PAMELAAYIERAMARINDA, FRANZHEIDHUES
University of Hohenheim, Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences in the Tropics and Sub-tropics, Germany
Gender equality and empowerment of women is one of the effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease, and to stimulate development that is sustainable. The government of Kenya has made efforts to promote women’s active involvement in all areas of societal development, in addition to ensuring that development is based on the contributions and concerns of both men and women. Despite these efforts, there are still clear gender inequalities in areas where both men and women’s roles are visible, for example in health, education, agriculture and in some remunerated work.
The aim of this paper is to assess the social and economic costs of gender discrimi-nation; these costs are incurred in suboptimal resource allocation, in lost agricultural productivity and in deficient nutrition of household members. The study is motivated by the fact that despite women playing an important role in agricultural production and in ensuring good nutrition for household members, many women in Kenya do not have the same access to resources like men do. This study argues that: with the same access and control of productive resources by both male and female headed households in a given geographical area, the levels of agricultural productivity and nu-trition outcomes in male headed households should not be significantly different from those of female headed households. Any difference would be attributed to differences in access to resource caused by gender discrimination.
The study analyses the food and nutrition situation in female and male headed households in relation to access to human capital, financial capital and land. The results show that human and financial capitals are the main resources that caused variations in both agricultural productivity and nutritional status in the two categories of households. Despite male headed households having access to more land than the female headed households, there was no significant difference in average area of land cultivated in the two categories of households. Economic cost analysis of unequal access to resources by gender is done using an econometric model.
Keywords: Access to resources, food and nutrition security, gender discrimination, Kenya
Contact Address: Pamela Ayiera Marinda, University of Hohenheim, Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences in the Tropics and Sub-tropics, Institute 490 a, 70599, Stuttgart, Germany, e-mail:
Subsession 1b: Resource Tenure and Resource Access — Oral Presentations
Forest Management between Conservation and Poverty Alleviation
KLASSANDER, MANFREDZELLER
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Institute of Rural Development, Germany In Madagascar, the management of forest resources is framed by widespread and extreme poverty and a continuous loss of the country’s unique biodiversity. As a re-sponse, the government of Madagascar has adopted conservation as the guiding prin-ciple for natural resource management. The decision is based on the results of macro-economic studies that emphasise macro-economic values such as biodiversity, recreation, and watershed protection. In addition, these analyses suggest that it is especially the poor-est people who benefit most from the conservation of natural resources. However, the success of this conservation strategy is planned to be measured mainly against progress made in reducing the present rate of deforestation, but not against indicators of economic development and poverty alleviation.
Therefore, it is the purpose of this study to carry out an economic analysis of alterna-tive forest management strategies from the viewpoint of rural household in Madagas-car using cost-benefit-analysis. In this context, this study places significant interest on a detailed exploration of the complex socio-economic and socio-cultural environment framing the decision-making process of natural resource utilisation by rural house-holds. In addition, economic aspects at the household level are combined with natural science data of forest resources to analyse the interdependence of ecosystem dynam-ics and economic decision-making processes. This extends the analysis beyond mere economic aspects of resource management and it provides further information how alternative management strategies can meet the increasing direct demand on forest resources, while also achieving the objective of biodiversity conservation. One em-phasis of this research project is to analyse the potential of alternative management strategies to contribute to the overall goal of poverty alleviation in Madagascar taking into account the subjective welfare judgement of the individual rural households. The quantitative analysis is complemented by a discussion of qualitative research results that are judged important to be taken account of whenever policy measures are de-signed in the future for achieving sustainable forest management. The emphasis of this study is to analyse the potential of alternative forest management strategies to contribute to the overall goal of poverty alleviation.
Keywords: Biodiversity, conservation, cost-benefit-analysis, forest management, poverty alleviation
Contact Address: Klas Sander, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Institute of Rural Development, Waldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, Germany, e-mail:[email protected]
Session 1: Institutional and Policy Challenges
Forestry in Tripura — Case Study of Resource Access and Conflicts
AVINASHSHRIVASTAVA Department of Forest, Tripura, India
This paper presents a historical and an analytical account of the struggle for domi-nance and changing dynamics of access control in various phases of forest use. The history of forestry in Tripura has been marked by a struggle for dominance. A diago-nally opposed production–consumption need, of the forest based people and the state, constitutes this struggle. To facilitate the analysis, the historical spread of the struggle has been divided into four periods, namely pre-commercial period before 1887, initial period of commercialisation 1887–1950, scientific forestry–period of commercialisa-tion 1950–1990 and joint forest management period after 1990.
The first phase is characterised as a period when forests and forestland were abun-dant to meet the needs of the primitive society. The access to forests and forestland was open to anyone who wanted to use it. In the second phase the State started its efforts to dominate the forests. The tribal people and peasants were marginalised and their traditional uses of forest and forest resources became criminal act and illegal.
In the third phase while the State continued to increase its domain, the resistance of the tribal people and peasants also intensified. The State used various mechanism in-cluding legislation and police force to retain its hold on the forests. The tribal people and peasants responded with their own overt and covert resistance in coalition with politicians and other wings of the functionally divided state.
The apparent effects of degradation brought the realisation among the warring ac-tors to resolve the struggle. There was a policy shift based on participatory system of management, founded not on mutual antagonism but on a genuine partnership be-tween the state and its citizens which immensely improved the situation. It is con-cluded from this case study that there is a necessity of evolving new institutions tai-lored to meet the requirements of different situations which will ensure local people’s participation as well as the use of experience and support for the forest department so that both local people and the State can work together rather than at cross purposes.
Keywords: Conflict, forest management, resource access
Contact Address: Avinash Shrivastava, Department of Forest, Tripura, India, e-mail:avinash_chandra_
Subsession 1b: Resource Tenure and Resource Access — Posters