Seven exercises are presented for use by team members who are involved with community environmental projects (some of which includes community forestry). Each exercise focuses on some aspects of gender and the environment. It is suggested that these exercises are used by small working groups mixed by both sex and work experience.
This source book is organised into five sections: 1) background articles on issues of gender, environment, and natural resources, including discussion questions (see also Warren 1992(b) and Davis-Case 1992) 2) a set of cases from the field with a number of discussion questions 3) seven exercises related to the cases and background articles of use for training project teams (see Warren 1992(c)) 4) a brief glossary of relevant terms 5) a bibliography of published resources and easily accessible materials organised by region and topic area.
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.
The Ugandan national parks service is setting a strategy of multiple use within its parks, with community participation in the management of forest areas. The aim is to allow harvesting of non- timber forest products in a sustainable manner. 7 'pilot' communities have been identified, and PRA is to used in these areas to undertake JFM. Community committees have been set up, although they consist mostly of local leaders. A number of historical and visual techniques attempted in order to promote small and large group discussions, and collaborative forest management agreements. Both the community and the national parks board appear to be happy with the progress so far.
An examination using participatory tools, predominantly informal interveiws and group meetings, of people's use of trees in homegardens. The study area is one where people have been resettled in the last 2-10 years, from regions which were very differently climatically, and where a different range of tree species were available and suitable. There is an analysis of people's perceptions of their problems, as well as the level of local expertise in tree planting.
Activitists for Social Alternatives, an Indian NGO, began to use PRA in order to reach the poorest villagers. This report describes their experiences since 1990, under the specific areas where PRA workshops were conducted: tank rehabilitation, watershed development, herbal medicine, women's issues, health and income generation (non agro based). The "process" section of the annexures describes in detail the PRA methods used and findings (including diagrams and pictures): village modelling, trend change, seasonality and linkage activities were used to explore women's perspectives on health and social issues. The Gender PRA training workshop was attended by women from 22 villages - sharing their personal problems "developed a strong bond and solidarity which later led to the formation of a women's coordination committee". They took up issues like "eve teasing, child marriage, dowry, wage and deserted women" and "feeling the need for educating the public about the problems of women, planned for an International Women's Day celebration this year".
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Participatory modelling was organised by a team on a training course in North Omo. To avoid the men dominating the activity, as is usual if only one group is formed, the group was divided into men, women and children. Each group created a model which showed their different perceptions and " a version of their area which begs certain emphases and areas for intervention."
The author argues the need to include women's issues in an RRA, since "analysis of likely or actual "before" and "after" situations are less obvious for women than for men". The "tarmac bias" is more significant for women than for men, so the RRA approach can offer significant gains. The article outlines how the RRA process can explore women's issues, but stresses the danger of "compartmentalising them" within the eventual overall report.
This case study examines gender roles and rural livelihood systems in Pwani, a recently populated resettlement village on the western edge of Lake Nakuru Park in Kenya. The objective of the research was to understand the ways in which natural resources are managed in the community and within the household, with emphasis on the institutions and individuals who make and carry out management decisions, particularly as distinguished by gender. PRA was one of several methodologies used to carry out the research. Spatial data was obtained through transects, village sketch maps and farm sketches. Time lines, trend lines and seasonal calendars provided time-related data. Social data was gathered through household interviews and diagrams of village institutions. By linking gender-focused research and PRA it was possible to learn about gender within the context of the community's history, its future aspirations and its resource management and development problems.
This study investigates issues of gender and resource management in Siquijor island in the Philippines. A rapidly growing population, severe environmental degradation and declining economic growth means that rural women and men are often forced to make short-term decisions about managing natural resources which are not necessarily appropriate for the long-term sustainability of the resource base or of their families. The study analyses gender roles in rural livelihood systems in order to clarify the ways in which rural people are responding to these problems, and to give direction to future efforts to assist these processes. The research methodology involved the complementary use of PRA techniques and more conventional survey methods. For example, wealth ranking was used to ensure that the household survey sample proportionately represented the range of household circumstances in each community. The results of the wealth ranking and household interviews were then used to help formulate questions for key informant interviews, focus group meetings and a short confirmation survey. Other PRA methods used included transects, mapping, seasonal calendars and institutional analyses.
This paper opened an international conference on Rapid Assessment Procedures (RAP). The author describes some of the main themes emerging from a decade of RRA and RAP. It is claimed that RAP has "launched some social sciences on a path of methodological re-tooling". RAP is viewed as a new force changing the development planning process and development planning process and development activities at community level. Examples are given of both the powers and the pitfalls of the RAP technique. Two sets of risks are examined: 1) intrinsic - connected with accuracy; representativeness; cultural inappropriateness; subjectivity 2) extrinsic - arising from failing to give RAPs a proper place or weight within a research strategy. It is concluded that RAP techniques complement rather than replace conventional quantitative techniques.
A three day training workshop and three weeks of fieldwork were conducted by a team of nine women in two parts (one typically urban and the other typically rural) of the Gaza Strip. The purpose was to understand the social and economic roles of women better, to obtain more information on women's projects and teach PRA methods to other women. A wide range of PRA tools were used. The PRA covered all aspects of women's socio-economic wellbeing including health. In the urban areas, health problems include the psychological and physical stress consistent with exposure to military activities. Possible development alternatives are discussed and ranked: a health clinic is the first of four alternatives in the rural area and the third of seven in the urban area
Participatory Rural Appraisal was conducted in two villages in Southern India in order to supplement formal survey information. One of the objectives was to develop a procedure for determining emic indicators of health and nutrition security. Four types of PRA were employed: i) participatory mapping (conducted separately by women and men) - to identify 'high' and 'low' risk households; ii) food charts - participants use beans to indicate the relative importance of foods consumed; iii) women's activity chart - beans are used to indicate the relative time spent on daily activities. iv) seasonality chart - this method was conducted with small groups (differentiated by gender and caste) to understand the yearly changes in rainfall, harvest of staples, food consumption, labour demand, childhood illness and women's illness. An ethnographer used in-depth interviews, key informant interviews, focus group and participant observation to conduct six household case studies in the two survey villages. The PRA techniques generated emic indicators of food-security which could be compared with the etic indicators of the formal survey.
This long and detailed study describes how the mandal (administrative area) of Devikere in Jagalar, Karnataka State was selected as the appropriate site for an Action Aid anti-poverty project. A socio-economic survey was conducted by a multi-disciplinary team using mainly RRA techniques. The methodology employed appears to have much in common with farming systems research. A section of the report is devoted to health issues. This includes: nutrition and food availability; mother and child wellbeing, health practices and beliefs; the environment; housing; occupation and health services. The anthropological/ethnographic technique of using case studies of individuals adds a strong human dimension to the study. Separate sections are devoted to women, infrastructure and sanitation, and socio-economic conditions.
This report was presented during the UNU/WHO/UNICEF International Conference on Rapid Assessment Methodologies for Planning and Evaluation of Health Related Programmes. It is asserted that development institutions should integrate rapid assessment methodologies into the the normal diagnostic, monitoring, and evaluation activities of implementing agencies. This article highlights four types of constraint likely to impede the process of institutionalisation: 1) the constraints of mistrust as efforts are made to encourage a flow of information between hierchical layers of an organisation. 2) the constraints faced by the effort to faclitate participatory development 3) planning and implementation mechanisms 4) personnel supervision and reward systems. Particular reference is made to World Bank experience.