Building a synthesis of a range of gender-sensitive
experiences and linking crop conservation and development with integrated
approaches strengthens local management mechanisms and encourages greater crop
genetic diversity. Gender-sensitive activities in the sphere of crop development
through participatory productivity enhancement, seed supply through network,
creating an economic stake in conservation, reducing drudgery for women,
gender-sensitive policy and policy advocacy, capacity building and enhancement
of the skills of women farmers and finally empowerment are guidelines integrated
to enhance conservation of agrobiodiversity.
Lessons learned from the case
project
- The process mode helps to integrate divergent perspectives and interests,
provides flexibility in thinking and facilitates reorientation of the approaches
towards conservation and management of agrobiodiversity.
- Integrating different conservation strategies to support each other offers
scope to deal with unpredictable ecological and social dynamics of the crop
resources managed by farming families.
- Community gene banks with backup linkages with community seed banks at
the local level, with women’s active role, ensure the availability of
germplasm during unpredictable situations.
- Training and capacity building, including awareness generation instilling
a sense of partnership, guarantee collaborative planning, implementation,
sharing, and refining of the results.
- Conservation enterprises managed by women grass-roots organizations with
stable market linkages inspire women conservers to continue cultivation.
- The drudgery of women’s tasks has been a major contributing factor
in the erosion of agrobiodiversity in some areas. By tackling drudgery it
may be possible to slow down agrobiodiversity erosion.
- The People’s Biodiversity Registers prepared in the projects are gender
sensitive. The knowledge of rural women is recognized and documented in the
process, opening up the possibilities of being supported and rewarded.
Constraints/problems encountered and measures
undertaken
- Traditional gender differential roles and responsibilities curtail women’s
mobility, and prevailing social norms keep women away from controlling the
resources.
Gaps and challenges
- There is immense scope to enhance the productivity and stability of yields
among local cultivars by creating partnerships within local communities, thereby
making local cultivars competitive with high-yielding varieties.
- It is necessary to develop exhaustive gender differential knowledge databases
on women’s role and knowledge to promote women’s role and equitable
sharing of benefits while implementing the community gene banks and national
legislation related to farmers’ rights and biodiversity.
- There is a need to establish monitoring methodologies using simple indicators
taking into consideration gender perspectives to monitor on-farm genetic erosion
at the village and regional levels.
- It is necessary to incorporate women’s knowledge in seed technology
development, particularly in the areas of selection and storage.
- In addition to the community seed banks, the sustainability of the seed
sources may be ensured by gradually developing small seed enterprises after
an analysis of market demand.
- There is a need to strengthen the relief and rehabilitation network to
provide locally adapted traditional cultivars to communities during and after
natural calamities such as floods, droughts, cyclones, etc.
- Incentives (direct, indirect, perverse and service) are to be promoted
to meet demand and motivate local people to conserve biodiversity, such as
revolving funds, risk and trust funds to farmers through grass-roots institutions.
- There is a need to evolve a management and methodological framework for
sustainable extraction, evolving localized participatory monitoring indicators
to measure the sustainable use of bio-resources at the village level.
- There must be a backflow of knowledge and information from international
to national to local levels in the form of synthesized outcomes/outputs for
planning conservation and development of plant genetic resources to facilitate
locally specific actions.
