The challenge of HIV/AIDS: Where does agroforestry fit in? - World ...

Keywords:Gender, property rights,tenure, agroforestryChapter 22Women, land and treesRuth Meinzen-Dick, International Food Policy Research InstituteAbstractThe distribution of rights to land and trees between men and women has important implications foragricultural productivity, women’s empowerment and household welfare. Rights to land and trees tendto shape women’s incentives and authority to adopt agroforestry technologies more than other cropvarieties because of the relatively long time horizon between investment and returns. Some of the complexitiesinvolved in understanding women’s control over resources are discussed, not only in the mainagricultural fields, but also in important ‘interstitial spaces’ that are often overlooked. There are manyfactors affecting distribution of rights and, often, simply changing legislation may not change rights inpractice. However, this heterogeneity offers considerable potential for women and outside agencies towork together to strengthen women’s rights over land and trees.IntroductionThe World Agroforestry Centre has conducted pioneeringwork on ‘women, land and trees’, so this is an appropriatesubject for a 25 th Anniversary publication. Itis also appropriate to look ahead, because these issuescontinue to affect many of the research themes relatedto agroforestry. Among its many accomplishments, theCentre and its partners have been successful in increasingunderstanding of people’s rights to trees as separablefrom (but linked to) rights to land, and how rights toboth land and trees are affected by gender (Fortmannand Bruce 1988; Fortmann and Rocheleau 1985).The recognition of rights to trees has important implicationsfor agroforestry adoption, particularly wherewomen are restricted from planting or have low incentivesto plant certain types of trees. But, rather thanusing these obstacles as a reason to focus on men (whoare often easier to reach) the Centre, to its credit, recognizeswomen as major clients who are likely to playan increasingly important role in agriculture. Research-ers have therefore redoubled their efforts to understandwomen’s use of agroforestry and to ensure that newtechnologies and dissemination programmes reachthem. For example, Rocheleau’s research (Rocheleau1988; Rocheleau and van den Hoek 1984) showed theimportance of spaces that are often overlooked, such aspatio gardens and the ‘interstitial spaces’ of hedgerows,roadsides, and the space between trees on ‘men’s’land. Programmes such as biomass transfer have builton this information and developed technologies thatuse the resources that can be accessed and controlledby women. At the same time, there has been carefulattention to men’s incentives to plant and maintaintrees. For example, the Centre’s collaborative researchin Malawi and Uganda identified links between treerights, tree density and marriage and inheritance patterns,where patterns of matrilineal inheritance (landpasses to nephews rather than sons) means that menmove to their wives’ villages, where they have less incentiveto plant trees, because the trees would not passto their own children (Otsuka and Place 2001). Thus,