Publications
Gender and Environment
Paper presented By Nirmala Nair (Director ZERI-Southern Africa)
Director, ZERI Southern Africa
GENDER PLANNING AND EVALUATION WORKSHOP
Heinrich Boell Foundation, Rose Bank Hotel
4, 5 April 2005
Introduction
I have been asked to contribute on gender and environment.
Since most of you do come from organizations actively involved in the area of gender work, I shall not go too much into the history background etc of gender and development programmes. I must also admit that in the last few years I have not been directly involved with gender programmes as such, though my own involvement in ZERI work has come out as a result of my search for concrete alternatives, practical – on- ground solutions. `The gender work’ I strongly feel must become a way forward in building on the current gender aware developmental work while being able to transcend gender specific agenda. The success of embedding gender lies in this paradox of being able to transcend gender specific agenda with an acute gender sensitivity while being able to embrace an all encompassing `big picture scenario’ where the interconnectedness, the hidden connections of the web of life plays a critical role than. For those of us who have been around working on gender issues for the last three decades, it is a broadening of our horizons, visions rooted in compassion, mellowed by the fights and oppositional politics. A realization is dawning that working for a just world is an act of all inclusive one, at the end of the day it is about harmony and balance – balancing the gender act, the male-female in us, around us, it is not a question of either or, it is about and- and. It is about creating optimum synergies, not getting lost in the details that we lose the world we created. It is about moving forward, being mindful of all the realities. It is about making the world we believe in, we dream about happen, not just through policies and regulations and policing, but from deep with in so that the structure outside is just there, a gentle reminder, a gentle support, a resting place – just in case…
In this paper I will briefly examine the difference between gender mainstreaming and gender and environment. Take some of the specific sectors like agriculture and health to clearly illustrate the contradictions of some of the developments that are taking place versus the gender bias and gender implications of some of these trends and how women are going to face the brunt of it much more so because of their inherent vulnerability in many developing countries. This is also to be taken as a case in point to expose the myth that mainstreaming gender in terms of equity, economic justice etc are not going to take us forward. Real transformation happens when we are able to break the `Silo mentality’, we need to get out of the box of narrow `targeted’ approaches.
Gender mainstreaming
The decade of democracy has truly made a sincere attempt to create gender democracy. What has been achieved in mainstreaming gender in the last ten years is truly remarkable. The South African gender machinery is impressive. There is a visibilisation of gender and related discourse in every sector. The awareness towards gender issues and gender sensitivity is something that the gender activists and the supportive forces working together can be very proud of. Gender is a visible concept. In private sector and related business environment, gender is very much part of the official package. It can be positively stated that South Africa has succeeded in institutionalizing gender in all respective organizational structures.
Is gender mainstreaming the same as gender and environment
While gender mainstreaming is more about creating adequate frameworks and institutional policies around gender equity, gender justice, protective measures against gender based violence etc in the context of gender and environment, principle of gender mainstreaming is only the first step, the first important step. The real task begins once the framework of gender policy is in place. The understanding of the local context, local community relationship with their immediate environment becomes a very critical part of creating a gender and environmental framework.
Since this is such a shifting terrain, the complexities of local traditions, local culture, local practices that may or may not have risen to live in harmony with nature have all complicated the process of creation of a critical body of knowledge in the gender and environment sector. To complicate the matter, both the concepts- gender as well as environment- is perceived with slight reservation by the local communities. Policies and programmes conceived outside, experts often from outside, superimposing these on the existing local context –sometimes not so sensitively have all contributed to a shadow of reluctant acceptance on this important sector.
Gender and Environment
UNEP Gender and environment document states that it is important to focus on gender and environment separately because
1. Gender mediates human/environment interactions and all environmental use,
knowledge and assessment
2. gender roles, responsibilities, expectations norms and division of labour shape all forms of human relationship to the environment” (UNEP Gender and Environment document)
I feel strongly that the next decade for South Africans engaging in gender debate particularly must be about the search for real alternatives, getting to grips with the nitty- gritty nuts; nuts & bolts of erecting on the sub structure. We need to be cautious not to get trapped that the gender is in place, so we can carry on. On the contrary, the vacuum created with no active focus while the gender battle was taking place – that gap has been filled in with various vested interest groups that are actually going to hamper – all the victories won so far.
The critical areas like water, land, farming methodologies; construction industry; alternative energy industry; health sector; education are some examples where much work has actually taken place interms of placing gender in the centre stage – but the actual content of some of these sectors are going to hit back at us, since we were busy with the ‘rights’ issue, entitlement; and the content is not getting much focus.
My plea to you all is that let us not forget the bigger picture. There is an interconnectedness, of the greater web of life that determine the hidden connections; that holds pure potentialities that must not be compromised as we move forward; here in the untapped potentialities lie the true secret of total integration, going beyond skin deep transformation and instant gratification couched in short term political agendas of national machineries and international machineries – the forces that are constantly pawning ordinary people’s lives in the name of development, sustainable development, gender and development etc.
Gender integration so far has been happening without a real deep questioning of existing developmental approaches and how they have influenced the developmental programmes so far.
Below I have pulled together some scenarios from key sectors like Agriculture; health; environmental pollution etc to highlight some of the current conflicting strategies and how, or the trend of working in silos, has aggravated the scenarios by losing the hidden connections that is necessary to understand the bigger picture.
Agriculture and food security issue
Globally 60 to 80% of women in rural areas are responsible for food production. Yet as in any other materially less affluent countries of Asia Africa and South America, food security issue is the biggest main concern.
Primarily women are the care takers making sure there is enough to eat in the house. But increasingly food production is becoming highly industrialized and by and large taken over by agri-business co-operations. These are two distinctly diverse roles driven by very gendered roles. Women have no say in the agri-business co-operations. Government trade and commercial farming sector is driven by multi billion rand programmes negotiated by agricultural engineers, farming related industries bent on selling their agri-gear in the market, chemical engineers and other specialists focusing only on agro-chemical as fertilizers and pesticides and profit market..
Agri-technology and bio-technology are proving to be the worst enemies of women in particular and small farmers in general threatening the food security problem further. The false hype that bio-technology is going to wipe out world hunger is being bought by the South African commercial farming sector.
Not a moment is given to this bizarre position that 1. It is driven by private sector, which can’t care less about South African women and children dying of hunger or HIV AIDS, all they want is a market for their technologies, most often obsolete technologies that are no longer selling in their own countries. 2. Often developed in different climatic conditions; within the precincts of clinical labs, these are often not practical in our context. What works in countries of four seasons need not necessarily work under the harsh African sun. 3. With our increasing joblessness, most of these technologies are devised in countries with labour problem, not enough labour. Farming technologies where thousands of acres of land can be farmed by couple of people and their machines is not going to fit our scene where we have thousands of people waiting to eke out a living off the land.
Commercial agri-business sector is proven to be the worst environmental pollutant, polluting our ground waters in particular and of course polluting our bodies with the persistent pollutants emitted into the air as well as into the food chain. Countries like America who are leading as well as pioneering into more and more deadly agri bio tech are blatantly ignoring their own research finding on these critical issues. Worse of course is their aggressive marketing agenda to get these into less materially resourced countries.
According to the USDA, agriculture is
“the leading source of remaining impairments in the Nation’s rivers and lakes and a major source of impairments to estuaries.” [21] Agriculture degrades water quality by increasing the concentrations of natural constituents such as dissolved solids, salts, suspended sediment, dissolved organic carbon, trace elements and nitrate, as well as man-made constituents such as pesticides and nutrients from fertilizers. [22] These pollutants have a variety of adverse effects, poses serious threats to human health”. (www.ewg.org)
More than 1 billion pounds of chemical pesticides are applied to U.S. farms each year, and like nitrates in fertilizer, what’s not used by the crop goes into runoff, which makes its way into drinking water.
Contradictory policies; Opportunistic and manipulative trade games
So on the one hand we have ample scientific proof that current practice of food production, commercial farming practices, mono culture, heavy reliance on agro-chemicals or agri-tech is not a sustainable solution to global problems including the rich countries.
Yet what happens behind the trade, aid and fund games are very disturbing. USAID is known to fund most of the technologies that are not easily going to be applicable in the context of US as consumer climate changes. The same goes for European funding. It is a vicious nexus of investors and research agendas on science and technology that becomes either obsolete because new technologies have taken over or there is no more market because of information campaigns and increasing consumer awareness thereof.
Politics of Organic farming
Without romanticizing the past, let us face it, in the heart of Africa, Asia and South America, people still are doing organic farming. They don’t have the money to buy fertilizer, pesticides, seeds etc. They have evolved their practices over thousands of years- trail and error learning from mistakes observing nature, experiencing what is sustainable.
The Chinese farming practice has been using digesters, a process whereby all livestock, human and agri-waste, are used to produce a nutrient rich effluence which becomes their main source of fertilizer while generating their own heating and lighting from this process.
There is a big regulation that prevents us in SA from using this design on the basis of a 1978 health and safety regulation.
I can tell you one thing; this process definitely has not impacted on health and mortality of the Chinese. If it has they surely would not have become world’s largest population.
But here we are, in 2005, guided by 1978 regulation, created by sanitation engineers trained on European model preventing us from using digesters that will actually take small farmers, women farmers from the brinks of poverty and create an independence and sense of self worth that is not tied to the bank loans and agriculture extension workers and market factors...
In rural areas farmers did natural farming quiet organically with no certification process. And yet the certification process – again coming from Europe mainly and some from US – is killing the organic farmers. The burden of certification process, the experts, the costs of compliance etc is driving them to the brinks of bankruptcy. Once again, the politics of the super north.
Large scale conversion to organic farming and EU’s own certification structures have made most of the certifying bodies out of business in Europe, these specialists are creating a thriving market running their certification programmes in Africa and Asia and South America.
I met Mme Grace Masuku, she come from a family of organic farmers for generations, living off the land. She shared fascinating stories with me. Her people living off the land had deep respect for the land, they watched, observed engaged with nature that is live around them; they have a deep connection from with in and outside, they are the real organic farmers. Yet their commodities cannot be considered organic unless certified organic by the experts from the North.
What has gone wrong, how did we come here.
The other side of the politics of organic farming lies in the reluctance on the side of the government to support organic farmers, create local institutional structures and trade forums.
New Research from non other than the World Bank itself is coming out with reports on the success of organic farming especially in dealing with food security issues. As the following report from Washington recently published on the 23rd of February 2005 states
Farmers in developing countries who switch to organic agriculture achieve higher earnings and a better standard of living, according to a series of studies conducted in China, India and six Latin American countries by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The findings were presented last month (February 3d 2005) during a workshop held at the World Bank’s headquarters in Washington, DC.
Organic farming also offers more employment opportunities precisely because it is more labor intensive….. The value of Chinese exports grew from less than US$1 million in the mid-1990s to about US$142 million in 2003, with more than 1,000 companies and farms certified organic.
“Marginal and small farmers in China, India, Latin America and most probably in other developing countries, have a comparative advantage in shifting to organic agriculture, as the technologies they use are often very close to organic practices” said Paolo Silveri, Evaluation Officer, Office of Evaluation, IFAD. “Still, many will face a number of obstacles to becoming certified organic producers, including lack of technical knowledge, inadequate market information, limited storage and processing facilities and complex certification processes. This is where IFAD, the World Bank and other donors can step in to help.”
You can see a new catch developing here, technical assistance for organic farmers.
Health issue
Health is an issue that is an outcome of many complex interconnected cores. Starting with consumption patterns, kind of food that we are told to eat, the kind of food we are made to grow; the kind of farming and related issues all contribute to the health factor. But we have no clear information on any of these issues, we are not aware of the health implications of any of these.
We turn a blind eye to the carcinogens in the cosmetic products that we use, we turn a blind eye in the devastating chemicals in our hair dyes, nail polish, lipstick. We are not concerned about the moisture junky hiding as our body creams as we reach out for petrochemicals based lotions and creams, unaware, that once we use them, we are forever addicted to them because it will keep our skin drier and drier and giving the false illusion of suppleness and softness, just for a short period when we apply them.
We think, these are not relevant issues to think about, to focus on or worry about in the middle of all our gender battles.
We don’t want to worry about the 24 or so chemicals that go into good old bread subsidized by the government forcefully grown with artificial chemicals and GE seeds. No we have no time to worry about these, even though it is hitting our bodies, making us sick.
When we are so disconnected from the basic issues that determine our health factor, how can we even begin to think about our environment? We have no clue about our inner environment, our inner eco-system.
What we see outside today is a reflection of what we are going through inside. Our rivers are polluted, our arteries are clogged, our lungs are infected, our trees are dying;
Conclusion
Transforming people’s approach, community’s relationship to environment means moving beyond gender mainstreaming. The core is to understand how environment features in people’s lives, how do men and women regard their immediate environment, what kind of cultural and traditional taboos are impacting their relationship to the environment. These will in turn affect research agendas pertaining to various environmental issues, issues relating to farming, agriculture, subsidiary industries related food production and manufacturing.
What are the alternatives?
The obsession with technocracy is making the gender divide acute, it is not just about entering the field of science and technology; it is not just about mainstreaming gender.
We need to get out of the box. Redesign the silo mentality approach to gender and environment.
Work towards creating multiple solutions.
Move away from single agenda, core programmes to a multiple agenda; multiple focus; multiple priorities.
Meeting basic needs cannot be done in a linear core business fashion. Poverty issues, issues of violence, economic justice, environmental degradation all of these are critical, and have to be tackled simultaneously. Focus on the interconnectedness of issues.
Ask questions, questions about the relevance, appropriateness, whose research agenda, whose funding needs. Long term implications, local impact, is it creating local diversity, contributing, enhancing local diversity while creating local solutions.
The bottom line here is questioning any agenda, especially the science and technology agenda, the research agenda, while keeping the focus on seeking simpler solutions, solutions that enhance people’s control over their lives, enables harmonious gender relations to evolve and most of all keep women centre stage not just make us into victims creating more battles based on victimhood. © 2005
