Galina Chus-Moulaye

1

GALINA CHUS-MOULAYE

ID UM2758SES6927

OOOAIU ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE

Student’s profile

Participatory and Gender Approach

ATLANTICINTERNATIONALUNIVERSITY

Table of Contents

Introduction...... 3

1. General Analysis...... 3

1.1 Participatory approach...... 4

1.2 Gender, a cross-cutting priority...... 6

2. Towards participatory approach and gender mainstreaming in

environmental policies...... 11

Conclusion...... 13

References...... 14

Introduction

It is of great importance to address environmental issues from a gender perspective.While environmental degradation has severe consequences for all human beings, it affects mainly women and children. Women and girls walk great distances every day carrying 20 litres of water or fuel. “Progress on water and sanitation is essential to empower women who suffer most from a lack of freshwater and private sanitation facilities”.[1] They could devote their precious time to schooling or doing other productive work.

It is clear that “the most appropriate way to manage environmental issues is with the participation of all interested stakeholders “at the relevant level”.[2] Principle 10 of the Rio declaration provides some basic public participation institutional components of good governance. The Aarhus Convention, considered a model for environment democracy, took root in Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration. The Convention adopted and opened for signature in June 1998, “is a new unique international agreement which provides the public with rights to access to information, participation and decision-making, and access to justice in environmental matters”.[3] It can be a basis for developing a framework for managing public participation in relation to sustainable development or decision-making policies. Greater awareness of environmental information will empower the citizens and enhance the democratic participation. UN Secretary-General called the Convention “the most ambitious venture in environmental democracy undertaken under the auspices of the United Nations. Its adoption was a remarkable step forward in development of international law as it relates to participatory democracy and citizens’ environmental rights”. The success of the Aarhus Convention will depend not only on the political will of governments but also on the readiness of the public to exercise the rights stipulated in the Convention. The public involvement will ensure that the Convention remains a living instrument.

It is important to explore the roles of women and men in relation to natural resource use and management and make them responsible for a gender approach in environmental work.

“A gender sustainable development perspective should be infused with a commitment to change the cultural values and sexual division of labour, to attain, in the near future, a state where men and women share power and labour in the management and control of fragile ecosystems”.[4]

1. General analysis

Participation is a currently a key aspect of democratic decentralization which is an institutionalized form of participatory approach and aims at increasing accountability and by bringing public decision-making closer to the local populations. Participation is believed to make plans more relevant, give people more self-esteem, and to help legitimize the planning process and the state as a whole (Conyers 1990).

“Critical voices about participatory initiatives have focused largely on mismatches between overambitious aims and poor practice. One such breach is that between claimed social inclusiveness and the reality of gender biases (Guijt and Kaul Shah, 1998). Despite the aims of participatory development to involve people in development affects them directly, surprisingly little attention is paid to understanding who wants to ‘participate’, what makes their participation possible, and what’s in it for them. Often, participatory processes have left women on the sidelines, along with the gender issues that shape their lives”.[5]

Sustainable development places people at the heart of development and gives the highest priority to poverty reduction, environmental regeneration and women’s participation in development process.Gender is inherent in the notion of participatory development.

“Any definition of development is incomplete if it fails to comprehend the contribution of women to development and the consequences of development for the lives of women. Every development policy, plan or project has an impact on women and cannot succeed without the work of women. And development with justice calls urgently for measures that will give women access to better jobs; that will diminish the arduous tasks and hundreds of millions of women face in their domestic and agricultural occupations; and that will distribute more fairly between the sexes opportunities for creative work and economic advancement”.[6]“Gender has often been misunderstood as being about the promotion of women only. However, gender focuses on the relationship between men and women, their roles, access to and control over resources, division of labour and needs.”[7]Inequality begins with basic human relationships between men and women who have faces extraordinary barriers worldwide and in particular in developing world.

1.1 Participatory approach

“Participation is in its ideal form when there is self-organization, self-responsibility and self-actualization”, says Burkey (1993). He also states that participation is essential for human development, self-confidence and growth. Participatory approach incites and teaches people to take charge of their own lives.

Participation is both a goal and method of change. First, it refers to the society without monopoly of political, economic and social powers in the hands of elite. Second, participation is a means that serves to develop the organizational capacity of those presently excluded in order to identify and express their needs and contribute to solving them.

Popular participation has become a fashionable, frequently used/misused concept which also vague and ambiguous. It is necessary to adopt bottom-up or participatory approaches in order to reach the poor and disadvantage people and guide them towards self-development efforts. Government and non-governmental organizations and agencies realized that the main reason of many unsuccessful development projects was the lack of active and lasting participation of the intended beneficiaries. Therefore, they started to promote the participation of people, particularly disadvantaged women and men on a pilot basis.

There is a wide range of definitions of participation:

“(1) sensitizing people to make them more responsive to development programmes and to encourage local initiatives and self-help; (2) involving people as much as possible actively in the decision-making process which regards their development; (3) organizing group action to give to hitherto excluded disadvantaged people control over resources, access to services and/or bargaining power; (4) promoting the involvement of people in the planning and implementation of development efforts as well as in the sharing of their benefits; and (5) in more general, descriptive terms: “the involvement of a significant number of persons in situations or actions which enhance their well-being, e.g. their income, security or self-esteem”.[8] Self-development and self-reliance should be an outcome of participation allowing the poor practise the self-development.

The mechanism through which the theorists – Manor, Oyogi, and Smoke- believe that efficiency and equity should increase is by bringing public decisions closer and making them more open and accountable to local populations.

Walter points out, “Democratic governance cannot be realized at the centre if it does not obtain at the local level. Governance is democratic at the local level to the extent by which people are able to influence the process and substance of decisions made by government that are likely to affect them”.

It is crucial to establish dialogue, partnership and participatory approach among the main stakeholders and diverse actors. “Local authorities have often become open to adopting participatory practices in their work. In many cases, local authorities unused to proactivity on the part of the communities they serve, initially opposed community-initiated projects, but were later convinced of the merits of this approach.”[9]

The term non-governmental organization encompasses a diversity of actors such as professional associations, labour groups, and church communities; in short, any non-profit groups with self-governing mechanisms and outside government. NGOs have becoming more active due to several factors: increasing recognition of global problems, the emergence of media and new communication tools, the spread of democracy and transparency.

“Public participation, and in particular NGOs, are very important factors in the development of environmental policy and institutions, both at the national and international levels. Among many roles, NGOs actas mobilizers of public opinion, publicizing the nature and seriousness of environmental problems, shifting public and political attitudes towards environmental issues and placing them high on the national and international political agenda; as advocates of view points and interests that governments and international organizations do not fully take into account; as watchdogs, monitoring the implementation and enforcement of environmental obligations; as policy analysts and expert advisors to governments and international organizations; and as bridges between local and global politics, supporting the local implementation of international environmental agreements”.[10]

NGOs are increasingly using participatory approach in natural resource management (NRM). Use of gender analysis involves describing who does what and when; who controls resources and makes decisions about them, and who benefits from this distribution of responsibilities. Nina Lilja and Jacqueline A. Ashby define different types of participation:

• Conventional: scientists make decisions alone without organized communication with populations;
• Consultative: scientists make the decisions alone, but with organized communication with populations;
• Collaborative: implies a shared decision between the populations and scientists through two-way communication;
• Collegial: populations make decision individually or in a group.[11]

Decentralization and participatory local governance are at the heart of MDGs because the achievement of many of the goals is dependent upon effective service delivery at the local level which is impossible without participation of citizens who can hold their leader accountable for the fulfilling these goals. Good governance, based upon the public, civic and private institutions, insures that the state meets needs of the people and that it is held accountable for the delivery of services. Nowadays, participation in governance is considered a right and is seen as fundamental to the social transformation necessary for development.

Democratic local institutions can better respond to local needs and aspirations due to their close proximity and are easily held accountable downwardly what is the centre of decentralization process. “Effective decentralization is defined by an inclusive local process under local authorities empowered with discretionary decisions over resources that are relevant to local people. Democratic decentralization reforms present the opportunity to move from a project-based approach toward legally institutionalized popular participation. Decentralization is believed to help to improve equity through greater retention and fair or democratic distribution of benefits from local activities.”[12]

“There are limits to the effectiveness of representative mechanisms as vehicles for popular participation. This goal is especially difficult to achieve in fragile democracies, in areas where party bureaucracies are not very democratic, and in large rural constituencies where face-to-face contact between constituents and councillors is rare, where significant groups or interests are underrepresented, and where information is scarce, communication poor and education levels low”.[13] The main constraint of genuine participation is the political will to promote this in a country that can be overcome by means of different strategies at international and national levels. The outcome of the strategies must be that officials and elites become motivated to support or tolerate the participation of the disadvantage people.

“If world leaders and international institutions are to be the highest expression of people’s values, and authentically inspired be the populace they represent, civil society must itself embody those ideals.”[14]

1.2 Gender, a cross-cutting priority

Gender is inherent in the notion of participatory development however, the role of woman as the home-maker has not really changed and the equation is similar worldwide, irrespective of regional, national, or religious differences. The power-sharing seems to have reached a critical level: men are not willing to delegate any more of their power to control economic and political activity while women are unable to accept more of the multiple responsibilities of home and office without the power to alter existing socio-cultural equations. It is crucial that women be empowered to change our society.

Wikipedea defines gender as follows “In a variety of different contexts, gender refers to the masculinity or femininity of words, persons, characteristics, or non-human organisms. The classification into masculine and feminine is analogous to the biological sexes of male and female, often by physical or syntactical analogy, linguistic decay, misunderstandings, societal norms, or personal choice. Gender Equity, Gender Equality, or Gender Egalitarianism is the belief in the equality of the gender or the sexes. Many followers of this philosophy would like to see this term come to replace “feminism” or “masculism,” when used to describe a belief in basic equal rights and opportunities for members of both sexes within legal, social, or corporate establishments. They strive for ultimate fairness, and seek cooperative solutions so as to make things better for both males, females and everything in between. While they may share a number of critiques and analyses with self-described feminists and/or masculists, they feel that “egalitarianism” is a better word for a belief in equality than any word that focuses on one of the genders.”[15]

“The world is unique for every human being, but, in general, women’s lives vary greatly from those of men because of patterns of socialization related to gender.”[16] Different theorists have demonstrated that it is a gendered concept. “Although the citizen has been traditionally depicted as a universal gender-neutral category, closer examination of the characteristics associated with this supposedly genderless citizen reveals that he possesses qualities that women have been historically assumed not to possess and/or have been systematically denied.”[17] Citizenship is constructed in a male image “with a number of specific references to ’himself and his family’ revealing an underlying assumption that the rights-bearers of these treaties are male household heads”.[18] Equal political rights are guaranteed but women are still under-represented in political structures. Early United Nations efforts to promote social and economic development were gender-blind. In 1970s, the UN policy included explicit consideration of women in development, however emphasizing women’s role in reproduction and not production. Nowadays, women’s specific social and economic needs are incorporated into the UN system.

Citizenshipis a contract between the individual and the society the individual lives. It is at the same time a framework that enables people to participate in political life. “The way we define citizenship is intimately linked to the kind of society and political community we want” stated Mouffe in 1992. “On one side of the citizenship ‘coin’ citizenship equals entitlement to a range of rights. On the other side of the citizenship coin is the issue of participation in governance…All are committed to the idea of active citizenship, in which individuals are at liberty to contribute their skills and knowledge to society through participating in public decision making which is relevant to their lives”.[19] Citizenship has ended to be restricted to men and dominant social groups. There exists an age-old stereotype of men as actors in public life who represent the interests of all the family and women in particular. This means that women have no independent status to appeal to the state for support. In some countries, women are denied full citizenship rights outright. Modernising these laws is a great challenge, especially, because women are still marginalised and do not take active part in politics nor governance.

Gender equality and the advancement of women, like human rights, are cross-cutting aspects of United Nations policy and its activities. The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) is a voluntary fund that works to promote the political and economic empowerment of women in developing countries by strengthening women’s economic capacity as entrepreneurs and increasing women’s participation in decision-making.

On one hand, women’s knowledge about the environment is valuable but often been ignored. On the other hand, because of limited access to education women may be ignorant about some environmental issues like water pollution, waste disposal or safe use of agrochemicals. Another crucial factor is access and control over resources. There are still gaps in access to and control of resources; historically, women have inferior rights over resources than men do.

“Gender-sensitive governance means not just ensuring that women are equally represented in public institutions, but also ensuring that these institutions provide equal access to services and opportunities and encourage participation in a way that promotes the human rights of women as well as men, based on the evidence that most women still start from a different place”.[20] Change of personal behaviours is required as well as challenges to socio-economic and cultural structures.

Gender equity is essential for countries’ economies, sustainable development and environmental conservation. Innumerable women organizations have contributed to natural resources management and the vivid example of the links between gender and natural resources is the Green Belt Movement launched in Kenya in 1977. Since its creation, the Movement has created a national network; in addition it has spread to other countries through Pan-African Green Network.

In spite of the fact that women have a decisive role and contribute actively to development and environment preservation, the entrenched patterns of gender inequality persist determined by social and cultural contexts; patriarchal values are instilled from childhood. Different current trends – fundamentalism, wars, globalization and environmental issues- feed the wide gap of gender inequality. In some African countries two thirds of women depend on land or/and other natural resources for their livelihoods; consequently it is important to redress the disparities related to land ownership in order to assure secure and direct access to land. All forms of discrimination against women’s access to natural resources must be removed.