Transcript Eco-Feminism - Carreograph

Women Status
Women’s essential contributions to over all
environmental health, development and economy
are negatively influenced by domestic tasks such
as gathering of fuel wood, biomass for cooking. In
reality, wood burning, kerosene stove and open
fireplaces emit significant quantities of known
health damaging pollutants.
Women Role
Women bear almost all responsibility for meeting basic needs of the
family, yet are systematically denied the resources, information and
freedom of action they need to fulfill this responsibility
• The vast majority of the world poor are women. Two third of the
world’s illiterates are female. Of the million of school age children
not in school, the majority are girls.
• And today, AIDS/ HIV is rapidly becoming a women’s disease.
• The current world food price crisis is having a severe impact on
women.
Women Empowerment
Effective bottom- up strategies for
ending hunger and poverty combine
three factors mobiliging people at the
grass root level to built self reliance,
empowering women as key change
agents
and
forging
effective
partnerships with local government in
India.
Eco-Feminism
Ecofeminism can be defined as a 'value system, a social
movement and practice...(which) also offers a political
analysis that explores the links between androcentrism
and environmental destruction.
• A branch of feminism that unites ecological and feminine
themes.
• It represents an important branch of environmental ethicsa normal philosophy which evaluates right or wrong action
of human being toward environment.
• The advocates of this approach state that women, because
of their biological and their social roles, have an innate
concern for nature.
• Through their roles as life-givers (child- bearing ) and nurtures, women
are closer to nature than man.
• It is emphasized in their approach, that current environmental
problems will remain unsolved unless related feminine qualities (such
as caring etc) are allowed to mold social life and policies.
• The eco-feminists want to make free the entire nature from the
oppression especially from male dominated policy making society and
state.
• Their deep concern centres on the problems& position of poor women
especially of there world cocentres.
According to the ecofeminists, one also needs to realize the interconnectedness of all life-processes and hence revere nature and all
life-forms. Humans should not try to control nature, but work along
with it and must try to move beyond power based relationships. This
would mean integrating the dualisms based on the polarization of the
male and female in one's conception of reality.
Women Possess Power for Change
• In India, the most visible advocate of ecofeminism is Vandana Shiva.
One would tend to categorize her work with the ecofeminists of the
radical mode, but her critique of the entire development model and its
effects on the environment, places her more among the ecofeminists of
the socialist framework.
• Vandana Shiva (1988) critiques modern science and technology as a
western, patriarchal and colonial project, which is inherently violent
and perpetuates this violence against women and nature. Pursuing this
model of development has meant a shift away from traditional Indian
philosophy, which sees prakriti as a living and creative process, the
'feminine principle', from which all life arises.
• Under the garb of development, nature has been exploited mercilessly
and the feminine principle was 'no longer associated with activity,
creativity and sanctity of life but was considered passive and as a
"resource".' This has meant the beginning of the marginalization,
devaluation, displacement and ultimately the dispensability of women.
• Women's special knowledge of nature and their dependence on it for
'staying alive', were systematically marginalized under the onslaught of
modern science. Shiva, however, notes that Third World women are not
simply 'victims' of the development process, but also possess the power
for change. She points to the experiences of women in the Chipko
movement of the 1970s in the Garhwal Himalayas-where women
struggled for the protection and regeneration of the forests.
Women-Environment Relations Historically Variable
• Women, particularly in poor rural households, are both victims of
environmental degradation as well as active agents in movements for
the protection and regeneration of the environment. They act in both
positive and negative ways with the environment.
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The unquestioning acceptance of the woman nature link and the idea
that since women are most severely affected by environmental
degradation, they have 'naturally' positive attitudes towards
environmental conservation, is, therefore, unacceptable.
• The forest and village commons provide a wide range of essential
items such as food, fuel, fodder, manure, building material, medicianal
herbs, resin, gum, honey and so on, for rural households in India as
well as in much of Asia and Africa. For the poor, village commons (VC)
are a vital source for fuel and fodder. Ninety-one per cent of their
firewood needs and more than 69 per cent of their fodder needs are
met by the VCs (Agarwal 92). Access to VCs reduces inequalities in
income among poor and non-poor households.
•The forest are an important source of livelihood, particularly for
tribal populations. Studies have shown that nearly 30 million
people in India depend on forests and forest produce to a large
extent (Kulkarni 1983). The dependence on forests is much more
during lean agricultural seasons and famines or droughts.
•Class differences are once again highlighted in the dependency
on and accessibility to water resources for irrigation and drinking.
While, for a large percentage of poorer households, water is used
directly from rivers and streams, richer households sink deep
wells and tubewells and tap groundwater for drinking and irrigation
•The growing degradation of natural resources, both qualitatively and
quantitatively, the increasing appropriation by the state and by private
individuals, as well as the decline in communally-owned property, have
been primarily responsible for the increased class-gender effects of
environmental degradation. Besides, the decline in 'community
resource management systems, the increase in population arid the
mechanization of agriculture, resulting in the erosion of local
knowledge systems have aggravated the class-gender implications of
environmental degradation' (Agarwal 1992).
•With the disappearance of forests, VCs, shortage of drinking water and
so on, women have to spend more time and walk longer distances to
get fuel, fodder, food and water. Drying up or pollution of wells
accessible to lower-caste women has meant an increase dependence on
upper-caste women to dole out water to them. This has increased the
burden on women and young girls and has even led to increasing cases
of suicide among them (Bagaguna 84; Shiva 88).
• The degradation of forests and the historical and ongoing malpractices and
state policies and increasing privatization have restricted the access of
villagers to forests and VCs which has directly resulted in reduced incomes.
The extra time spent in gathering has reduced the time available to women for
crop production, where they are the main cultivators, as in the hill regions
due to high male outmigration (Agarwal 92).
•The little that women earned through selling firewood is also reduced due
to deforestation. This has a direct impact on the diets of poor households.
The decline in the availability of fruits, berries and so on, as well as
firewood, has forced people of poor households to shift to less nutritious
food or eat half-cooked meals or even reduce the number of meals eaten
per day.
•The existing gender biases within the family lead to women and female
children getting secondary treatment with regard to food and health care.
Given the kind of tasks poor rural women do, such as working in the rice
fields, fetching water, washing clothes, etc., they are more exposed to
water-borne diseases and to polluted water bodies (Mencher and
Sardamoni 1982). It is also women who are mainly responsible for the care
of the sick within the family.
Material Base of Women's Knowledge Declining
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The displacement of people due to large dams, or large-scale deforestation,
etc., has led to the disruption of social support networks within and between
villages. Women, particularly of poor, rural households, who depend to a
large extent on such networks for economic and social support, are
adversely affected (Sharma 1980). It has also eroded a whole way of life and
resulted in alienation and helplessness (Fernandes and Menon 1987).
Old people and widows or deserted women are most neglected. The
dominant forms of development have led to a devaluation and
marginalization of women's indigenous knowledge and skills which they have
acquired through their everyday interaction with nature. Simultaneously, they
are not trained to use the new technologies and are excluded from the
planning process. With degradation and privatization of natural resources,
the material base of women's knowledge is declining.
The Ecological Marxists, influenced by Marxist philosophy see the unequal
access to resources as the basic problem in society. They are most closely
identified with People's Science Movements and are now advocating
environmental protection. They are against tradition and emphasize
confrontational movements. For them modern science is indispensable for
building a new society. Falling between these two streams are the
Appropriate Technologists. With regard to modern science, they are
pragmatic, arguing for a synthesis of traditional and modern technological
knowledge systems. Though they recognize the existence of socio-economic
hierarchies, they do not clearly tackle them.
Active involvement of Women in Chipko Movement
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The emergence of the Indian environmental movement can perhaps be dated
to 1973, when the famous Chipko movement began in the central Himalayas.
The Chipko movement emerged as a protest against the granting of
permission for access to the forests to commercial timber operators, while
the local people were refused access to the forests for making agricultural
implements.
The movement, which spread rapidly to other villages, saw the active
involvement of women. They worked jointly with the men of their community
and in some cases even against them, when they differed with them over the
use of forest resources.
Women were more concerned with the long term gain of saving the forests
and environment and hence, subsistence and survival issues, rather than the
short-term gain through commercial projects like monoculture forests,
potato-seed farms, etc.
The scope of the movement broadened and involved issues of male
alcoholism, domestic violence, women's representation in village councils, as
well as against mining in the hills.
It helped women recognize the inter-connections between nature and human
sustenance. The movement was carried forward largely by women using
Gandhian techniques of protest.
Women's Participation in Movements of Sixties and Seventies
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In the first phase of their movement in the pre-Independence era, women were
mainly involved with the national liberation struggle.
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Women's organization essentially focused on constitutional equality and
amendments to Hindu laws.
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With the achievement of independence, a period of lull ensured.
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The mid-sixties witnessed general discontent and displeasure in society,
especially among the youth jand the working class.
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All over India, in the mid-sixties and early seventies, there were student
protests, anti-price rise morchas, tribal revolts, the Naxalbari movement and so
on.
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Women participated in large numbers in these movements. As a result of the
mid-sixties' crisis, the 1970s witnessed a resurgence of the women's
movement.
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A number of autonomous women's groups emerged that questioned the
development plans and policies and put forward gender equality as an
operative principle.
• Some of the major debates that engaged the women's movement were issues
of women's oppression, violence against women, the campaign for women's
rights that challenged the dichotomy between public and private sphere and the
social, cultural, economic and political manifestations of 'gender'.
• The debate over growth, development and equity isues from a woman's
perspective have thrown new light on the dimensions and causes of gender
inequality.
• The women-and-development innovations on women's work and income,
effects of migration, increase in female headed households, exploitative
conditions in the unorganized sector and in the free trade zone industries
(Banerjee 1991; Kalpagam 1994), impact of environmental degradation, and so
on. Issues of peripheral groups of tribals, poor, landless, rural and urban women
also gained recognition.
• This led to an extended debate over what constituted 'work' and 'non-work'.
Whether housework was to be considered 'productive' and whether women were
exploited and oppressed within the household. Discussions have also begun
over the origins and development of women's oppression.
Women In The Field Of Environmental Sciences
• Women's participation in the formulation, planning and execution
of environmental policy continues to be low. At the same time, the
international community has recognized that without women's full
participation, sustainable development cannot be achieved.
• Women have a key role to play in preserving the environment and
natural resources, and in promoting sustainable development. For
example, women still have the main responsibility for meeting
household needs and are therefore a major force in determining
consumption trends.
• As the women play a leading role in all the household affairs of a
family, which is based on the family values. It is no wonder that
the women are outstanding and able to glorify all the national,
religious, economic, education, health, cultural fields as they are
born of and brought up in the society which gives honors to them.
• As such, women have an essential role to play in the development
of sustainable and ecologically sound consumption and
production patterns.
Role in prevention of health hazards from environmental
pollution
• As every one knows all the activities of any household started with
women from morning to evening.
• They play the keystone role in dealing the air, water, soil, living
creature and all above the environment as a whole.
• As we are very sensitive to the various kinds of environmental
pollutions like water, air, soil and noise pollution.
• And these kinds of pollutions invite the several kinds of diseases like
food poisoning, bacterial, fungal and viral attack and several kinds of
carcinogenic problems.
• The famous women in this are Amita Devi, Maneka Gandhi, Medha
Patekar, Arundhati Royand, Rachel Carson and many more.
Environmental planning
• Environmental planning is a field of study that since the 1970s has
been concerned with a given society's collective stewardship over its
resources that ultimately includes those of the entire planet.
• The aims of environmental planning are to integrate the public sector
urban planning with the concerns of environmentalism to ensure
sustainable development, notably of air, water, soil and rock resources.
• Planning seeks to include into consideration for future growth of
society factors other than those urban planners have traditionally
factored in economic development, such as transportation, sanitation,
and other services in legislator decisions, by working with
environmental planners to add sustainable (social, ecological & equity)
outcomes as important factors in the decision-making process.
Elements of environmental planning
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What exactly constitutes the "environment", however, is somewhat open to
debate among these practitioners, as is the exact scope of the intended
environmental benefits. Chief concerns among environmental planners
include the encouragement of sustainable development, equity,
environmental justice, green building technologies, and the preservation of
environmentally sensitive areas.
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The primary concern of environmental planning is expressed in the
assessment of three spheres of environmental impact by human economic
activity and technological output:
– Biophysical environment
– Socio-economic environment
– Built environment
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The environmental planning assessments encompass areas such as land
use,
socio-economics,
transportation,
economic
and
housing
characteristics, air pollution, noise pollution, the wetlands, habitat of the
endangered species, flood zones susceptibility, coastal zones erosion, and
visual studies among others, and is referred to as an Integrated
environmental planning assessment.
An objective view of the environmental planning process is often framed in
perspectives offered by the integration of assessments of the natural
resources, the environment as a system, the scientific perspective, and the
social scientific perspective.
As with other forms of planning, the processes in environmental planning
include distinct facets of organisational activity such as:
•Legislative planning framework
•Administrative planning framework
•Environmental resource management planning
•Landscape ecological planning
•Ecological urban planning
•Environmental planning information dissemination
•Decision making in environmental planning