GGCA Gender and Climate Change Training Manual - Women's ...

not only reduced landslides, but also solved the problem of fuel and fodder.
Women looked after the trees so carefully that the survival rate was between
60–80% (Joshi, 2007). Some of the other major achievements of the Chipko
Movement have been: a 15-year ban on green felling in the Himalayan forests in
Uttar Pradesh; a ban on clear felling in the Western Ghats and the Vindhyas; and
greater pressure for a natural resource policy that is more sensitive to people’s
needs and ecological requirements.
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Innovative agriculture can also play an important role in mitigation,
especially, agroforestry. Agroforestry is widely regarded as an important
approach to lessening the problems of environmental degradation and
promoting rural development through using economic trees. However,
agroforestry practices are also divided between women and men according to
gender roles. For example, a study carried out in Nigeria shows women do not
participate in all practices and perceptual differences concerning agroforesty
practices exist between women and men (Aboh and Akpabio, 2008).
Box 2 India: carbon sequestration project
An innovative and gender-responsive agroforestry project in Gudibanda Taluk, Karnataka,
India (implemented by the NGO Women For Sustainable Development [WSD]), supports
local women and men farmers in planting mango, tamarind and jackfruit tree orchards
for harvest and carbon sequestration. The project support women’s participation in
decision-making processes by taking into account women’s special condition in respect
of their cultural constraints and time schedule when establishing public forums. The
project established a prototype carbon marketing facility to sell the certified emissions
reduction of the global environmental services that the participating poor rural women
and men provide. Because farmers have an average annual income of less than US$100,
they cannot afford to plant fruit trees without financial assistance. Success also requires
expensive irrigation changes and planting tools. Since harvesting the crops is possible
only about four years after planting, farmers will live on the carbon sales from their mango
plantations until they harvest their crop. When fruit production starts one acre of crop will
at least triple their annual income. The project lifetime is 35 years, with an estimated CO 2
benefit of 23 tons of carbon sequestration per acre. The project target is 35,000 acres, for
a total sequestration of 575,000 tons of carbon.
Source: The World Bank, 2009.
At the COP-13 meeting in Bali, the Parties recognized there is an urgent
need for developing countries to adopt significant measures to reduce emissions
from deforestation, forest degradation and undertake afforestation initiatives. 2
2
UNFCCC, 2008.