Gender and Development

Bangladesh

Sundarbans Biodiversity Conservation Project, 1998

The Sundarbans Reserve Forest (SRF), comprising 6,000 sq km, is the world's largest remaining contiguous mangrove area. A globally significant ecosystem, SRF features habitats for fish, shrimp, birds, and other wildlife including the Royal Bengal tiger. The SRF also offers subsistence for 3.5 million people in the 17 subdistricts of the impact zone, within a 20-km radius beyond the SRF border. The forest is part of the lives of people in the impact zone, but traditional user practices and seasonality of harvesting have largely broken down. The SRF is increasingly being used by commercial wood processors, rural communities, fisher folk, and fishing vessels from the Bay of Bengal. Under pressure from the growing number of users and the unsustainable harvesting of forest products and fishery resources, forest and biological resources are being depleted.

The gathering of firewood and the processing of forest products extracted from the SRF have traditionally been carried out by women from the surrounding rural communities. With increasing poverty in the impact zone, women are now also involved in fishing and crab collection. The rise of the shrimp industry and growing demand have led women to join in the collection of shrimp fry, disrupting the education of girls and exposing them to health hazards, violence, and harassment from illegal elements. Because the society and the forest officials do not recognize women's role as minor forest product collectors, women's needs are only marginally considered in forest management policies.

Women who fish and collect shrimp fry are generally from the poor households. To acquire boats, fishnets, and their other needs, they resort to borrowing from private moneylenders and shrimp fry traders at exorbitant interest rates. Women also suffer from lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation and health services, and from greater vulnerability to diseases.

The overall objective of the project is to develop a sustainable management and biodiversity conservation system for all Sundarbans Reserve Forest resources on the basis of rational plans and the participation of all key stakeholders. The project includes a number of components:

1. The restructure and institutional strengthening of the forestry department;
2. The establishment of a Sundarbans Management Unit, Sundarbans Stewardship Commission and Stakeholder Advisory Council;
3. Socioeconomic development of the impact zone; and
4. The promotion of ecotourism and environmental awareness.

The project design recognizes that community development and the participation of forest users are key to the success of the project. Without the support and cooperation of local communities, the unsustainable exploitation of the Sundarbans Reserve Forest is likely to continue. For this reason, local forest users will participate in the Stakeholder Advisory Council and be the primary beneficiaries of the project's socioeconomic development programs. The establishment of local forest user groups - representing local users such as wood cutters, shrimp fry collectors, honey collectors, tour operators and fuel wood collectors - is central as local forest users will be offered socioeconomic development opportunities and participation on the local Stakeholder Advisory Council through these groups.

Participatory rural appraisals conducted during the PPTA revealed women's important role as forest users. The general perception of forestry officials and others that women were not significant users of the forest turned out to be incorrect. Women from the surrounding communities have long used the forest as a source of firewood and processed a range of forest products. Furthermore, with growing poverty in the impact zone, increasing numbers of poor women have taken on new economic activities in the forest, mostly involving fishing and crab collection.

Given women's involvement in the forest, the project team considered a number of related issues including the project's likely impact on women's livelihood and how to ensure women's participation in future forest management structures. The design of alternative employment activities and community-based organizations also had to take into account the cultural conditions in the communities surrounding the forest, specifically the high level of gender segregation and gender division of labor. This segregation is particularly noticeable in the economic and public spheres, where women do not freely mix with men at work or within community-level forums. For this reason, specific strategies and targets were designed and included in the project to promote and encourage women's participation.

The community development component of the project is designed to address the needs of women forest users living in the impact zone in the following ways:

• Women to comprise 50 percent of the beneficiaries of the microcredit program.
• Priority is to be given to households headed by poor women in alternative employment and microcredit actitivities.
• Alternative employment opportunities, including charcoal making, seedling plantation and reforestation will be introduced to reduce women's dependence on forest products, fish and shrimp fry.

Reducing women's reliance on fishing and shrimp fry work through alternative employment generation will also benefit women and girls as such activities are not without personal and financial risk. Women frequently borrow from private moneylenders and shrimp fry traders at exorbitant interest rates in order to acquire boats and fishnets. High levels of indebtedness are common, resulting in near bondage terms of production. Furthermore, the growing demand for shrimp hand-in-hand with growing landlessness have led more poor women and their daughters to join in the collection of shrimp fry, often disrupting the education of girls and exposing women to violence and harassment within the forest. Developing alternative forms of work for these women will therefore not only benefit the forest but also the women themselves. The microcredit program is also intended to lessen women's dependence on private moneylenders and to increase their incomes. It is hoped that more girls will be enrolled in school as a result.

In terms of protecting women's continued rights to the forest as well as the forest itself, the project is mobilizing and organizing groups of women into forest user organizations. Women's participation in forest user groups will give women a collective and legally recognized voice in the forest's planning and resource management processes. In particular:

• Women's forest user groups will also establish women's rights and entitlement to forest resources and common property resources in the impact zone.
• Representatives of women's forest user groups will participate in the Stakeholders Advisory Council.
• Women's forest user groups will be a vehicle for training programs developed as part of the project on the sustainable harvesting of fishery resources and on forest resource conservation and management.
• Women's forest user organizations will also provide a forum for women to discuss issues related to their general economic and personal well being, such as violence against women.

To support the effective mobilization of women into forest user groups, women will need particular training aimed at capacity building for group formation, including:

• Capacity building in order to articulate their views in gender specific and mixed venues, such as workshops and training programs.
• Training in how to access modern financial systems for savings and credit.
• Training in literacy, numeracy and basic accounting skills.

The communities to which these women and girls belong are in the main very poor and lack adequate social infrastructure. As noted above, lack of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation and health services are a major cause of disease in the area. For this reason, the project addresses social infrastructure improvement, such as sanitation facilities, clean water supplies, rural roads, schools, non-formal education and adult literacy programs. To ensure that proposed social infrastructure projects meet women's needs:

• Women will participate in village infrastructure planning processes through women's forest user groups and other women's groups.
• The Local Government Engineering Department, the agency responsible for developing social infrastructure, will be trained by NGOs in the areas of gender sensitization and participatory approaches.

As in all projects, implementation and monitoring are critical if the project is to achieve its objectives. In this project, a number of specific strategies are included to ensure that the gender issues mentioned above are carried through into implementation:

• Specific gender conditions are outlined in the terms of reference for international and domestic consultants, particularly those working in the areas of community development, education and communication.
• The loan agreement explicitly notes the role expected of consultants in assisting the forestry department, local government departments and local NGOs with gender sensitization programs, women in development issues, and specific issues facing women and women's groups.

NGOs play a key role in facilitating and mobilizing community development, education and participation in this project. They are primarily responsible for all gender sensitization training at the community, SMU and implementing agency level, as well as for gender and skills based training for forest user groups. For this reason:

• The selection criteria applied to NGOs include experience in gender sensitization training and women's mobilization programs.
• Their performance will be monitored and evaluated on the basis of women's participation in the Stakeholders Advisory Council; women's participation in leadership training; women's participation in the planning of social infrastructure; and the percentage of women accessing microcredit programs.