Forest GLOBAL GENDER AND ENVIRONMENT OUTLOOK Energy Chapter 2


marginalizing them from their traditional livelihoods; production of biofuel feedstocks instead of food; and indirect health impacts due to use of agrochemicals, as well as smoke and dust.


Production of biofuels can exacerbate gender inequality, contributing to the socio-economic marginalization of women and female-headed households and threatening families’ health and food security (Alvarez 2013; Juma 2011; Ewing and Msangi 2009; FAO 2008) (Box 2.6.3). The associated environmental and socio- economic risks can also lower the resilience of rural communities and individuals to exogenous shocks, for example reducing their ability to cope with the impacts of climate change (FAO 2008). On the other hand, it has been suggested that biofuels production schemes that include promotion of alternative energy sources for household uses could improve productivity and health, especially for women and children (Ewing and Msangi 2009). According to a World Bank study (Kammen 2011; Benfica et al. 2010), biofuels production could provide an opportunity for women in Mozambique to substantially increase their incomes, as they are currently predominantly involved in subsistence agriculture. Extra income generated through biofuels production is predicted to have positive knock-on effects (e.g. reducing household vulnerability and poverty levels), but this study emphasizes the need for female education. It is projected that increasing the number of years of schooling for unskilled female workers would increase overall gains in economic growth from biofuels and give women greater access to skill-intensive agricultural jobs in agriculture.


Biomass is being used in some parts of Europe and North America to produce heat and power. Although the trade in this energy source is mostly North-North


Box 2.6.4: Industrial tree plantations


Industrial tree plantations (ITPs) have different effects on women and men and can reinforce existing inequalities. In a study of Brazilian women in communities that once lived in forest areas, but had lost their lands and were surrounded by ITPs, one woman reported: “Indigenous women face more difficulties today, because in the past there was an abundance of everything. Indigenous women stayed home with their children and they grew a lot of different crops and devoted themselves to picking leaves, while their husbands were doing other things. There was an abundance of everything. Today, in addition to the fact that they don’t have a lot of crops, there’s a lot of unemployment” (Overbeek et al. 2012).


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Women have also found that access to traditional medicines, which they were accustomed to look after and which were vital to rural communities, has been affected. “I am pregnant and ill,” said one woman, “and the herbs are nowhere to be found. Before now, we used to go to the bush to get herbs to cure all sorts of ailments, but now we cannot gain access to them” (WRM 2005).


(United States and Canada, EU to within the EU) and there is little South-North trade, there are concerns that it could be scaled up, with major impacts on forest- dependent communities. An example is the Suzano e Papel investment in Maranhão, Brazil, where the Cerrado forest was bulldozed and communities lost their land to eucalyptus plantations across 40,000 hectares, partly so that wood pellets could be produced for a power station in the United Kingdom. Neither a proposed pellet plant nor the power station that was intended to burn the pellets has so far been built (Goncalves de Souza and Overbeek 2013).


Large-scale intensification of livestock production requires large areas of land on which to produce animal feed crops like maize and soybean. Paraguay’s Chaco forest, the last refuge of the uncontacted Ayoreo-Totobiegosode tribal peoples, has been devastated by the world’s highest rate of deforestation. Satellite images show the astonishing extent of forest destruction in the Chaco between 1990 and 2013; the area claimed by the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode is one of the last remaining patches of forest left (Survival 2014; Hansen et al. 2013). The most important primary production sectors in Paraguay are livestock and soy production; most land is privately controlled (85.5% of the territory is in the hands of 2.6% of the population) (Lovera 2015).


Despite numerous studies on the social and health and environmental effects of monoculture plantations (Hahn et al. 2014; Mutter and Overbeek 2011), further research is needed on gendered impacts (FOEI


2009) (Box 2.6.4). Several years ago the


World Rainforest Movement (WRM) documented the impacts of plantations on women worldwide, identifying factors such as their lack of participation


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