Forest GLOBAL GENDER AND ENVIRONMENT OUTLOOK Energy Chapter 2


Box 2.6.8: Rooibos


Rooibos is a plant endemic to the South African Western and Eastern Cape Provinces. It has a long tradition of use in this region, including for tea and medicinal purposes such as alleviation of infantile colic, allergies, asthma and dermatological problems. Given its rich properties, Rooibos can be a substitute for milk. Women use it as a staple food for their children. Rooibos is drunk regularly in most households, and communities that grow it receive an income from its commercialization. Rooibos also has an important use in cosmetology, so it is a source of income for small women-led enterprises. To date, attempts to patent Rooibos have not been successful.


Patenting it would have meant misappropriating genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, and losing an important source of nutritious food and medicine for communities which have traditionally used it. Source: Joubert et al. (2008) and Natural Justice Videos (2016)


Diversity not only acknowledges women’s role in decision-making and biodiversity conservation, but also emphasizes the traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources (CBD 2011).


Concerns about the search for and commercialization of new products based on biological resources (sometimes referred to as “bio-prospecting”) urged such an international legally-binding agreement like the Nagoya Protocol to occur as many industrialized countries continued to exploit natural resources that constitute the basis for the livelihoods of people in developing countries at the detriment of communities who depend on them (Shiva 2007). Without such a protocol, patents would grant companies – and other actors – full rights to certain genetic resources without the free, prior and informed consent of communities who traditionally use them (Forest Peoples Programme 2016), meaning that these resources become private property. In the case of Rooibos and Honeybush in South Africa in 2010, a big multinational corporation had five pending patent applications (Box 2.6.8) (Amusen 2014; ICTSD 2010).


Gender and REDD+ 164


Comparing women’s participation in forest management and decision-making in 18 Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) sites in five countries, Larson et al. (2015) observed that women’s involvement in decision-making was limited and that significantly fewer women than men had knowledge and information about REDD+. In an analysis of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya and Community Forestry Programs in Nepal, Boyer-Rechlin (2010) highlighted the importance of taking account of pre-existing gender roles and cultural contexts, as well as investing in civic education and building women’s skills.


Among the many factors that influence successful


implementation of a REDD+ scheme (e.g. baseline CO2 emissions, records of forest carbon stock, condition of biodiversity, quality of governance), it is important that safeguards are in place to secure land rights and full participation by local communities in order to achieve “win-win” effects on both poverty alleviation and environmental protection (Mahanty and McDermott 2013; Lawlor et al. 2013). The UN-REDD programme developed guidance to promote gender-sensitive processes in the preparation, implementation and monitoring of REDD+ projects and other action plans which focus on strengthening a bottom-up approach, including priority alignment to national needs and capacities. However, mainstreaming gender national policies, which is often interpreted as an increased number of women participating at local level, is not sufficient to realize the full potential of women and men as agents of change at community level. Several reports have suggested that gender should be carefully integrated in the design, monitoring and evaluation of REDD+ programmes, including gender-sensitive indicators and safeguard approaches. Systematic gender-responsive analysis should be carried out, including


information on decision-making, gender


perceptions and actual gender differences in interests, as well as needs for effective engagement of women and men in REDD+ implementation in local contexts (Larson et al. 2015).


From natural resource management to green economy approaches


Natural resource management (NRM) or sustainable livelihood projects often provide a good “neutral” entry point for tackling social norms and cultural issues related to the gender-environment nexus. There are numerous examples of NRM projects that are trying


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