Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Indigenous groups
There has been a growing practice of seeking to consult and involve local people in
environmental management, and to understand and make wider use of indigenous
knowledge (Klee, 1980). Environmental management can learn a lot from study of
people’s livelihood strategies; Geertz (1971) was one of the first to try to understand
the process of exploitation and ecological change in the real world, focusing on
Indonesia. There is now a growing field of study of traditional knowledge. For an
overview see IUCN Inter-Commission Task Force on Indigenous Peoples (1997).

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CHAPTER TWELVE
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Women and environment
There has been a growth of interest in this field, especially since the 1975–1985 UN
Decade for Women. Some have attempted to subdivide studies according to the
perspective adopted:
(1)
women, environment and development—focusing on women as having a special
relationship with the environment as its users and managers;
(2)
gender and development—with gender seen as a key dimension of social
difference affecting people’s experiences, concerns and capabilities;
(3)
women in development—focusing on reasons for women’s exclusion or
marginalization from decision making and receipt of the benefits of
development (Rao, 1991; Leach et al., 1995; Ngwa, 1995).
(Gender can be defined as a set of roles. For a review of gender and development
from an environmental management standpoint see Mitchell, 1997:199–217.)
Women are often adversely affected by environmental degradation: for example,
they are often the poorest sector of society and depend on common resources, loss of
access to which may well hit them harder than the menfolk. Women and children are
commonly gatherers of fuelwood and water, so shortages mean more work for them.
Exposure to environmental hazards like insect pests and pesticide contamination
may differ from that of the men, reflecting divisions of labour, different diets and
routines (Sachs, 1997). In Burkina Faso studies discovered that productivity was
better if men and women were given separate plots of land, rather than having women
work on men’s land (Zwarteveen, 1996). The two genders are likely to respond to
opportunities in a different way as well as being differentially marginalized—so to
think of even a single citizen social group as uniform is probably mistaken (A.Agarwal,
1992; B.Agarwal, 1997).
There have been suggestions that women are more likely than men to be
concerned for local environmental issues (e.g. in the USA Love Canal pollution case
women recognized the problem and campaigned for a solution; in India the Chipko
and related forest protection movements started with largely female memberships).
Women often benefit more from environmental improvements because they are often
the fuel and water collectors—afforestation and improved water sources reduce the
distance they have to walk and the risks they face (Dankelman and Davidson, 1988;
Shiva, 1988; Momsen, 1991; Sontheimer, 1991; Jackson, 1993). In a number of
periurban areas it has been the women who have organized to practise gardening and
tree planting. Gender differences in ownership can be important; if women are seen
by men to be improving their crop yields or tree-cover and they do not own the land,
they will probably have it taken from them. To get participation in soil conservation,
tree planting and other environmental improvements it is necessary to ensure that
women enjoy the full fruits of their labour.
Eco-feminism (ecological feminism) is a broad field, but in the main it
recognizes parallels between oppression of women and oppression of the natural
world. Men dominate both, so ‘greening of the Earth can only begin with the

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