Yearly archive for 2011.
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Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development and World Hunger
›June 22, 2011 // By Kellie FurrProviding women with equal access to productive resources and opportunities may be the key to bolstering the struggling global agricultural sector and feeding communities living in extreme hunger, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) latest State of Food and Agriculture report, which this year is sub-titled, “Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development.”
“Women are farmers, workers, and entrepreneurs, but almost everywhere they face more severe constraints than men in accessing productive resources, markets, and services,” write the authors. “This ‘gender gap’ hinders their productivity and reduces their contributions to the agriculture sector and to the achievement of broader economic and social development goals.”
Barriers to Productivity
Globally, women comprise 43 percent of the agricultural labor force, ranging from 20 percent in Latin America to 50 percent in southeastern and eastern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, according to the report. But despite their significant global presence, female farmers face gender-specific constraints that hinder access to productive resources, financial support, information, and services required to be viable and competitive. “The yield gap between men and women averages around 20 to 30 percent, and most research finds that the gap is due to differences in resource use,” write the authors.
Generally, women are more likely than men to hold lower-wage, part-time, or seasonal positions and tend to get paid less even when they are more qualified. Furthermore, domestic and occupational lines are blurred for women, who are often not compensated for work that is closely related to domestic food preparation. Most significantly for agricultural productivity, women across the developing world often lack access to quality land, sometimes being barred from land ownership. This ban precludes female farmers from exercising managerial discretion over farming activities, such as entering contract farming agreements. Women also generally own less livestock and contract for less labor – two crucial assets for marketable agricultural production in many developing countries. Moreover, because of insufficient land and resources, women farmers are also more vulnerable to climate shocks.
Resource barriers for female farmers extend to education, finance, and technology as well. The authors observe that “female household heads in rural areas are disadvantaged with respect to human capital accumulation in most developing countries, regardless of region or level of economic development,” which represents a historical bias against females in education. Despite notable success observed in finance projects involving female farmers, gender bias exists in the financial system, which prevents women from bearing initial financial risk in order to increase long-term productivity gains. Sources of gender bias in the financial sector include legal barriers, cultural norms, lack of collateral, and institutional discrimination by public and private lenders. Due to the aforementioned lack of credit, labor, and education, women farmers are deficient in all aspects of technology, such as the acquisition of new equipment, information about new seed varietals and animal breeds, pest control measures, and management techniques.
Global Implications
Closing the gender gap could have profound implications for easing world hunger. According to the FAO, approximately 925 million people are currently undernourished, most of whom live in developing countries. If women were given all the inputs and support as men, agricultural output could increase by 2.5 to 4 percent in developing countries, potentially reducing the world’s hungry by 100 to 150 million people. “This report clearly confirms that the Millennium Development Goals on gender equality (MDG 3) and poverty and food security (MDG 1) are mutually reinforcing,” FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf argues in his introductory remarks.
Increasing the economic viability of women farmers may also translate into better infant and child health indicators – when women control additional income, they tend to allocate more of their earnings toward the health and well-being of their children. Closing the agricultural gap is “a proven strategy for enhancing the food security, nutrition, education, and health of children,” Diouf asserted. “Better fed, healthier children learn better and become more productive citizens. The benefits would span generations and pay large dividends in the future.”
Finally, the FAO notes that in addition to reducing child mortality rates, increasing female education and economic prosperity helps lower fertility rates, which over time increases human capital and can help drive a demographic transition towards lower dependency rates and higher per capita growth.
Closing the Gender Gap
“The conclusions are clear,” write the authors:1) Gender equality is good for agriculture, food security, and society; and
Though they note that “no simple ‘blueprint’ exists for achieving gender equality in agriculture,” the authors do recommend some basic principles to the development community, including working towards eliminating discrimination against women under the law, strengthening rural institutions and making them gender-aware, freeing women for more rewarding and productive activities, building the human capital of women and girls, bundling interventions, improving the collection and analysis of sex-disaggregated data, and making gender-aware agricultural policy decisions.
2) Governments, civil society, the private sector and individuals, working together, can support gender equality in agriculture and rural areas
Recognizing that “women will be a pivotal force behind achieving a food secure world,” the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has actually launched initiatives aimed directly at closing the gender gap. The Feed the Future initiative, announced last spring, includes a heavy focus on gender equity and integration with small-scale farming initiatives. For example, the Office of Women in Development is supporting a three-year project in Liberia, “Integrated Agriculture for Women’s Empowerment,” that aims to train and support 1,500 small farmers in Lofa county, two-thirds of whom are women. And in Rwanda, USAID helped the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources – headed by Dr. Agnes Kalibata – develop a national investment plan, which has been successful in bringing in donor support.
However, the FAO report does not offer specific feedback on programs like Feed the Future, which is arguably a crucial component of a truly comprehensive assessment on the current state of agriculture. Though they write that the State of Food Agriculture series is intended to simply be “science-based assessments of important issues,” the infancy of these food security efforts and the immediacy of the problems examined (see recent food price instability) creates an excellent opportunity for critical input. “Women in Agriculture” offers perhaps the most comprehensive report on the gender gap and development to date, but more specific critiques on the current efforts of USAID and others might make more of an impact in a field where the issues at play have been fairly clearly enumerated many times before.
Sources: Food and Agriculture Organization, The Hunger Project, International Fund for Agricultural Development, Population Action International, USAID.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Ngurumo Village-Ntakira (Kenya),” courtesy of flickr user CGIAR Climate. -
Tim Siegenbeek van Heukelom, State-of-Affairs
Food Security in Kenya’s Yala Swamp
›June 21, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Tim Siegenbeek van Heukelom, appeared on State-of-Affairs.
In West Kenya on the Northeastern shore of Lake Victoria, the Yala swamp wetland is one of Kenya’s biodiversity hotspots. The Yala swamp also supports several communities that utilize the wetland’s natural resources to support their families and secure their livelihoods. Even more, many people recognize the swamp’s extraordinary potential as agricultural land to significantly boost Kenya’s food security. These are three widely diverse interests, which may seem to be difficult to reconcile. Yet, with proper management, sufficient investment and effective communication, a differentiated utilization of the Yala swamp can be realized through a system of multiple land use. This will be a difficult but certainly not unrealistic objective.
A Brief History
The most recent development of the Yala swamp was undertaken by Dominion Farms, a subsidiary of a privately held company from the United States investing in agricultural development. The reclamation and development of the swamp, however, is far from a new phenomenon.
The intention of the Kenyan government to transform parts of the Yala swamp into agricultural land for food production goes back as far as the early 1970s. Around that time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands was consulted extensively by the Kenyan government for technical assistance on reclamation of the swamp and the feasibility of agricultural production.
Throughout the 1980s numerous reports were commissioned by the Kenyan Ministry for Energy and Regional Development and the Lake Basin Development Authority to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Reports like the “Yala Integrated Development Plan” and the “Yala Swamp Reclamation and Development Project” focused in depth on the potential of the development of the swamp and made recommendations on practical matters, such as drainage and irrigation, soil analysis, agriculture, marketing, environmental aspects, employment opportunities, human settlement, management, and financial planning.
As a result, small-scale reclamation and development of the swamp land was undertaken throughout the 1980s and 1990s under the supervision of the Lake Basin Development Authority. The development of the swamp was partially successful, yet its scale was small and financial benefits were too marginal. Major investment was therefore required to extend the scale of the project.
Then, in 2003, an American investor expressed interest to make significant long-term investments into bringing parts of the swamp into agricultural production. Subsequently, a lease for 45 years was negotiated between Dominion Farms and the Siaya and Bondo County Councils to bring into agricultural production some 7,000 hectares of the Yala swamp. The whole Yala swamp wetland covers 17,500 hectares, which means that Dominion Farms is allowed to reclaim and develop roughly 40 percent of the swamp.
Protracted Conflict
Since the early days of the arrival of the foreign investor in 2004, there has been lingering tension and occasional flares of conflict between the communities surrounding the project site, third parties (i.e. government officials, politicians, NGOs, CBOs, environmentalists), and the investor.
The most commonly touted complaint is that Dominion Farms “grabbed” the communities’ land. While it is hard to trace back the exact procedures and individuals that were involved, there are clear contracts with the Siaya and Bondo County Councils that substantiate the transfer of land-use to Dominion Farms for a period of 45 years. Some claim, however, that the negotiation process for the lease was entrenched in bribery and corruption, yet no one has been able to show this author a single trace of evidence to substantiate these accusations. Similarly, there are complaints by local residents that they were never consulted in the negotiation process – where they should have been, as they rightly point out that the swamp is community trust land. However, the land is held in trust by the relevant county council for the community. The county council should therefore initiate consultations with the local communities and residents to get their approval to lease the land to third parties. So it appears that some of the resentment over the loss of parts of the swamp should not be directed at the foreign investor but rather target the local county council and their procedures.
Continue reading on State-of-Affairs. -
Watch: Richard Matthew at TEDxChange on Natural Resources, Conflict, and Environmental Peacemaking
›“It’s not surprising that about half the time, efforts to try to stabilize countries as they come out of war fail,” said Richard Matthew, associate professor at the University of California at Irvine and founding director of the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs, at a recent TEDxChange event. “Wars today are very destructive. They may not be as big as the wars of the last century, but they do a lot of damage.”
Matthew’s work focuses on the environmental dimensions of conflict and peacebuilding. Conflict can be spurred by competition over natural resources but it also contributes to further scarcity in many cases, creating a feedback loop. The natural resource aspect of conflict is particularly important in areas where livelihoods depend directly on access to land, water, and forests, he said.
In addition to discussing the benefits of including the environment in peacemaking efforts, Matthew also touched on the need for an increased proportion of national security spending to be spent on peace and development rather than defense. “It is in our interest to grow people out of the conditions that foster terrorism and extremism and infectious disease and crisis,” he said.
In particular, Matthew remains confident that an emerging group of leaders will find new and creative ways to support peacebuilding, natural resource management, and adaptation activities in the future: “Social entrepreneurs – people willing to combine their passion to make a better world with sound business tools – are developing truly innovative ways of taking daunting social problems and making them manageable.” -
Enhancing Public Engagement in Climate Change: The 2011 Climate Change Communicators of the Year
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“Excellence in climate communication has to do with public engagement – communication that expands the portion of the public that is engaged in this issue and enhances their degree of engagement,” said Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. “Enhancing Public Engagement in Climate Change: The 2011 Climate Change Communicators of the Year,” was held jointly by the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) and George Mason University on June 8 to present awards for excellence in climate change communication by Naomi Oreskes and the Alliance for Climate Education.
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New Oxfam Report Tackles Broken Food System
›June 17, 2011 // By Ramona Godbole“The global food system is broken,” reads a new report from Oxfam International. While much of Growing a Better Future: Food Justice in a Resource-Constrained World essentially reviews the major factors that contribute to food insecurity, Oxfam’s call to transform the food system is certainly timely, given this year’s high food prices (blamed in part for inflaming popular revolts in the Middle East) and fears of another global food crisis.
Despite producing enough food for everyone, one in seven people globally face chronic under-nutrition and almost one billion people are food insecure. Hunger is concentrated within rural areas in developing countries, and within families, women are often disproportionally affected, having serious implications for maternal and child health.
“We face three interlinked challenges in an age of growing crisis: feeding nine billion without wrecking the planet; finding equitable solutions to end disempowerment and injustice; and increasing our collective resilience to shocks and volatility,” write the authors of the report.
A “Perfect Storm” for Hunger
If current trends continue, population growth, natural resource scarcity, and climate change will put increasing stress on the food system in the future and create a “perfect storm” for more hunger, says Oxfam.
In the short term, oil price hikes, extreme weather, and speculative trading in markets have caused food prices to rise. With global population slated to grow to 9.1 billion and the global economy projected to be three times as big, demand for food may increase by as much as 70 percent by 2050. Food scarcity will also be deeply affected by the depletion of other natural resources including water, oil, and land.
According to the report’s predictions, child malnutrition levels in sub-Saharan Africa are expected to grow by 8 million by 2030. This estimate is before taking into account the effects of climate change, which could reduce agricultural yields by 20 to 30 percent in sub-Saharan Africa by 2080. The latest UN Population Division projections over that same time period predict an additional two billion people will be living in the region.
The Broken Food System
Up until now, many governments in developed countries have either ignored rising food prices or made it worse by imposing trade restrictions or encouraging the production of biofuels, says Oxfam. Thirty to fifty percent of all food grown is wasted, at least in part, as the result of poor consumer and business practices in rich countries, write the authors, and national governments are not doing enough to address climate change and manage scarce resources, especially water.
Another major challenge that contributes to global hunger is equitable access to land, technology, and markets, says Oxfam. In Guatemala, for example, less than eight percent of agricultural producers hold almost 80 percent of the land, and in developing countries, despite sharing an equal or larger burden of the work, women account for only 10 to 20 percent of landowners. Large companies, rather than local farmers, make the majority of decisions regarding key resources such as land, water, seeds, and infrastructure, while ignoring the technological needs of small-scale farmers.
“Growing a Better Future”
The report concludes that “from the failing food system to wider social and ecological challenges, the dominant model of development is hitting its limits.” The authors recommend three ways to effectively reduce hunger and fix the broken food system:1) Make food security a top priority for national and international governing bodies;
To make this a reality, write the authors, governments must invest in climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and social protection, while international governance of trade, food aid, financial markets, and climate change must work to reduce risks of future shocks and respond quickly and effectively when shocks do occur. The policies and practices of both governments and businesses should support the needs and interests of small-scale farmers, ensuring access to natural resources, technology, and markets.
2) Support small-scale food producers in developing countries; and
3) Set clear global targets for the equitable distribution of scarce resources.
While not exactly novel or ground-breaking ideas, these reforms certainly are lofty and the report avoids sugarcoating issues of food security, directly calling out governments and the private sector for their role in supporting food injustice. But, some argue that simpler solutions, like promoting fertilizers and new technologies among poor farmers, might be more effective at fighting malnutrition. Others question the validity of the reports assertion that the average food prices will more than double in the next 20 years.
Despite criticisms, this report and the corresponding GROW campaign will hopefully help further highlight the importance of food security and the need to move towards a more sustainable future.
Image Credit: “Thriving in Africa,” courtesy of flickr user Gates Foundation. -
The Implications of Urbanization on Food Security and Child Mortality of the Urban Poor
›In the chapter, “Urban Agriculture and Climate Change Adaptation: Ensuring Food Security Through Adaptation,” of the edited volume, Resilient Cities: Cities and Adaptation to Climate Change – Proceedings of the Global Forum 2010, authors Marielle Debbeling and Henk de Zeeuw assess the viability of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) as a method of climate change adaptation for the urban poor. Debbeling and de Zeeuw assert that UPA increases the resilience of cities by diversifying both food supply and income streams for the urban poor; decreasing the negative effects of “heat island effect,” air pollution, and urban flooding; conserving water and utilizing organic waste; and reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Given the scale and impact of modern urbanization, the authors write that “the integration of UPA into urban development and master plans, urban land use and zoning plans, as well as active maintenance of the protected agricultural zones…is crucial.”In “Urban Area Disadvantage and Under-5 Mortality in Nigeria: The Effect of Rapid Urbanization,” published by Environmental Health Perspectives, authors Diddy Antai and Tahereh Moradi found a significant link between the mortality rate of children under five years of age and a poor and disadvantaged urban environment; such an environment is characterized by poor sanitation, overcrowding, a lack of access to safe water, and high levels of disease-inducing air pollution and hazardous wastes. Although urban living may increase proximity to health care and other social amenities, low- and middle-income countries, such as Nigeria, have overstretched their adaptive capacities and the result is poor health indicators. Antai and Moradi predict that the rapid urbanization of Nigerian cities will bring increased infant mortality, unless individual- and community-based policy interventions are implemented to counter the adverse environmental conditions of deprived areas. -
Jacob Park, Our World 2.0
Will Expanding “Human Security” Really Improve People’s Lives?
›June 16, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Jacob Park, appeared on the UN University’s Our World 2.0.
To those working in the financial markets, the term “securitization” refers to the financial practice of pooling various types of debt, such as residential mortgages, and repackaging them as products like bonds, etc. And you can bet that most of the 2.5 million pages one gets if one searches for this term on the web probably relate to complex financial markets.
Yet the use of the term “security” is not limited to the financial markets and it appears that the United Nations system and the international community seem to be caught up in its own securitization trend. At the April 2011 65th General Assembly of the United Nations, the General Assembly held an informal debate on the human security concept and why it is important to the UN and the international community.
At this meeting, UN Deputy Secretary General Asha-Rose Migiro argued that “in a world where threats could be as sudden and unpredictable as a tsunami or as protracted and unyielding as an oppressive dictatorship, an expanded paradigm of security was needed to encompass the broad range of conditions threatening people’s survival, livelihoods, and dignity.”
In light of the recent triple disaster in Japan and this year’s uprisings in the Arab World, Migiro stated that from “natural disasters and entrenched poverty to outbreaks of conflict and the spread of disease, the dramatic events of recent weeks had underscored the vulnerability of developed and developing countries alike.”
Her views reflect a trend since the 2005 World Summit, where leaders agreed that human security concerned both “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want,” and the definition of human security expanded beyond the traditional military-political paradigm of security to be inclusive of social, energy, and environmental issues.
In fact, a wide range of UN institutions have been active promoting their respective security work; the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in relation to environmental security; the Food and Agricultural Organization in relation to food security; and the United Nations Development Programme/UN Trust Fund for Human Security, among others. (Similarly, the International Energy Agency, founded in response to the 1973/74 oil shocks, today plays an increasingly important role in advising its member countries on energy security.)
Real Solutions or Good Metaphors?
It’s hard to disagree with the expanded definition of security to include a wide range of social, environmental, and human development issues. But toward what ends? What will this diverse focus ultimately lead to?
Perhaps I am being overly pessimistic and need to be more patient for these various security issues to develop as possible policy solutions. However, experience with the term “sustainable development” offers a good illustration of what happens when vague concepts rather than real solutions starts the drive the institutional machinery of global governance.
It seems like at times we’re replacing solutions with metaphors or frames to discuss social, environmental, and human development global concerns. The emerging security narrative feels as if we’re waiting for some military quick fixes; as if there is some special forces unit that can be called upon to get rid of the climate-induced migration problem in the same manner as a special U.S. Navy SEAL team was dispatched to deal with Osama Bin Laden.
Unfortunately, there is a real possibility that these UN programs and initiatives (however worthwhile they may be) on energy security, food security, environmental security, climate security, and human security will attempt to deal with all of these issues at the same time and at the end, risk dealing with none. One thing is certain: more international conferences will be planned on security issues even if it is unclear what real benefits this will provide to the most vulnerable members of the international community, whom this securitization trend is designed to help.
What do you think? Will the securitization of all threats to human life make a difference to “at risk” communities across the globe? Or are we just getting caught up in language and not solutions?
Thoughts? Be sure to follow-up on Our World 2.0 as well.
Jacob Park is an associate professor of business strategy and sustainability at Green Mountain College in Vermont specializing in global environment and business strategy, corporate social responsibility, community-based entrepreneurship, and social innovation.
Photo Credit: “UN Peacekeepers Rescue School Collapse Victims,” courtesy of flickr user United Nations Photo. -
Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?
›“The world as a whole is getting more religious,” said Professor of Politics at the University of London Eric Kaufmann, speaking at the Wilson Center for the launch of his latest book, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Due to their consistently higher birthrates, religious fundamentalists may reverse the tide of secularism within the next century, he said. [Video Below]
