Gender and Natural Resource Management: an Introduction

This is a very brief introduction to the topic of women and natural resource management. Deforestation has received the widest notoriety as a symptom of environmental degradation, which has been manifest in the social, economic and environmental costs of fuelwood scarcity to women and their families. The least powerful members of society seem to suffer first from the loss of access to natural resources: women with their primary responsibilities for household subsistence; forest-dwelling peoples dependent on forest habitat for sustenance and trade goods; landless people dependent on wage labour and common property for their livelihoods; any people who cannot afford substitutes.