The primeval forests in Middle Earth are inhabited by tree-like creatures, the great Ents in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Amid threats from the dark forces, Tree Beard, the eldest of the Ents, convenes an Entmoot, the equivalent of a forest council, to discuss their moves.
The moot is shown as a democratic and inclusive method of decision-making, but with a significant feature: it has no Entwomen in the council or in the entire forest. “Tolkien with a deft flick of story-telling tells us that the Entwives who kept order and peace and cultivated gardens have long disappeared. In other words, women and their work have been made invisible. Moreover, there is no hint that Entwives were ever invited to an Entmoot.'”
This little anecdote from Tolkien’s classic serves as a parable of sorts for the argument that runs as an undercurrent in economist Bina Agarwal’s treatise: no women in decision-making bodies is equivalent to a negation of all the forest produce for which only women have any use.
The book studies local forest governance from a gender perspective and seeks answers to two questions. First, what difference would it make if women were present in forest governance institutions? And, second, how much presence do women need for making a difference?
Agarwal studied the forest management committees started as part of a new forest policy in 1988 which shifted emphasis on forests for commercial gain to forests for fulfilling local subsistence needs and conserving the environment. But these committees, which were a partnership between the forest department and the villagers, created new inequalities because women who previously had rights as citizens over the village commons found themselves with little say. Agarwal studies community forestry groups mainly in Gujarat in India and in Nepal to assess the results of the exclusion of women. The results suggest that the objective of conserving the environment has been met while the other goal of fulfilling local subsistence needs has been unfulfilled, with women and the cattle at the receiving end.
The priorities of men and women in their relationship with the forests vary dramatically. Women prioritise fruit, fodder, firewood and non-wood products and men tend to prioritise species that provide timber. Women are keen on local fruit that children like — tamarind, jamun, amla and sitaphal. For firewood, women differentiated between smoky and smoke-free tree species.
These differing needs also imply the differing impact on men and women from forest decline. For women, it means more time spent gathering fuel, less time left for crop production and, therefore, lower incomes, says Agarwal. The differing needs when clubbed with rules for forest use made by men-only forest committees imply a negation of women’s needs.
In the chapter on gendered interests and environment, Agarwal makes out a case for women-dominated forest management groups and cites their greater abilities at cooperation seen in crop cultivation and interdependence in day-to-day activities.
Across India, there are over 84,000 joint forest management (JFM) groups, but they are in themselves no less a problem as far as exclusion is considered. Do they represent women’s rights to the forests as they exercised them prior to the formation of these committees?
In her chapter “From Absence to Negotiated Presence”, Agarwal says that traditionally, women as forest users held the same rights as men to local forest resources. Later the rules began to be set by men as forest guards, and village headmen and forest officials were predominantly men in the centralised systems of forest management. The decentralisation of forest management created conditions conducive to women’s entry into forest governance but did not assure it.
The presence of women is sparse in the two-tier governance structures of the new committees — the general body constituted of all members and the executive committee of nine to15 members.
In 1993, of the 14 states that first initiated JFMs, six allowed general body membership to one person per village household, the rest to a couple per household. But even in states where all representatives of the villagers were included, as in Gujarat where the survey was conducted, male members remained the spokesperson for the family. Wherever changes were introduced, it was to the extent of a nominal representation of women, suggesting that an arbitrary number of two women in these committees, which makes little difference, Agarwal notes. She found that half the violations of rules for conservation and gathering of forest products are by men and relate to cutting timber. The violations were fewer in areas managed by groups run by women or with women members, she says.
All-women patrol teams were also found to be more effective in preventing thefts of forest products, besides women members being able to spread information about rules much better and faster than men. So, while conservation benefited, the committees have left women worse off. There were fodder shortages and people were found cutting down on cattle numbers and food intake. While fodder shortages were being addressed by male members, firewood shortages were never addressed by committees unless there was a woman member, the survey finds. And the firewood shortage was mostly thanks to under-extraction for which solutions could be found if the matter was negotiated in the committees and rules for extraction made accordingly. For this, the author feels that women need a bigger role in the matter.
But she argues that merely having women in the committees won’t solve the problem of firewood shortages. The committees also need to make strategic linkages with civil society and government to tap funds for clean-energy cooking sources like bio-gas plants which need just two heads of cattle.
The book is also a call for a more gendered approach to the problems of forest management. It also tries to fill the yawning gap left by all the research so far into forest resources that have been made leaving out the main dependants and protectors of the forest: women.
GENDER AND GREEN GOVERNANCE
The Political Economy of Women’s Presence Within and Beyond Community Forestry
Bina Agarwal
Oxford University Press
488 pages; Rs 625
