Nepalese housewife Manohara Khadka believes rural women are the best protectors of local forests.

For rural women, the forest is a source of livelihood, providing fuel and food, she said. Because of that, women do their best to care for the forest.

Women, however, have so far been excluded from international discussions on protecting forests —the so-called REDD talks.

REDD stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and is a plan to do just that — reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

With the REDD plan in place, countries are required to reduce deforestation and receive financial benefits in return.

“Women have been excluded from the discussions, meaning they are not considered stakeholders,” Khadka said. “It also sends the wrong message to women that REDD will end community access to forests.”

Khadka said women would be useful for policy making as they could provide insight on ways to protect the forest, as well suggestions for benefit sharing once the REDD projects are in place.

In Nepal, half of its population of eight million live near forests.

Of the country’s 5.5 million hectares of forest, 1.2 million hectares are categorized as community forest.

REDD talks have been taking shape in the last three years, since forest loss was predicted to contribute 20 percent to global emissions.

The REDD plan is expected to be one of the priority issues to be discussed at the Cancun climate talks.

A REDD text did not include a single word on women’s involvement in the plan. The text only discussed the roles of indigenous people in protecting forests.

“Women are explicitly excluded from what is happening now [in the REDD talks]. Gender is a missing link in REDD,” Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management director Jeannette Gurung said.

Jeannette said rural women in Asia who have innate skills to protect forests were not involved in the REDD plan’s implementation.

“Women know nothing about the REDD business because governments in Asia pay no attention to gender issues,” she said.

Jeannette said she had spoken with women in Indonesia, including Aceh, which is one of the candidate provinces to host a REDD pilot project.

Indonesia has the largest amount of forest in Asia, with 120 million hectares of rainforest.

“The Indonesian government needs to make gender one of the indicators in determining the REDD pilot project host,” she said.

The Indonesian government was slated to announce the province that would host the pilot REDD project this year.

The governments of Indonesia and Norway have a US$1 billion climate deal to reduce forest loss, which had hit over 1 million hectares per year.

The Alliance of Archipelago Indigenous People estimated there were 50 million to 70 million in-digenous people living in Indonesia. Most of them live around or in forests.

Among the main concerns of indigenous communities are conflicts over forest borders and rights to forests.

Indigenous women experience a double exclusion, not only from the government, but also from their own communities because many indigenous people have patriarchal systems in which men hold all the important customary positions.

International Union for the Conservation of Nature senior forest policy adviser Carole Saint-Laurent also said gender issues received low priority in the discussions on REDD policies.

“Women often carry the brunt of the impact from climate change, as they often manage the natural resources in rural communities. But they are left out of REDD talks,” she said. (By Adianto P. Simamora)

Source: The Jakarta Post

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