Revathi Balakrishnan
FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific
Presented for
Director, Women and Population Division
FAO Rome
FAO places great importance on technical work as related to information on gender roles and rural women's concerns in resource management. Recently, in October 1999, FAO organised a high level Ministerial Consultation on Rural Women and Information. Representatives of member countries from the focal Ministries of Agriculture and Food as well as the focal Ministries for Women, Gender, and/or Equal Opportunities attended. Participation was designed to highlight a persistent action gap, manifested by limited or no communication between the technical ministries that FAO collaborates with and the national machineries of women that promote gender-mainstreaming agenda. We hoped to transcend the conventional boundaries of communication among key national policy-making and programme-implementing agencies that could serve to improve the status (economic and social) of rural women in FAO member countries. The outcome was productive and we foresee expanded activities in this area. The emphasis will be to strengthen and improve the content and quality of information on rural women as relevant to FAO technical activities as well as the process of widely sharing such information, including among the general public through the media.
Hence, this technical consultation fits well with FAO's mission and vision. First, the partners have invited participants from a multidisciplinary expertise base. A media workshop was also organised jointly by the Uttara Devi Resource Centre for Gender and Development at MSSRF and The Hindu Media Resource Centre. We hope the presentations and dialogue during these events will explore the links between gender roles, biodiversity management, and food security. In the latter half of this century each of these issues has been explored extensively, most often independently of the other. With your co-operation and contributions, FAO seeks to design multi-disciplinary lenses that will improve our gender vision to consistently strengthen gender-equitable policies and programmes.
Mr. Peter Rosenegger
FAO Representative in India and Bhutan
For
Dr. Prem Nath
Assistant Director General and Regional Representative
FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific
The technical consultation has been organised to explore the role of men and women in managing agro-biodiversity in the countries of Asia and to identify strategies to improve the policies and programmes to be women-inclusive. The focus of the consultation reflects the commitment of FAO in three issues, namely, food for all, sustainable development, and integration of women as development partners. The UN-Agenda 21 sets the framework for the FAO initiative in the areas of biodiversity and bioresource management. The FAO Global Plans of Action for Conservation and Sustainable Utilisation of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture provide the impetus for actions relevant to agro-biodiversity management. The FAO World Food Summit Plan of Action outlines the organisational mandate for food security and defines actions for sustainable management of ecological resources for food security. In Commitment 1, the Plan clearly identifies actions for integration of women in all technical activities of FAO. These instruments for actions as affirmed by FAO member countries are an indication of our joint commitments. Now we seek your active involvement in developing policies and programmes that are gender responsive and sensitive to roles of women and their potential to contribute to agro-biodiversity management.
At FAO, we know for a fact, and by experience of working closely with agriculture and rural communities, that rural women in their multiple roles contribute to food production as well as for sustainability including conservation of plant biodiversity. On a global scale, women produce more than half of all the food that is grown. In South-east Asia and the Pacific, women's home gardens represent some of the most complex plant diversity systems known. But, what is lacking is the relevant information to acquaint policymakers and programme agenda planners to recognise rural women's current contribution to food security and the potential contribution they could make to achieve sustainable food security through biodiversity conservation.
Hence, research in the area of gender dimensions in biodiversity management for food security deserves our attention. FAO has begun the work of documentation of gender roles in biodiversity management both in Asia and Africa. We hope that the work in this technical area of gender dimensions in biodiversity management for food security will expand to be an active FAO global programme. Institutions such as those each of you represent could make a significant contribution to reduce the “data gap” by opening up your research agenda to be inclusive of social dimensions of biodiversity management and to adopt gender responsiveness in setting up biodiversity research programmes.
We acknowledge that research alone is not an end in itself. We hope that quality research will lead to a sound information base that would direct policy formulation and programme development. We should strongly emphasise the three-way integrative flow of gender responsive information between research, policy formulation, and programme development. Such a close integrative process can be made possible only through the commitment and participation of national institutions and agencies.
Hon'ble Begum Matia Choudhury
Minister for Agriculture and Food
People's Republic of Bangladesh
A study by FAO on Rural Women and Food Security recognises that rural women in Asia play a key role in biodiversity as seed selectors, biodiversity managers in home gardens, and as keepers of local knowledge of food crops, medicinal plants, wild foods and forest products. Asian rural women are also known for their contribution as guardians and managers of biodiversity in the region. There is a very close relationship between agriculture and biodiversity. We can say that in primitive times, when mankind lived in the caves, the women of those days first discovered seeds, the prime movers of plant life. Since then women's role in agro-biodiversity has continued and is still there today.
Traditionally, peasant women used to play a critical role in areas of seed collection, handling and storage, and in maintaining the biodiversity. It is the woman who conserves, preserves, and germinates seeds in most parts of our subcontinent. The intricate knowledge involved in performing this task is transmitted from mothers to daughters, from sisters to sisters, from mothers-in-law to daughters-in-law or from one village sister to another. Women are the repositories of this vast area of knowledge and, in a true sense, owners of this complex seed technology and know-how. Communities have not only developed elaborate systems of pest management and biological control; they have identified and managed a series of genes conferring valuable traits for commercial and domestic use. It is those genes or traits as diverse as disease resistance, high salt tolerance, resistance to drought or water-logging, which have been maintained in the repertoire of communities and managed by rural women in most cases.
Thus, it would not be entirely correct to say that the ‘feminisation’ of agriculture is a recent phenomenon. If one overlooks the facts of the history of agriculture, one can only be guilty of ‘gender blindness’ arising out of the ‘invisibility’ of women's roles in, and contributions to, agro-biodiversity management and food security. The global survey conducted by FAO has shown that, in Asia, women account for 50 per cent of overall food production in the region. There is, of course, considerable variation by country. In Bangladesh, a survey conducted in 1989 showed that agricultural production (direct and processing) as the primary occupation of 43 per cent of women. It is the secondary occupation of another 15 per cent, making a total of 58 per cent.
What should or can be done to further enhance the participation of women farmers in biodiversity management and food security? Some suggestions are:
Intensify and promote home gardens and provide needed support.
Provide women farmers with easy access to agricultural information on appropriate technology to improve upon the existing homestead agricultural diversification practices.
Give women farmers opportunities to gain technical knowledge and skills to be able to adopt more environment-friendly agricultural production systems.
Enable women farmers increase their capability to cope with problems encountered in sustainable farming systems.
Encourage rural women's participation in the community level biodiversity conservation programmes.
Increase rural women's access to credit to enable them to sustain the process of biodiversity and food security.
The policy issues and future action in the management of biodiversity with respect to food security and gender dimensions should lead to the conservation and potential use of agro-biodiversity for long term economic benefits. In more specific terms, such policies may include:
increased government commitment to mainstreaming biodiversity in agricultural research and development
increased participation of the farming community in general, and women in particular, to facilitate incorporation of diversification in farming systems
institutional arrangements for effective partnership between agricultural research centres, NGOs, farmers, private companies, agricultural extension agencies, and various development agencies for achieving inter-sectoral collaboration
special programme interventions to harness, sustain, and expand women's role in biodiversity, especially in the backdrop of the commercial process of the seed industry and the much-talked-of Intellectual Property Rights
Policy measures should include protection of farmers' rights and community knowledge in biodiversity management. Simply stated, without ownership rights being given to farming communities, biodiversity cannot be conserved.
The imperatives for such an agenda arises from the fact that all natural resources, including biodiversity, are finite. However, the need for such resources for mankind is virtually infinite. The biosphere, comprising the outer layer of the earth's surface and the lower part of the atmosphere, earlier thought to possess unlimited resources and resilience is now recognised as a delicate system with finite resources and limited ability to recover from misuse or overuse. While non-renewable resources may at one time be completely used up, renewable resources will continue to provide the needs of the people so long as their very base is not depleted or destroyed. Natural resources, whether renewable or non-renewable, must, therefore, be used rationally, economically, and judiciously—so that our need is not jeopardised by the greed of others and the needs of the present do not destroy the prospects of the future.
Prof. M. S. Swaminathan
Chairman
M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, India
On the eve of the UN Conference on Environment and Development held at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists published an open letter titled World Scientists' Warning to Humanity which stated that “human beings and the natural world are on a collision course…if not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.” This warning was signed by over 1,600 scientists from leading scientific academies in 70 countries, and included 104 Nobel Laureates.
I wish to take biodiversity, one of the key components of our basic life support systems, as an example to illustrate what changes are needed in the management of our biological resources. It is now widely realised that the genes, species, ecosystems and traditional knowledge and wisdom that are being lost at an increasingly accelerated pace limit our options for adapting to local and global change, including potential changes in climate and sea level.
Another important paradigm shift witnessed in recent decades in the area of management of natural resources is the change in the concept of ‘common heritage’. In the past, atmosphere, oceans and biodiversity used to be referred to as the common heritage of humankind. However, recent global conventions have led to an alteration in this concept in legal terms. Biodiversity is now the sovereign property of the nation in whose political frontiers it occurs. The global commons for example the oceans, can be managed in a sustainable and equitable manner only through committed individual and collective action among nations.
Biodiversity and Human Security
While we have some knowledge of variability at the ecosystem and species levels, our knowledge of intra-specific variability is poor, except in the case of plants of importance to human food and health security. What kind of action will help us to ensure not only the conservation of biodiversity, but also its sustainable use? I would like to discuss this issue with reference to two major threats to biodiversity in general, and agro-biodiversity in particular:
Habitat destruction
Genetic homogeneity in farming systems
Habitat Destruction
How do we arrest the trend of habitat destruction and prevent further genetic erosion? I would like to summarise briefly the approach adopted in India as well as at our Research Centre in Chennai (Madras) to foster an Integrated Gene Management strategy in the country. We use the term management in the context of natural resources to include conservation, sustainable use, and equitable sharing of benefits. It is only such a concept of management that can result in the conservation as well as enhancement of natural resources.
The Integrated Gene Management system includes in situ, ex situ and community conservation methods. The traditional in situ conservation measures comprising a national grid of national parks and protected areas are generally under the control of government environment, forest, and wildlife departments. The non-involvement of local communities in the past in the sustainable management of forests has resulted in a severe depletion of forest resources in India. It has become clear that sole government control alone will not be able to protect prime forests or regenerate degraded forests.
Community Gene Management
Both in situ on-farm conservation of intra-specific variability, particularly in plants of food and medicinal value, and ex situ on-farm conservation through sacred groves have been part of the cultural tradition of rural and tribal families in India. In the Old Testament also, there are several references to sacred groves. Gadgil and Vartak (1975) defined sacred groves as tracts of forest that have been completely immune from human interference on the basis of religious beliefs. Unfortunately, several of these beliefs are now tending to disappear. It is only by giving explicit recognition to the pivotal role of community conservation in strengthening ecological, food, and health security systems that we can succeed in the revitalisation of these conventions. In national integrated gene management systems, in situ, ex situ and community conservation methods should receive adequate and concurrent attention. A recognition and reward system, based on FAO's concept of Farmers' Rights and the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) provisions for ethics and equity in benefit sharing, should become an integral part of national legislation in the fields of biodiversity conservation and plant variety protection.
Participatory Forest Management
The Participatory Forest Management (PFM) procedure became a significant turning point in the history of forest management in India as well as other Asian countries (see Samar Singh et al, 1997 and Mark Poffenberger et al, 1997). The essential feature of this system is that the state and community become partners in the management of the forest resource. The state continues to own the resource but the benefits are shared. Access to non-timber forest products becomes an important avenue of sustainable livelihoods to the forest-dependent communities. Thus, the community develops an economic stake in the preservation of forests, leading to conservation and sustainable use becoming mutually re-inforcing components of a Forest Management Policy. The experience gained in India in the last 25 years shows that the process of natural forest degradation can be reversed through PFM and that forests can provide non-wood forest products to the local community on a continuous or seasonal basis, if there is a more widespread understanding of their regenerating capacity. Since forests are the habitat for a large proportion of naturally occurring biodiversity, saving forests results in saving genes.
Biosphere Management
In 1994, MSSRF conducted a detailed study of the threats to the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve in Tamil Nadu, one of the 9 Biosphere Reserves in India. The study showed that unless the livelihood security of the impoverished families living in that area can be strengthened, unsustainable exploitation of biological resources will continue.
Between 1996 and 1998, MSSRF worked on a proposal for bringing the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve under a participatory management mode. The project proposal was approved by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Council at its meeting held in May 1999 and commended as a model that deserved to be widely emulated by those preparing similar projects. The Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) of GEF endorsed the project for approval with the following remarks:
The project addresses a major challenge, namely, the conservation of coastal biodiversity of the highest ecological value in a large area subject to considerable pressure from poor populations upon the sole resources that appear to be at their disposal. To meet this challenge, the project follows the only framework which can succeed, namely, to combine the necessary protection of the threatened ecosystem and ecological processes with economic and social benefits which will meet the essential needs of local people, through providing appropriate institutional, financial, and managerial arrangements.
The management structure through which people and nature will be united in the area is through a Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Trust. Representatives of fishermen and rural communities as well as all the principal civil society stakeholders will, together with government representatives, form the members of the Trust. It is hoped that the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Trust, whose long term sustainability will be ensured with the help of a Trust Fund, will show the way for promoting a management-by-partnership system of governance in all the other Biosphere Reserves in the country.
There is a proposal to develop a similar plan for the Similipal Biosphere Reserve, one of the tiger reserves, in collaboration with the Government of Orissa. The result of this program will be the establishment of a Similipal Biosphere Trust managed jointly by the major stakeholders.
A major need in such programs is the strengthening of the livelihoods of the poor families living in the vicinity of the Biosphere Reserve. For this purpose, the biovillage model of livelihood security will be introduced in the villages around the Reserve. The biovillage concept of human-centred rural development aims to address concurrently the challenges of natural resources conservation and poverty eradication (Swaminathan, 1999). Market-driven livelihood opportunities will be identified and local families will be assisted in taking to them with the help of institutional credit. The steps involved are:
micro-level planning with GIS maps
micro-enterprises identified on the basis of market needs
micro-credit
industry support for contract cultivation by small farmers on the basis of buy-back agreements
Genetic Resources Enhancement and Sustainable Use
Tribal and rural farming communities have a long tradition of serving as custodians of genetic wealth, particularly landraces often carrying rare and valuable genes for traits like resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, adaptability and nutritional quality. Farmers for religious ceremonies preserve several land types that carry valuable genes and they constitute valuable material for conservation and sustainable use.
Local landraces are still being maintained largely by the tribal poor. Such poverty-ridden custodians of genetic wealth are increasingly confronted with severe socio-economic problems that are rendering the maintenance of their traditional conservation ethics difficult. Steps are urgently needed to link their conservation efforts to the strengthening of their livelihoods.
It is now widely recognised that the conservation continuum consists of the following three links.
| In situ | In situ | Ex situ | ||
| Conservation of habitats | → | On-farm conservation by rural and tribal communities | → | Conservation through botanical and zoological gardens and cryogenic preservation |
While the two ends of this conservation chain (namely, in situ and ex situ) receive support from public funds, in situ on-farm conservation by rural and tribal women and men remains largely unrecognised and unrewarded. Yet, this link in the chain is responsible for the conservation of valuable intra-specific variability. MSSRF's partnership with local communities and government agencies is designed to strengthen this neglected component in the conservation chain.
For this purpose, a Community Gene Management System is being developed, initially in three pre-dominantly tribal, biodiversity-rich districts of Orissa—Koraput, Khandamal, and Kalahandi known for their variability in rice and millets.
The Community Gene Management System (CGMS) comprises the following:
Field Gene Bank (FGB) at the village level
In situ on-farm conservation by rural and tribal families
Participatory breeding (selection)
Area Seed Bank (ASB) at the level of a cluster of villages
Conservation of representative samples of seeds in seed stores
Insurance against total loss of seeds during drought years
Community Gene Bank and Herbarium (CGB)
Cryogenic preservation
Evidence for getting tribal families reward and recognition under the proposed Plant
Variety Protection and Farmers' Right Act
Field Gene Banks are basically in situ on-farm centres of conservation. Landraces and location-specific plant genetic resources (PGR), usually identified on a participatory basis with the local families, are conserved in FGBs. The local landraces are periodically grown in their native habitats for seed renewal. They serve as effectively decentralised and highly cost-effective arms of a community gene management system. The FGBs would ensure in situ on-farm maintenance of landraces and preservation of the cultural and cropping practices under which PGR acquired their distinctive traits.
Several FGBs can be linked to an Area Seed Bank (ASB) taking into account factors like distance, communicability, conservation space, and the like. There could be two to three seed banks in a district. The ASB will help to strengthen coping mechanisms for facing the problem of seed scarcity caused by drought-induced crop failures.
One or more ASBs will be linked to the Community Gene Bank (CGB). The CGB would hold ex situ the seed stocks of landraces, etc., along with herbarium sheets and other information needed to get the primary conservers reward and recognition under the proposed Indian Act for Plant Variety Protection and Farmers' Rights. The CGB could deposit duplicate sets of accessions in the National Gene Bank (NGB) of the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources at New Delhi.
The operational efficiency, low transaction costs, and conservation potential of such a network will encourage their replication and implementation at state and national level. Thus, an effective integrated national gene management system can be built up. The Community Gene Management System provides an opportunity for fostering symbiotic partnerships between rural/tribal society and scientists in areas like participatory breeding and the development of new varieties adapted to local conditions using novel genetic combinations provided by genetic enhancement centres.
Genetic Homogeneity
Genetic homogeneity associated with mono-cropping and modern agriculture leads to the replacement of large numbers of local varieties with a few high-yielding strains. Varietal diversification and crop rotations involving crops with non-overlapping pest sensitivity are important for sustainable agriculture. The transition from ‘green revolution’ to an ‘ever-green revolution’ involves the substitution of a commodity-centred approach by a farming systems approach. The farming systems approach involves the adoption of mixed farming (crop-livestock-fish) methodologies, based on an integrated natural resources conservation strategy.
In most developing countries, particularly in India and China where 50 per cent of the global farming population live, continuous advances in farm productivity per units of land, water, and energy are essential for sustainable food security. Hence, there is need for developing and disseminating ecotechnologies, based on appropriate blends of traditional wisdom and systems with bio-, information, space and renewable energy technologies. The ecological prudence of the past and the fruits of contemporary innovation can then be combined in a symbiotic manner.
With the growing privatisation of plant breeding and expansion of proprietary science, it is important that an ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable farming systems policy is developed for each agro-ecosystem. Such a policy will have to be developed jointly by farming families, official extension agencies, and private sector companies. Unilateral introduction in large areas of one or two genetically modified strains of important food crops could cause irreparable harm in a few years' time both to food security and technological credibility. The pathway to an ever-green revolution on the farm is the adoption of integrated natural resource and gene management strategies.
Gender Dimensions of Biodiversity Management
It is important that in all these aspects of a community-centred integrated gene management strategy, gender roles in all approaches to genetic resources conservation, sustainable use, and equitable sharing of benefits are given attention. Women in many developing countries are the primary seed selectors and savers. Their contributions to the evolution of a biodiversity conservation ethic should be fully recognised in any system which is designed to operationalise the equity in benefit sharing provisions of CBD.
If we promote a worldwide community-centred integrated gene management strategy, we will soon stop hearing about disappearing species and vanishing landscapes and habitats. None of the policies and procedures I have suggested is difficult to implement. By recognising that conservation efforts represent a continuum, with rural and tribal families performing a vital function in preserving precious genetic variability in important plants and farm animals, we will be able to attend to all the links in the conservation chain. Community conservation is a value-added link in the conservation system, since local families not only conserve but also add value to the conserved material through selection and information.
If the twentieth century was a period of understanding and chronicling threats to biodiversity and bioresources both in land and water, let us hope that the twenty-first century will be one where the threats are terminated and benefits harnessed for a better common present and future for humankind.
REFERENCES
Gadgil, M. and V. D. Vartak. 1975. “Sacred Groves of India: A Plea for Continued Conservation.” In Hornbill, No 72. Mumbai: Bombay Natural History Society. pp 314–320.
Poffenberger, Mark, Peter Walpole, Emmanuel D'Silva, Karen Lawrence, and Arvind Khare. 1997. Linking Government with Community Resource Management. Asia Forest Network - Research Network Report, Number 9. A Report of the 5th Asia Forest Network Meeting held at Surajkund, India, in December 1996.
Singh, Samar, Avinash Datta, Anil Bakshi, Arvind Khare, Sushil Saigal, and Navin Kapoor. 1997. Participatory Forest Management in West Bengal. New Delhi: World Wide Fund for Nature India.
Swaminathan, M. S. 1999. A Century of Hope: Towards an Era of Harmony with Nature and Freedom from Hunger. Chennai: EastWest Books (Madras) Pvt. Ltd.
