PART 1 •
Introduction
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"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.
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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
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Much of the soil conservation in East
Africa over the past decades has been carried out by women.
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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)
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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.
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- 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..
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The Second Part
presents suggestions and recommendations for including indigenous
and gender concerns in natural resource management activities based
on a project cycle approach
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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. |
