Reclaiming Rights and Resources: Women, Poverty, and Environment

This 34-page report, published by CARE, presents 7 case studies from across Africa that focus on three types of threatened environmental resources: land, forests, and water. In each case women share their stories of how the loss or degradation of such critical resources has adversely affected their lives and what they are doing to address these problems. In the foreword, Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai argues that women's livelihoods are directly linked to the state of the environment, and that when rural environments become unsustainable, it is women whose lives are most disrupted. She also argues that educating those who work most closely with the land - especially women - will greatly benefit the environment.

The report looks at case studies from Burundi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Niger, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, and highlights CARE projects that have been working to address specific environmental problems. These projects cover a wide range of activities, including training in improved farming methods and prevention of deforestation and soil erosion; management of communal rangelands; community awareness programmes around forest stakeholders' rights; women's land rights interventions; community mobilisation to prevent large commercial company takeovers of land; and preserving water supplies.

For example, in Uganda, the government had proposed donating a third of a local forest reserve to a sugar cane corporation who wanted to raze the forest for a new plantation. According to the report, the reserve contains hundreds of species that would become endangered by logging, helps maintain central Uganda's wet climate, and sustains the livelihoods of more than a million people in surrounding communities. However, with the help of CARE's local partners and other non-governmental organisations, the communities around the reserve mobilised into a central organisation to advocate for the forest's protection. They organised a mass demonstration, sent messages to local leaders and spoke to them individually, appeared on radio talks shows, spoke in churches, and wrote articles in the local press. According to the report, their activities led to a reversal in government attitude, and, as a result, the Mabira reserve was not razed.

The report notes that responding to environmental problems requires action at multiple levels, and that interventions delivering rapid and tangible benefits are only the entry point for dealing with poverty and environmental degradation. The authors recommend further actions to address the root causes of these problems. They indicate that more emphasis must be given to measures such as many of those described in the case studies, which empower women and other marginalised groups to become their own agents of change.