gender food security forests - presentation
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Lindiwe Sibanda's presentation for Forest Day 5 on 4th December 2011,TRANSCRIPT
Gender, food security, forests and climate change
Women are not foresters or farmers – they are both,
and more
Average time in a 24 hour day – southern Zimbabwe
Sleep
Domestic work
WoodlandsDryland crops
Leisure – social networking
Vegetable garden
Women manage livestock, crops and
wild resources
Women as integrators
Livelihood strategies involve multiple activities - choosing what to grow, raise, gather, or sell is never a decision made in isolation of other options
As an aside
Therefore, Forestry cannot be decoupled from Agriculture
REDD+ recognises “agriculture as a driver of deforestation” but has not thought through how to integrate forestry and agriculture to enhance livelihoods
Women’s education and status are key to child
nutritionThe first 1000 days of a child’s life are
the most important in terms of their life-long health, well-being and performance
Countries’ successes in improving child nutrition are more strongly correlated with women’s education and status (>50%) than with making food more available (36%)
Gender roles are linked to climate adaptation and
mitigationGlobally, men and women tend to perform different jobs/tasks
Climate change will alter what they can do, exposing men and women to different risks and opportunities
Men and women have different access to resources, including physical (e.g markets), social (e.g. networks), financial (e.g. credit), natural (e.g. land, water)
In times of change, they will have different options and ‘safety nets’ for coping with change
Differing sets of knowledge and skills
Men may know which seeds to plant when the onset of rains is delayed; women may be able to judge which tree species fare better in droughts
Yet, women often not as connected to the formal networks and information
providers
Kenya Tanzania Uganda Ethiopia0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Male-headedFemale-headed
% of households with access to cell phones
Recent findings regarding weather advisories
Source: CCAFS-FAO Gender-CC study in Bangladesh, Uganda and Ghana
• Seasonal weather forecasts are rare, and the current format is problematic for smallholders to understand and use
• Daily weather forecasts are reaching both men and women, through radio for men and women in some places; through church and groups for women in most – but with limited use
Challenges for climate-smart livelihoods
Source: CCAFS-FAO Gender-CC study in Bangladesh, Uganda and Ghana
• Learning visits to ‘climate analogue’ sites is desirable but problematic for women for various reasons
• ‘Climate smart practices are being taken up, but only the easiest ones, and largely not by women
Yet women are marginalized from ownership and
decisions
In sub-Saharan Africa women produce 80% of the food but own less than 10% of land
Participation in decision making and politics, and access to decision makers is not always equal for men and women
Meeting 1 overall attendance (n=250)
Women
Men
Meeting 1 plenary presenters (n=13)
WomenMen
Meeting 2 overall attendance (n=188)
WomenMen
Meeting 2 plenary presenters (n=7)
WomenMen
Women are poorly represented in agricultural, forestry, meteorological
and policy professions (e.g. two recent CC meetings)
What this means in the context of climate
changeGreater vulnerability of women:• More extreme weather events: women and
children are 14 times more likely to die than men during disasters
• Water scarcity will increase women’s labour
Gender-specific abilities to act:
• Women determine family nutritional security
• Agricultural productivity increases radically when women have equal access to inputs
Women as the key to family food security and child nutrition
There is lots of evidence that interventions aimed at women lead to enhanced child nutrition and food security at the household level
Actions to empower women in dealing with climate
changeUnderstand women’s priorities when
selecting crop varieties, farming practices and natural resource mgmt for adaptation interventions
Strengthen women’s resource tenure (also to improve performance of REDD+ and access to carbon markets)
Link early warning systems to nutrition programmes
Invest in capacity of women professionals in agriculture, forestry & climate change
Incorporating gender into local and community-level actions
Use participatory approaches to involve all members of the community in planning and improve understanding of local gender roles and differing vulnerabilities
Draw on local knowledge, which is linked to men’s and women’s gender-differentiated roles; enhance local capacity to adapt
Tailor science-based climate prediction information to different groups’ needs to make it more useful and used by smallholders (co-creation of new knowledge)
Climate Change and Key Gender Research Questions
1. How do the different types of climate change impacts, such as more frequent droughts and flooding, differently affect men and women?
2. In what ways do men and women adapt to climate variability and extreme events?
3. How do men’s and women’s roles complement each other when coping with changing climate conditions?
4. How may gender roles change when climate conditions change?