Volume 5, Number 1
July 1999

Gender Equality and Biodiversity

Beth Woroniuk (bworoniuk@ggi.ca), of Goss Gilroy Inc. in Canada, asked for references to analyses of gender equality and biodiversity (linkages, key issues, best practices, and so on). She is working on a short "tool" for a development cooperation agency and trying to communicate key issues and insights in a brief, readable fashion. The idea behind the tool is to see how and why gender equality issues are relevant in this area. Joanna Kerr (jkerr@pop.web.net) replied that Green, Joekes, and Leach, "Questionable Links: Approaches to Gender in Environmental Research and Policy," in Cecile Jackson and Ruth Pearson, eds., Feminist Visions of Development (Routledge, 1998) is an important essay on the ways that environmental policies and programs have attempted to incorporate gender analysis.

Ritu Verma (RVerma@idrc.ca) pointed to two International Development Research Centre publications that could be helpful: "Guidelines for Integrating Gender Analysis into Biodiversity Research" (1998) and "Resources for Gender Analysis and Mainstreaming" (1998). Both are available on the IDRC website (www.idrc.ca/research/index_e.html) at the SUB (Sustainable Uses of Biodiversity) webpage. Further inquiries can be made to Erin O`Manique, (eomanique@idrc.ca).

Revathi Balakrishnan, regional rural sociologist and WID officer at FAO, provided an update on work undertaken by FAO's Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (RAP) on the gender dimensions of biodiversity management. FAO RAP's interest and work in biodiversity management relates only to agro-biodiversity. In the last two years, RAP has funded studies on Gender Dimensions and Biodiversity Management in Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

RAP has plans to find funds and talent to complete studies in the other two South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries. In the next phase the focus will shift to Southeast Asia.

Publications are at various stages of review and revisions. After reviewing the initial drafts, FAO RAP came to the conclusion that more work was needed in order to obtain additional information from women themselves on agro-biodiversity management. M.S. Swaminathan edited and published the case study for India in 1998: Gender Dimensions in Biodiversity Management (Konark Publishers, A-149 Main Vikas Marg, Delhi 110092, India). Copies can be directly purchased from the publisher.

Another document published by FAO RAP that could be of interest is "Forest Dependent Survival Strategies of Tribal Women: Implications for Joint Forest Management in Andhra Pradesh India" (FAO, Bangkok, 1997).