Women, Trees, and Land

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Women, Trees, and Land Ruth Meinzen-Dick
International Food Policy Research Institute
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Overview

• Achievements
• Recognition of gender differences in land and
  tree tenure
• Lessons
• Importance of property rights for women
• Complexity of rights to land, trees, water
• Conceptual framework
• Points of intervention
• Challenges

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Achievements

• Identification of rights to trees
• Separable from (but linked to) rights to land
• Gendered nature of rights
• Restrictions on women planting, using some trees
• Importance of patio gardens, hedgerows, etc. for
  women
• Links to marriage, inheritance patterns (e.g.
  matrilineal)
• Recognizing women as clients
• Attention to land and tree tenure needed for
  women to adopt, benefit from agroforestry
• Finding ways to work around womens lack of
  assets
• Also considering mens incentives

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Importance of Property Rights for Women

• Agricultural Productivity
• Incentive, authority to adopt agroforestry
  technologies
• Access to complementary inputs, e.g. credit,
  extension, labor
• Womens Empowerment
• Raise womens status
• Provide greater security
• Improve bargaining power
• Ensure resource management meets womens needs
• Household Welfare
• Investment in food, education, health care

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Complexity of Rights overLand, Trees, Water

• Separate bundles of rights
• For different uses, users of land, water, trees
• Developing diagnostic methods
• Legal pluralism
• Look beyond state title
• Complex interaction with variety of customary
  law
• Difficulties in operationalizing claims
• Dynamic property rights
• Due to interaction between legal frameworks
• Due to population pressure
• Due to agroforestry technologies

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Sources of Change in Land/Tree Rights in Ghana

• Population pressure ? Increase in relative
  profitability of agroforestry ? Individualization
  of land ownership to induce development of
  agroforestry, which is land-saving
• Increased labor demand for cocoa development and
  management ? Land rights of women and men change
  to provide appropriate incentives
• Using customary gifting ceremonies for men to
  transfer land to wives in return for labor on
  mens cocoa land, as well

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Importance of Interstitial Spaces

• Homesteads, patio gardens
• High-value production, though often not counted
• Convenient for womens labor, control
• Land between the trees
• Women cultivating food crops between trees
• Roadsides, hedgerows as common property
• Especially for those with little land
• Wild food, medicines, biomass transfer
• Watershed resources filters and sinks
• Streambank protection
• Wetlands
• Rights often not defined, not cared for

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Conceptualizing the Linkages
Access to Inputs, Info, etc.
State Law
Womens Rights to Land, Trees
Agroforestry Adoption
Gendered Power Relations
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Conceptualizing the Linkages
Access to Inputs, Info, etc.
State Law
Womens Rights to Land, Trees
Agroforestry Adoption
Gendered Power Relations
Productivity, Income
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Conceptualizing the Linkages
Access to Inputs, Info, etc.
State Law
Womens Rights to Land, Trees
Agroforestry Adoption
Gendered Power Relations
Productivity, Income
Household Welfare
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Conceptualizing the Linkages
Access to Inputs, Info, etc.
State Law
Womens Rights to Land, Trees
Agroforestry Adoption
Gendered Power Relations
Productivity, Income
Household Welfare
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Ways of Influencing Womens Property Rights
Legal reform
Agroforestry Adoption
State Law
Womens Rights to Land, Trees
Access to Inputs, Info, etc.
Gendered Power Relations
Productivity, Income
Household Welfare
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Ways of Influencing Womens Property Rights
Legal reform
Agroforestry Adoption
State Law
Womens Rights to Land, Trees
Community Programs
Access to Inputs, Info, etc.
Gendered Power Relations
Productivity, Income
Household Welfare
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Ways of Influencing Womens Property Rights
Legal reform
Appropriate Agroforestry
Agroforestry Adoption
State Law
Womens Rights to Land, Trees
Community Programs
Access to Inputs, Info, etc.
Gendered Power Relations
Productivity, Income
Household Welfare
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Ways of Influencing Womens Property Rights
Legal reform
Appropriate Agroforestry
Agroforestry Adoption
State Law
Credit, Info, Inputs for Women
Womens Rights to Land, Trees
Community Programs
Access to Inputs, Info, etc.
Gendered Power Relations
Productivity, Income
Household Welfare
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Ways of Influencing Womens Property Rights
Legal reform
Appropriate Agroforestry
Collective Action, Programs
Agroforestry Adoption
State Law
Credit, Info, Inputs for Women
Womens Rights to Land, Trees
Community Programs
Access to Inputs, Info, etc.
Gendered Power Relations
Productivity, Income
Household Welfare
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Challenges for Research and Action

• Contextualization Identifying key gender/tenure
  interactions for each site
• Increasing awareness
• Cost-effective diagnostic tools
• Ways to strengthen womens rights
• Effectiveness of alternative intervention
  strategies
• Effects of interaction between interventions,
  endogenous change
• Interactions between land, trees, and water
• Effects on individual and household welfare
• Effects on landscape level, watershed management