Gender Research in Natural Resource Management

Building Capacities in the Middle East and North Africa

Malika Abdelali-Martini, Aden Aw-Hassan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415728539
• eBook ISBN: 9781317916338
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Social Sciences

The aim of this book is to highlight the role that gender research can play in understanding natural resource management and rural development issues in the Middle East and North Africa region and how hands-on training and mentoring can be used as a capacity enhancement approach. It presents findings of four research teams, working in three countries, Algeria, Lebanon and Morocco.

The approach was to build the capacity of national teams through hands-on field research, mentoring and technical support, which is different from traditional training. The chapters present the results of the case studies used as learning platforms for the teams and reflections on this approach. The case studies demonstrate the capacity and skills that the teams have acquired. These teams were multi-disciplinary and included social scientists as well as specialists in water management, livestock production and rangelands and agronomy. The book provides grounded empirical examples for MENA academics, practitioners and development students concerned about ensuring gender-balanced rural development.

1	The emergence of the capacity development initiative on social and gender analysis in MENA
	Malika Abdelali-Martini^1 and Liz Fajber^2

Introduction

With increasing environmental and economic pressures, poor women and men of the MENA region are challenged to meet daily livelihood needs. These populations depend upon an increasingly fragile natural resource base for food and economic security and are increasingly vulnerable to climatic variability and change. Furthermore, poor women and men are hindered by limited access to resources and services, exacerbated by political and social inequities. Women, in particular, despite their significant role in agriculture and environment and natural resource management, own fewer and have less access to resources including land, water, livestock, inputs, credit and technologies, potentially limiting productivity (World Bank 2012).

Social hierarchies and power relations heavily influence access to and control over resources and benefits, and it is critical to understand the way institutions govern the use of natural resources. Gender-based relationships influence the division of resource-based labor and access to resources. Such relationships are dynamic and differ from one society to another, and depend greatly on wider social, cultural, political and economic processes. Therefore, a sound understanding of social differences, social inequalities and power relationships is needed to answer questions of who participates and how, and who benefits and how, from research and development interventions, projects, programs and policies (Cornwall 2003; Feldstein and Jiggins 1994; Beck and Fajber 2006).

In order for development efforts to materialize into real progress for poverty alleviation in the MENA region, analysis of social, gender, economic and institutional dimensions of environment and natural resource management including agriculture are critical in the development of appropriate interventions and policy responses. Despite significant progress made by research in tackling ENRM challenges, the effective integration of social and in particular gender analysis (SAGA) remains minimal, thereby limiting the effectiveness and impact of research, development and policy activities that seek to address poverty and environmental sustainability. Key reasons for this include a lack of capacity within the MENA region to apply SAGA in practice, limited regional resources demonstrating the effectiveness of SAGA in research, and institutional biases that neglect the importance of social and gender issues. To date, approaches for capacity development have primarily focused on building technical skills in biophysical sciences, and the institutionalization of SAGA in research, academic and development organizations of the region remains a challenge.

Therefore, in order to effectively address the development challenges of poverty, social and gender equality and environmental insecurity in the MENA region, the capacity within the region to conduct social and gender analysis in ENRM research needs to be enhanced. This challenge of capacity building, while emerging from regional experience, resonates deeply with experiences in other regions, such as in Asia (Fajber and Vernooy 2006), and opportunities exist to draw on lessons of what is effective to strengthen the institutionalization of SAGA in ENRM research.

To address this need, the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas, the International Development Research Centre of Canada and partners embarked on a regional initiative to strengthen SAGA in ENRM research activities in the MENA region. The development of this program involved initial steps to assess regional needs, critical gaps, and weaknesses in SAGA of past and on-going projects, initiatives and approaches in MENA (what is working, what is not and why); and develop a collaborative approach for an iterative capacity development program. This included review of literature, review of regional research and capacity building program and workshops with key regional experts. The following sections outline key results which emerged from these processes and discussions:

1	The importance of social and gender analysis in environment and natural resource management in the region;
2	Challenges and opportunities for social and gender analysis and capacity building in MENA;
3	The focus of the project on social and gender analysis in environment and natural resource management in MENA.

Gender, poverty and environment and natural resource management in the Middle East and North Africa: development challenges

The rapid population growth in the MENA region during the last decades is reflected in the overwhelming majority of young people in all countries. This has led to high dependency ratios, which average 54.1 in the overall region. In other words, for each 100 people of working age (15–64 years), there are 48.7 children (0–14 years) and 5.5 older people (55 years and above) (OECD 2011).

The recent social, political and economic changes in the Middle East and North Africa will certainly leave their footprints, although each country will change in its own way and at its own pace depending on its resources. This will particularly affect gender relationships while managing the available resources. In MENA as elsewhere, climate change will also impact on human mobility. By the end of the century, MENA is projected to become considerably hotter and drier. In several MENA countries overall growth and poverty levels are strongly dependent on agriculture and agricultural related activity, and most of them depend on rain-fed agriculture, making this population highly vulnerable to reduced rainfall and shifts in rainfall timing and distribution. As a consequence important migration flows are observed (Abdelali-Martini and Hamza 2012), composed mainly of men to earn or to compensate a meagre living existence at origin where natural resource economies are insecure and highly vulnerable. Migration is also gendered.³ The impact of male migration on women translates into additional vulnerability, through the exacerbation of existing economic disparities, increases in women’s workload, disruptions of activities with gender-differentiated roles, and further limits women’s access to male-dominated institutions such as extension agencies or market.

Countries in the MENA region face a number of impediments to development, including widening social and economic gaps between rich and poor, rapid population growth, and persistent gender discrimination. Poverty is actually relatively low in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – 17 per cent of the MENA region live below $2 a day. Poverty can be reduced by rapid economic growth (above 2 per cent per capita). However, poverty persists because it is concentrated among groups which are the last ones to benefit from growth: the illiterate or uneducated, rural dwellers, large families with many dependents. Gender inequality and a deficit of women’s empowerment are increasing in the MENA region with serious implications for poverty reduction. Furthermore, gender inequality – the differential access to opportunity and security for women and girls – has become an important and visible issue for the economies of the Middle East and North Africa (Hosni et al. 2005, World Bank 2011). The lack of women’s empowerment, through their exclusion from control of environmental assets and household income, perpetuates the status quo of women and hinders the attainment of Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) in general. Three countries in the region fall in the bottom third of countries ranked in the Gender Inequality Index (UN HDR 2011), with Morocco 104th, Sudan 128th, and Yemen at the bottom at 146th. Furthermore, equitable human development in the Arab region has been impaired by two governance deficits: one in state capacity and accountability and one in societies’ empowerment (UNDP-AHDR 2009, UNDP 2011).

These negative social development trends are exacerbated by deterioration of the natural resource base (land, water, biodiversity) upon which the population, especially poor women, men and children depend. The region is plagued by high rates of environmental degradation (World Bank 2008). The most water scarce region in the world, MENA countries are challenged by frequent droughts, high climatic variability, desertification, land degradation and inefficient management systems that further stress irrigated, rainfed and pastoral agriculture-livestock systems. Worsening drought conditions compounded by increasing demand for water and a crisis in water quality are forcing the MENA countries, including the energy-rich Arabian Peninsula, to consider costly measures to confront the effects of climate change (Sowers et al. 2011). Water resources will become increasingly scarce with climatic change (Cabot Venton 2007), resulting in severe impacts on agricultural production systems and competition for resources that could escalate conflicts and violence at local, national, and even international levels. Urban areas also face difficulties of limited water availability and poor water quality, ineffective treatment of waste and pollution resulting in increases in disease, and the challenge of meeting food and basic needs of growing urban populations.

This deterioration of natural resources has profound impacts, particularly on poor people who depend on agricultural production systems for their livelihoods. An estimated 17 per cent of the MENA region were below $2 a day in 2005, and 2.6 million more people are projected to be in poverty because of the crisis by 2011 (World Bank 2011), and comprise the landless or families with very small marginal lands (Rathgeber 2003). For a large portion of the region, agricultural production and livestock management are central to meeting their food and livelihood needs. However, agricultural production remains limited, primarily due to fragmented and small land holdings, low and highly variable rainfall, land degradation, limited crop production and post-harvest practices, lack of inputs, and poor market linkages. Constraints to livestock production include limitation of availability and quality of pasture, forage and feed resources, disease and poor health services, marketing and pricing policies (ICARDA 2002a). The agricultural sector has been constrained by poor agricultural policies dominated by strong central government interventions, including macro-economic, trade and sectoral policies that discriminated against agriculture (ICARDA 2002b). This has contributed to a strong reliance on food imports to meet national needs for many of the countries in the region, which, with global rises in food prices, has led to severe repercussions on poor women and men who are unable to afford basic staples to feed their families.

There has been increasing interest and evidence in the last few years of the significant and essential roles of women in agricultural production, livestock management, management of natural resources, and marketing of derived products, and of the potential of investments in women and agriculture to achieve gains in productivity, food security, and livelihoods (World Development Report 2012; FAO 2011a; FAO 2011b; World Bank, FAO, and IFAD 2009; IFAD 2007a). In the MENA region, the FAO estimates that the female share of the agricultural labor force has risen from 30 per cent in 1980 to 45 per cent in 2011. However, women have less access than men to productive resources and opportunities, including land, livestock, extension, inputs, financial services such as credit and technology (World Bank 2012; FAO 2011a,b; Meinzen-Dick et al. 2011). Where women may have access to some material resources (for example land), they may lack the necessary inputs (for example fertilizer) or technologies or knowledge (how to effectively apply the fertilizer). This is compounded by a lack of extension services reaching women, with only 5 per cent of global extension resources directed at women; and only 15 per cent of extension personnel female⁴ (FAO 1993). This lack of equitable access and opportunities for women in agriculture and ENRM imposes costs on the sector, the broader economy and society as well as on women and their families. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that equal access to resources for female farmers could increase yields in developing countries by 20–30 per cent, and agricultural outputs as much as 2.5 to 4 per...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Contributors
• Acronyms and abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1. The emergence of the capacity development initiative on social and gender analysis in MENA
• 2. Marginalisation of women’s work as a result of changes in pastoral societies and natural resources
• 3. The potential loss of traditional know-how of qashabiya production in Djelfa, Algeria
• 4. Gender and marketing of qashabiya in Djelfa (Algeria)
• 5. Occupational health and prospects of empowerment for female weavers: evidence from a home-based activity in the informal sector in Djelfa, Algeria
• 6. Access of rural women’s cooperatives to markets in Lebanon: barriers, enablers and options for action
• 7. Factors of market access success for traditional food industry in Lebanon: some themes pertinent to rural women’s cooperatives
• 8. Gender inequality in the context of climate change: the case of the Boudinar commune in Morocco
• 9. The effects of changes in climate and water resources on gender inequality in Boudinar community in Morocco: the case study approach
• 10. Social Analysis Systems (SAS) for gender research and social capital enhancement
• 11. Exclusion of women from local development initiative doomed to failure: the case of the Middle Atlas community of Maâmar in Morocco
• 12. The ripple effect of the SAGA research process: the case of Boudinar Community in Morocco
• 13. Capacity building effects of the social and gender analysis project: approach and lessons learnt
• 14. Conclusion
• Index