inclusion of gender and indigenous
concerns in natural resource management activities are not yet
available in a comprehensive manner within NGOs, indigenous
organisations and governmental structures. Therefore, the aim of
these present guidelines is to offer some conceptual and practical
tools for improving natural resource management activities and to
open a dialogue among practitioners as to how gender and indigenous
concerns can best become an integrated part of any natural resource
management process anywhere in the world.
Thus,
the purpose of these guidelines is to facilitate relevant knowledge,
experiences and practical tools to all practitioners, who are
concerned with a continuous improvement of their natural resource
management results, impact and sustainability within indigenous
territories or areas.
The
guidelines do not pretend to be comprehensive in all aspects and for
all areas. The diversity of living conditions, indigenous cultures
and traditions as well as the political, social and economic context
in which indigenous peoples live and natural resource management
takes place is so vast, that it is impossible to develop a
blue-print approach to the issue. However, the guidelines do pretend
to raise questions, present some answers and examples of why, how,
when and where indigenous and gender issues are crucial to consider
in order to achieve positive results, impact and sustainability
within natural resource management interventions.
2. How to use the
guidelines
To be
user friendly the guidelines are divided into three parts with a
view to facilitate the reading and the practical application of the
suggestions and recommendations. |
- The
First Part offers a number of case stories on the
consequences of excluding and including indigenous and gender
concerns in relation to natural resource management. Furthermore
it presents arguments against and in favour of including
indigenous and gender aspects in order to put the issues into
perspective..
- The
Second Part presents suggestions and recommendations for
including indigenous and gender concerns in natural resource
management activities based on a project cycle
approach
- The
Third Part - the ANNEXES - provides short background
information on the IGNARM network, including the working concepts.
A number of other annexes provide additional useful
information.
3. Sources leading to
the recommendations
The
suggestions and recommendations of this document have been derived
from several sources of information and through thorough analysis.
The main sources mentioned below have been focussed on the interplay
between the three thematic issues (natural resource management,
gender, indigenous peoples). They are based on literature
documentation, on practical experiences and on personal opinions and
observations from all the involved indigenous and non-indigenous
individuals. They can all be found and downloaded at the Network
project website http://www.diis.dk/graphics/IGNARM/ignarm/.
A
State of the Art Paper was elaborated on the basis of an
international Internet screening of available literature within
NGOs, research institutions, international organisations and
governmental structures.
Each of the four participating Danish NGOs
conducted a questionnaire screening of organisational
experiences within their national and international contact network
and a summary report of the four organisational screening reports
was elaborated.
A
five days seminar with the Network project organisations and
four indigenous resource persons from Nepal, China, Panama and
Ecuador discussed and explored further the results of the various
information obtained in order to identify practical
recommendations.
4. Hopes for the
impact of the guidelines
It is
our hope that the present guidelines will be an inspiration and will
be useful for enhancing the quality of natural resource management
activities within our own Danish network project organisations,
within other Danish governmental and non-governmental organisations
as well as within indigenous and non-indigenous natural resource
management agents in other countries.
We
encourage any natural resource management agent to continue the
improvement of these guidelines and to adapt the recommendations and
suggestions to the specific reality in which each intervention takes
place. The aim and purpose of these guidelines will be achieved if
agents and interventions come to terms with the fact that indigenous
and gender concerns are vital to include if sustainable solutions
for both nature and indigenous peoples are to be obtained through
natural resource management activities.
5.
Acknowledgements
A number
of indigenous and non-indigenous people have been contributing to
the creation of these guidelines by facilitating valuable
experiences, suggestions, advice and recommendations. We are
extremely grateful to all of them for the time invested in this
endeavour and for sharing their broad experiences with us either on
a voluntary basis or as resource persons. We have been encouraged
during this process by all the positive reactions to our network
project from many individuals all over the world, who have confirmed
the felt needs for guidelines and tools as to how to include gender
and indigenous concerns in natural resource management
activities. |
