You've got to know who controls the land and trees people use: gender, tenure and the environment

Abstract

For the purposes of this paper it is helpful to group policies and projects to protect and enhance the environment into two general categories: those intended to stop or reduce the effect of environmentally detrimental actions and those intended to restore or enhance the environment. In the context of rural Africa, Asia and Latin America, the first generally involves exclusion of people from specific wildland areas or the prohibition of specific activities such as hunting, tree felling or riverain cultivation. The second tends to involve the encouragement of environmentally beneficial activities in agricultural production areas such as the construction of contours,tree planting or the practice of agroforestry in homesteads, on farm fields and on the commons. The failure to consider tenure generally and the gender dimensions of tenure specifically in the design and implementation of exclusionary and enhancing policies (each discussed separately below) can have three unfortunate consequences in respect to women. First, each mainly adversely affect women. Second, they may simply fail to benefit women. And third, tenurial considerations may prevent women, who constitute a major proportion of the agricultural work force, from participating and thus reduce the effectiveness of the environmental effort.