Women, Agriculture, and the Environment

Presentation by Lauren Richey

Women & Agriculture

Women are the majority of agricultural workers worldwide

The world is dependent on the work of women farmers

Women produce the bulk of the food consumed by their families, local communities, and globally

Colonization

Systematic attempts made by colonial powers to destroy female systems of farming

Separation between agricultural workers (especially women) and land

Introduced new divisions between men and women

Women as subordinate to men

Struggles for Women

Food security

Reproductive crisis

Non-capitalist, non-commercial use of natural resources

Defend subsistence agriculture and communal access to land

Genetically modified crops

Protests & Resistance Movements

Introduction of cash crops

Destruction of women’s subsistence farms

Selling of their land

Land privatization

Rising food prices

Commercial logging and deforestation

The Narmada Valley India

Narmada Valley

Home to more than 21 million people

The site to one of the world’s largest multipurpose water projects

The Narmada River Development Project

Supposed to increase food production and hydropower generation

No detailed assessment done of the overall effects of the project

Estimated that one million people would be displaced

Save the Narmada Movement Movement began in the 1980’s

A struggle for just resettlement and rehabilitation of the people who would be displaced

Focused on preserving the environmental integrity and natural ecosystems of the valley

By making the environmental, economic, and social problems apparent, the movement forced the World Bank to withdraw from the project

Silent Valley Movement One of the last remaining untouched

rainforests in India

In the 1960’s the state government began planning a dam to generate hydroelectricity as the basis for regional economic development

Dilemma between environment and development

Silent Valley Movement brought attention to the ecological consequences

The state government abandoned the idea in 1983

Silent Valley National Park

Nepal’s Community Forestry Program

Introduced in the 1970’s

Countrywide, government-sponsored method of forest management

Goal was to involve local communities in the management and preservation of the forests

Involved women in its efforts

Kenya’s Green Belt Movement Founded in 1977 by

Wangari Maathai

Encouraged rural women to plant trees

Participants have planted over 30 million trees

Women maintain tree nurseries and engage in environmental conservation along with community development activities

Kenya’s Green Belt Movement

The goal of the Green Belt Movement is to create community consciousness, social justice, and equity, along with improved livelihoods, a reduction of poverty, and increasing environmental conservation and awareness

The Chipko Movement

Started in the 1970’s in India

A rural, non-government organization of people

Based off the Gandhian idea of satyagraha

Non-violence resistance movement

The Chipko Movement

“Hug A Tree” movement

Goal was to protect the trees of Himalaya from commercial logging and deforestation

Women were at the forefront of this movement

The Chipko Movement The survival of local populations

and forest dwelling communities was directly linked with access to the forests, healthy soil, clean water, and pure air

The people’s movement was opposed not only to the felling of trees for commercial purposes but also to other environmentally destructive activities

The Chipko Movement was trying to conserve not only local forest resources, but also the entire life support system where nature was neither exploited or destroyed

Environmental And Women’s Movements

Unite people who have a common interest in saving the environment

Women are prominent leaders and participants

Women have a great responsibility when it comes to the survival of a community

Women’s work is directly linked with forests and natural resources

Environmental awareness and conservation, subsistence agriculture, in addition to sustainable development and resource use, are necessary not only for the survival of women, their families, and local communities, but

for the world as a whole to continue to thrive and live on