Patricia Howard
I am an Emeritus Professor at Wageningen University and Honorary Professor at the University of Kent, and currently a Lead Author of Chapter 6 for IPBES Global Alien Invasive Species Assessment. Since 2008, I led an ongoing science-policy collaboration initiative on Human Adaptation to Biodiversity Change. Rapid biodiversity change that is already occurring across the globe is accelerating, with major and often negative consequences for human well-being. Biodiversity change is partly driven by climate change, but it has many other interacting drivers that are also driving human adaptation, including invasive species, land-use change, pollution, and overexploitation. Humans are adapting to changes in well-being that are related to these biodiversity drivers and other forces and pressures. Adaptation, in turn, has feedbacks both for biodiversity change and human well-being; however, to date, these processes have received little scientific or policy attention. The Human Adaptation to Biodiversity Change Project, based at the University of Kent School of Anthropology and Conservation, introduces human adaptation to biodiversity change as a science-policy issue. Research on human adaptation to biodiversity change requires new methods and tools as well as conceptual evolution, as social-ecological systems and environmental change adaptation approaches must be reconsidered when they are applied to different processes and contexts - where biodiversity change drivers are highly significant, where people are responding principally to changes in species, species communities, and related ecosystem processes, and where adaptation entails changes in the management of biodiversity and related resource use regimes.
Multiple drivers, including climate change and other anthropogenic stressors, are forcing rapid biodiversity change across the globe. This rapid change is also the outcome of human adaptation to biodiversity change, which affects both the drivers of biodiversity change and creates new feedbacks with both intentional and unintentional consequences for ecosystems and human well-being. Human adaptation to biodiversity change can lead to regime shifts and intentional transformation. However, human adaptation to biodiversity change is not yet considered in international, regional, or national policy or science forums, not even in the Intergovernmental Policy-Science Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which otherwise integrates the multiplicity of human values, indigenous and local knowledge, and good quality of life within its framework. In part, this is because, while both adaptation and biodiversity change are research topics, human adaptation to biodiversity change is not “a ‘scientific problem’ – a field of theorising or methods development”. Policy makers and scientists thus lack conceptual frameworks, knowledge, and tools to understand or predict human responses and their actual or potential outcomes, synergies, and feedbacks in terms of human welfare, biodiversity, social-ecological systems, and climate change mitigation and adaptation (Howard 2009). For these reasons, from 2011 to 2012, the Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation Programme (ESPA) of the UK Government funded the first research project on this theme, entitled ‘Human adaptation to biodiversity change: building and testing concepts, methods, and tools for understanding and supporting autonomous adaptation’.
Address: Centre for Biocultural Diversity
University of Kent
Dept. of Anthropology
Marlowe Building
Canterbury
CT2 7NR
UK
Multiple drivers, including climate change and other anthropogenic stressors, are forcing rapid biodiversity change across the globe. This rapid change is also the outcome of human adaptation to biodiversity change, which affects both the drivers of biodiversity change and creates new feedbacks with both intentional and unintentional consequences for ecosystems and human well-being. Human adaptation to biodiversity change can lead to regime shifts and intentional transformation. However, human adaptation to biodiversity change is not yet considered in international, regional, or national policy or science forums, not even in the Intergovernmental Policy-Science Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which otherwise integrates the multiplicity of human values, indigenous and local knowledge, and good quality of life within its framework. In part, this is because, while both adaptation and biodiversity change are research topics, human adaptation to biodiversity change is not “a ‘scientific problem’ – a field of theorising or methods development”. Policy makers and scientists thus lack conceptual frameworks, knowledge, and tools to understand or predict human responses and their actual or potential outcomes, synergies, and feedbacks in terms of human welfare, biodiversity, social-ecological systems, and climate change mitigation and adaptation (Howard 2009). For these reasons, from 2011 to 2012, the Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation Programme (ESPA) of the UK Government funded the first research project on this theme, entitled ‘Human adaptation to biodiversity change: building and testing concepts, methods, and tools for understanding and supporting autonomous adaptation’.
Address: Centre for Biocultural Diversity
University of Kent
Dept. of Anthropology
Marlowe Building
Canterbury
CT2 7NR
UK
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Books by Patricia Howard
Jane Goodall
Female-headed households (FH) are the most destitute and yet have been almost completely neglected in policy making and in development interventions in Tigray, other than in relation to Food-for-work which nevertheless benefits them less. Wild and indigenous botanical resources and open access common lands were found to constitute a very important part of livelihood resources for the community (a ‘third’), but these resources have also in fact been largely neglected. Neglect of both almost certainly together generate further ‘externalities’, including the reproduction of poverty and resource degradation, and as well as possibly the alarming recent increase in HIV/AIDS in Tigray.
Overall, the research in Adiarbaetu revealed much more extensive use of wild and indigenous botanicals than has been previously reported for Tigray: more areas are used by more people for more purposes. Data presented in the appendix shows that FH are the vast majority of users (n= 30 households) of enclosed woodlots (80%), other community enclosures (90%), restricted graz-ing land (67%), and roadsides and boundary areas (100%). They are a slight majority among the users of unenclosed forests and woodlots (58%), and of unenclosed hillsides (52%), where the last category was used by 29 out of the 30 households. Open grazing lands were the only com-mon lands that were most used by MH, at 63% versus 38% of FH. FH also predominate in par-ticular use categories: aromatics (75%), grass for coffee ceremonies (62%), medicinals (69%), wild foods (56%), and fuelwood (57%), which reflects the fact that FH use common land areas more. In comparison with MH, a higher percentage of all FH uses (of open grazing land?) are of medicinals (24% versus 15% of all MH uses), grass for coffee ceremonies (20% versus 16%), and aromatics (6.5% versus 3%), whereas uses that figured more prominently in MH were grazing (6% versus 1%), and construction and fodder (4% versus 1%). The appendix provides a list of the some 127 species identified that are used by local people from the environment.
Particularly FH must live by providing their limited assets to others, by gleaning subsistence resources from common lands, participating in Food-for-work, and turning their limited and fairly uniform set of skills and assets toward spheres of petty production, trade, and services that are, nearly by definition, oversupplied. Women are particularly disadvantaged because they face multiple cultural and material constraints that do not permit them to accede to a wider la-bour market and networks of social exchange. The general inattention to FH in particular is an outcome not only of the unwillingness of the State and other development agents to intervene in matters that are culturally sensitive and ingrained, but as well of the inability of the State to redress the problem, as it has so often done, through land reallocation. Those programmes that provide productive resources to households are demonstrably targeted toward men. A third of the population, or FH, are thus ‘left out’ of the development equation.
Common lands and botanical resources are essential to livelihoods, even in heavily de-graded and drought-stricken Tigray. Access regimes have also changed repeatedly, with inevitable effects on livelihoods. Development dynamics have led to the fragmentation and diminution of individual farm holdings. Drought, the conversion of common lands for agriculture, and increas-ing livestock populations have led to the reduction and degradation of grazing lands. Traditional control over forest and tree resources are also eroded: forests and woodlots were often convert-ed to farmland, and deforestation of remaining areas proceeded apace. Enclosures led to environmental enhancement, but policies have not promoted linkages between environmental sus-tainability and livelihoods, and do not recognize that local populations are heavily dependent up-on resources other than grass and timber. Although at times disadvantaged groups, such as the landless and FH, have been permitted to benefit economically from enclosures, in general the economic benefits perceived have been either unequally distributed, in the case of restricted grazing lands, or minimal or negative, in the case of enclosed woodlots.
All common land areas and all uses are entailed in and affected by resource degradation and all must also be considered in resource management. People seek specific botanical resources that are important to them no matter where they occur in the landscape. If restrictions on resource access are created in one area, then demand shifts to another. Species restrictions provide a partial response to this: it is only by restricting or preventing use of the most threat-ened species anywhere they can be found that their disappearance can be prevented. But formally declaring an activity illegal does not prevent it from occurring. If ‘open access’ areas and use of restricted species are not adequately dealt with, these areas are likely to become deserts, with area enclosures dotting the landscape like tiny oases. If the material resources that are produced in area enclosures continue to largely fail to meet the most pressing needs of the population, their destiny can only be likewise to disappear. These neglected resources and common land areas, we argue, constitute the forgotten third of development resources in the region, and their neglect threatens to undermine the other two-thirds: farming and area enclosures. Another set of issues that is crucial to address in common property resources management in Adiarbaetu and all other villages in the highlands is that of destitution and social equity. Highland political culture has, for centuries, upheld principles of equitable distribution of key livelihood assets, and has both formally, and to a degree in practice, recognized women’s entitlements. However, many cultural and economic factors have recently combined to generate very high levels of poverty, especially among particular types of households: those headed by divorced or widowed women and those that are young. It can be demonstrated empirically that these households rely more on common resources and are the major users of the ‘minor’, if not ‘major’ resources.
Both FH and the plant resources that are essential to them have been largely neglected in development efforts: this ‘third’ of the population, and this ‘third’ of the livelihood resource base, have either gone unrecognized, been culturally defined as useless (often called ‘wasteland’), or simply been neglected. FH are often forced into destitution due to higher dependency ratios, unequal division of household assets (with women accessing fewer resources of lower quality), and unequal opportunities to farm and to participate in civil life. FH are more dependent on common resources, but enclosures are not governed with their resource requirements in mind, and those that remain open are under increasing pressure precisely because they are relatively free access and increasing numbers of people, both female headed and young households, de-pend upon them for bare subsistence. The unintended but very real marginalization and neglect of these households, both in terms of access to private assets and of access to ‘major’ common resource benefits, can only result in an increasing environmental and human toll, as well as increasing inequality.
Pages: 298 pp., 566 refs., tables, graphs, botanical index, subject index
Binding: Paperback/Hardback
ISBN: 1 84277 156 6 cased; 1 84277 157 4 limp
Price: £16.95 (US$29.95) paper; £49.95 (US$75.00) hardbound
Readership: Ethnobotany, biodiversity conservation, forestry, indigenous knowledge, gender studies, and development studies.
This unique collection of largely unpublished, in-depth case studies drawn from Latin America, Asia, Africa, Europe and North America aims to increase our understanding of the importance of women and gender relations in plant biodiversity management and conservation. It provides a state-of-the-art overview of the concepts, relationships and contexts that help explain the relatively hidden gender dimensions of people-plant relations.
The contributors come from a rich range of disciplines including ethnobotany, geography, agronomy, anthropology, plant breeding, nutrition, development economics and women’s studies. They demonstrate how crucial women are to plant genetic resource management and conservation at household, village, and community levels; and how gender relations have a strong influence on the ways in which local people understand, manage, and conserve biodiversity. Continued access to plant biodiversity is crucial to rural women’s status and welfare, and their motivations therefore are a principal driving force countering processes of genetic erosion.
The volume covers the following broad areas:
* Women, the domestic arena and plant conservation
* Gender relations, women’s rights and plant management
* Gendered plant knowledge in science and society
* Plants, women’s status and welfare
* Gender, biodiversity loss and conservation.
The contributors highlight the gender biases evident in much contemporary scientific research, policy and development practice relating to biodiversity management. And they seek to contribute to a number of important debates, including the determinants of genetic erosion, the significance of gender in ethnobotanical knowledge systems, traditional intellectual property rights systems and women’s entitlements therein, and other debates about the nature of gender-environment relations.
Here’s what renowned commentators have to say about the book:
Dr. Jane Goodall, world-renowned primatologist, conservationist, and anthropologist
“THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT BOOK [that] presents a rich picture of the vital role played by peasant women around the world. They are struggling to preserve, in the face of modern agribusiness, the agricultural wisdom of the past and the diversity of plants that have been used for both food and medicine. It is vital that decision makers heed the knowledge of these women who understand so well the art of a sustainable lifestyle. Women and Plants must be in the library of every individual who cares about the future of our planet.”
Dr. Hamdallah Zedan, Executive Secretary to the Convention on Biodiversity
‘FOCUSING ON TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE of indigenous people and local communities, and especially on the relationship between biodiversity and women in traditional societies worldwide, this book provides a well-marked path for the better understanding of biodiversity, its values and its importance for humans while at the same time highlighting community and ecosystem inter-relations’.
Prof. José Esquinas Alcazar, Secretary of the Commission on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture of the Food and Agriculture Organization of The United Nations, and Father of 'Farmers' Rights'
"AT LONG LAST, the predominant role of women in the management of plant genetic resources has begun to be scientifically documented in this highly important book. . . All those with responsibilities for promoting the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources should certainly read this book."
Dr. Bina Agarwal, Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University, and author of A Field of Ones Own; Gender and Land Rights in South Asia
“WONDERFULLY RICH IN EVIDENCE, persuasive in its argument, and wide-ranging in coverage, this timely edited volume on the gendered nature of knowledge about biodiversity enriches both scholarship and policy. It points to the critical need not only to recognize the specificity of women’s knowledge about plant species, but to strengthen their conservation efforts and bring their interests to bear in arrangements for biodiversity development and benefit sharing.”
Professor Nina L. Etkin, Associate Editor, Pharmaceutical Biology.
“WOMEN AND PLAnts offers a uniquely gender-sensitive perspective on the management of biodiversity . . . and offers keen insights for policy development and application.”
The book can be ordered at http://zedweb.hypermart.net/home.htm or at Amazon.com or through Palgrave-Macmillan at http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalogue/index.asp? isbn=1842771574
Table of contents
Preface
1. PATRICIA HOWARD, “Women and the plant world: an exploration.”
Section I. Culture, Kitchen and Conservation
2. LAURIE GREENBURG, “Women in the garden and kitchen: the role of cuisine in the conservation of traditional house lot crops among Yucatec Mayan immigrants.”
3. ANDREA PIERONI, “Wild food plants and Arbëresh women in Lucania, Southern Italy.”
4. EPHROSINE DANIGGELIS, “Women and ‘wild’ foods: nutrition and household security among Rai and Sherpa forager-farmers in Eastern Nepal.”
Section II. Gender Relations, Women’s Rights, and Plant Management
4. LISA LEIMAR PRICE, “Farm women's rights and roles in wild plant food gathering and management in northeast Thailand.”
5. ALLISON GOEBEL, “Gender and entitlements in the Zimbabwean woodlands: a case study of resettlement.”
Section III. Gendered Plant Knowledge in Science and Society.
6. NANCY TURNER, ‘Passing on the news’: women’s work, traditional knowledge and plant resource management in indigenous societies of Northwestern North America.”
7. BRIJ KOTHARI, “The invisible queen in the plant kingdom: gender perspectives in medical ethnobotany.”
8. PAUL SILLITOE, “The gender of crops in the Papua New Guinea highlands.”
Section IV. Plants, Women’s Status and Welfare
10. FÜSUN ERTUĞ, “Gendering the tradition of plant gathering in Central Anatolia (Turkey)”.
11. LINDA DICK BISSONNETTE, “The basket-makers of the Central California Interior.”
12. MARGOT WILSON, “Exchange, patriarchy, and status: Women’s homegardens in Bangladesh.”
Section V. Gender, Biodiversity Loss and Conservation
13. STEPHEN WOOTEN, “Losing ground: gender relations, commercial horticulture, and threats to local plant diversity in rural Mali.”
14. MILLICENT MALAZA, “Modernization and gender dynamics in the loss of agrobiodiversity in Swaziland’s food system.”
15. SHIRLEY HOFFMANN, “Arawakan women and the erosion of traditional food production in Amazonas Venezuela.”
16. YICHING SONG & JANICE JIGGINS, “Women and Maize Breeding: The Development of New Seed Systems in a Marginal Area of Southwest China.”
Botanical Index
Subject Index
It is clear that our world is changing with a rapidity that is unprecedented in human history. Our impacts on the biosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere are so great that many scientists are now calling this period in the Earth’s history the ‘anthropocene’. The Earth’s social-ecological systems are also characterised by unprecedented integration and inter-dependency: the actions of populations living in highly developed, urban and industrial parts of the globe have extensive repercussions far across the planet, and it has thus become exceedingly difficult for them to see and understand the ecological and social repercussions. People living in GIAHS-type systems have the advantage that they can still witness and, to a great extent, understand the implications of their actions for their environments, but their great disadvantage is that they have virtually no power to affect those global drivers that are changing their status and the state of their systems so rapidly.
It is in this context, where both scientific and local knowledge are of such great importance, that we have attempted to bring to bear the state-of-the art of scientific knowledge to conceptualise GIAHS. We have sought to exploit those perspectives that are informing global policy debates about means to understand the earth’s social-ecological systems and the dynamics of global change. The choice has been made to adopt a social-ecological systems’ resilience approach, while integrating into it those perspectives that have contributed most strongly to understanding the nature and dynamics of traditional societies. All of the topics that are addressed herein represent brief summaries of such perspectives, that highlight some of the most important general insights. All of the literature cited represents only a fraction of that which is relevant.
We have drawn on GIAHS background documents, participated in several meetings with FAO staff and GIAHS partners, and consulted with scientific experts who have provided valuable comments and critiques.2 In this process, much of the early GIAHS thinking has been critiqued and revised, and the current effort, represented in these pages, will in turn be subjected to scrutiny and debate. Invariably there are perspectives and issues that are glossed over or missed entirely. The development of the Scientific Conceptual Framework for GIAHS, like the GIAHS initiative itself, must be understood as a social learning process. As the GIAHS Programme continues to develop, a Scientific Advisory Committee and, as necessary, Working Groups, should have the tasks of validating and updating the Scientific Framework and Strategic Principles. The most crucial forum for validation and adjustment, however, resides at local level within GIAHS project sites, among the stewards of GIAHS who hold the greatest wealth of knowledge about their own systems and whose knowledge and volition must constitute the wellsprings of decision-making.
What is presented in these pages is not a plan of action for the GIAHS Programme, which must draw upon an additional substantial body of knowledge dealing with experiences in supporting traditional communities in adaptive co-management, and which must reflect broad consultation with indigenous and traditional peoples as well as with governments, donors, and the relevant NGO community. Rather, an effort has been made to derive Strategic Principles from the body of scientific knowledge that can guide implementation, and to provide a framework of concepts and issues that need to be considered when developing such plans. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no previous attempt to develop such a comprehensive framework, and therefore errors are inevitable. The authors accept full responsibility for such errors and express our gratitude to FAO, and especially to Parviz Koohafkan and David Boerma, for entrusting us with such a challenging task.
"
All of this work and much not cited has served to bring attention to the problems involved in beef production in Latin America. The massive expansion of beef production which occurred over the decades of the 1950S, 1960s and 1970s as a result of the boom in the world beef market brought with it the most extensive changes in lCL'1d use of the region's history. Deforestation, environmental degradation, population expulsion, land concentration, displacement of basic food crops, increasing hunger, foreign market dependency, monopolization and finally, world and internal market crises are the basic processes which have characterized the historical development of many of the beef subsystems in Latin America. Yet nowhere have these different elements been drawn together, theorized and put forth as explanatory factors in the overall structural changes in agriculture and in the social formations of Latin America as a whole. Nor is beef production ever mentioned as an important element of the social and economic crises that plague Latin American social formations. In Central America, where literally 'cattle is king', this productive activity is mentioned only occasionally as having importance in agriculture and exports. Traditional economic indicators 3 show that coffee and bananas have far more importance, so these are the branches that are given attention when analyzing changes in the Central American agrarian structure over the last century. Williams (1986) is the first to begin to place cattle production in its rightful place in a global analysis of exports and crisis in central America, when he shows the intimate relationship between pasture expansion and rural class struggle which has been one of the material bases for central American revolutionary movements.
This investigation aims at developing a political economy of beef production and at revealing the relations between this branch and the social formation by examining the structural changes in the agrarian societies of Central America that have participated in its expansion. We examine in depth only the case of Honduras, but we draw heavily on experience gained in the investigation of the Nicaraguan case. And research which has been per formed on Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama tends to sup port the idea that there is very little variation between Central American countries in terms of the processes involved in the expansion of beef production. The particular characteristics of each country provide more variations on a theme than significant divergences.1
Beef production seems a mundane topic at best. The empirical specificity of the political economy of beef in Central America would cause most theorists of imperialism, capitalist crisis, Third World agrarian structure and political class struggle to respire deeply and pass on to other topics. Yet the study of the microcosm which is beef production, set within the macrocosm which is central American reality, has important contributions to make to the understanding of the processes of surplus transfer at the international level, of monopoly capitalist development within Third World social formations, of the creation of a 'free' labour force and a relative surplus population, of agrarian social class formation and differentiation, of rent formation, of surplus transfers within branches of production and finally, of the lack of dynamism in the development of the productive forces characteristic of many Latin American economies. The in-depth study of the major productive systems of Third World countries, their forms of social organization, the processes of generation and distribution of surplus value, the particular insertion of these systems in their 1. See, for example, ClCA (1987), INIES (1986), and Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganaderia y Alimentaci6n (1984). 5 respective world markets, the role of the respective states in their development, organization and expansion, the imperialist interests and their means of influencing these productive systems, provides a secure basis upon which to analyze the broader processes of the subordination of labour to capital on a world scale. We apply a rather unique methodology. As far as we know, only DTIES (1982) and Harriet Friedmann (1980, 1982) have attempted to develop and apply a similar approach to the understanding of particular commodity systems and their social relations of production. Our work focuses on a branch of production, or in more modern terms, a production subsystem, which incorporates the entire process of production, circulation and distribution of exchange value in the creation of a single use value, which in this case is beef. But further, we trace the movement of a commodity which is traded internationally, and whose basic characteristics as an exchange~ value are therefore determined internationally.
To understand fully the characteristics of beef as an international exchange value, we have also researched, albeit in less detail, the beef subsystem of the world's largest beef importing nation, the United States. An additional benefit rendered by the investigation of this totality is that it reveals one of the means by which the working classes and agricultural sectors of the US and Central America are linked through their mutual subordination to monopoly capital. The work is presented in six lengthy chapters. The first chapter briefly discusses recent debates and controversies about the roots of the crisis in Central America, and presents some alternative hypotheses. The theoretical and methodological perspectives that guide the overall analysis are put forth by means of a brief critical contrast of some of the basic premises of neo-Marxist analysis of 'underdeveloped' social formations, with recent contributions made around the problem of a 'generic' concept of petty commodity (peasant) production. We introduce our research methods and summarize the basic arguments with respect to the changes in the Honduran social formation that we attribute to the expansion of beef production and its particular social relations. The second chapter builds a significant part of the theoretical framework employed to analyze the relations between monopoly capital and agricultural producing classes in the Honduran beef subsystem, where we focus specifically on the 'problematic' class, petty commodity producers, and attempt to reformulate some recent contributions toward a generic concept of petty commodity 7 production, as well as clarify the concepts involved in surplus transfers. Chapter three explores the US market for beef and its relation .to the world and Central American markets. We examine the global determinants of supply and demand in the world market, and the reasons for US hegemony in this market. We then discuss the social relations within the US beef subsystem which gave rise to US beef imports, as well as the impacts of these imports on the social classes involved, including consumers, emphasizing the role of monopoly agro industrial and commercial capital. We then discuss the origins and nature of the crises in the world beef market. Subsequently, all of these are related to the development of the export beef market in Central America, where in addition the role of foreign capital and international lending agencies in the expansion of beef exports is explored. The relation of beef exports and monopoly capital to price formation and consumption within the Central American region is then discussed, and finally we make some assertions about the nature and direction of surplus transfers that occur as a function of U.S. Central American trade. Chapter four discusses the evolution of beef cattle ranching from 1950 1982 in Honduras, the development of 'cattle rent', the concentration and centralization of 8 land and capital in agriculture and the role of cattle ranching expansion in this process, and tJ."1e broad outlines of rural class differentiation over the period. We then develop a typology of cattle producers and relate this to the technical division of labour that arose in cattle production. The relations between cattle producing classes, and between these and agro industrial and commercial monopoly capital, are presented as explanatory features of the processes of social differentiation and surplus distribution. Chapter five focuses on the relationships between the organic composition of capital, labour use and the creation of a relative surplus population within the Honduran social formation. We briefly outline the historical processes of change in the organic composition of capital in agriculture and structural change in the labour force, and relate these to the expansion of cattle ranching which is seen as the primary force behind the expulsion of the rural population and the creation of a relative surplus population. The analysis of migratory flows over the period 1950 1974 is related to changes in the economically active population and land use change as basic empirical indicators. In the sixth chapter we discuss the current crisis, the growing antagonisms between fractions of capital 9 within the beef subsystem, the role of the state and the limits imposed by its class character, and the principal and secondary contradictions within the Honduran social formation, as well as the role of cattle ranching in their development. The contradictions that arose over control of the means of production in land, and the relation of these to agrarian reform, are discussed in the Honduran context. The principal contradiction between labour and monopoly capital, which has been sharpened by beef subsystem expansion, is examined in relation to the lack of development of the productive forces and increasing class struggle. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the crisis for the Honduran social formation, and of different possible alternative responses to the crisis depending upon the class practices of the social agents involved in the subsystem.
Papers by Patricia Howard
Jane Goodall
Female-headed households (FH) are the most destitute and yet have been almost completely neglected in policy making and in development interventions in Tigray, other than in relation to Food-for-work which nevertheless benefits them less. Wild and indigenous botanical resources and open access common lands were found to constitute a very important part of livelihood resources for the community (a ‘third’), but these resources have also in fact been largely neglected. Neglect of both almost certainly together generate further ‘externalities’, including the reproduction of poverty and resource degradation, and as well as possibly the alarming recent increase in HIV/AIDS in Tigray.
Overall, the research in Adiarbaetu revealed much more extensive use of wild and indigenous botanicals than has been previously reported for Tigray: more areas are used by more people for more purposes. Data presented in the appendix shows that FH are the vast majority of users (n= 30 households) of enclosed woodlots (80%), other community enclosures (90%), restricted graz-ing land (67%), and roadsides and boundary areas (100%). They are a slight majority among the users of unenclosed forests and woodlots (58%), and of unenclosed hillsides (52%), where the last category was used by 29 out of the 30 households. Open grazing lands were the only com-mon lands that were most used by MH, at 63% versus 38% of FH. FH also predominate in par-ticular use categories: aromatics (75%), grass for coffee ceremonies (62%), medicinals (69%), wild foods (56%), and fuelwood (57%), which reflects the fact that FH use common land areas more. In comparison with MH, a higher percentage of all FH uses (of open grazing land?) are of medicinals (24% versus 15% of all MH uses), grass for coffee ceremonies (20% versus 16%), and aromatics (6.5% versus 3%), whereas uses that figured more prominently in MH were grazing (6% versus 1%), and construction and fodder (4% versus 1%). The appendix provides a list of the some 127 species identified that are used by local people from the environment.
Particularly FH must live by providing their limited assets to others, by gleaning subsistence resources from common lands, participating in Food-for-work, and turning their limited and fairly uniform set of skills and assets toward spheres of petty production, trade, and services that are, nearly by definition, oversupplied. Women are particularly disadvantaged because they face multiple cultural and material constraints that do not permit them to accede to a wider la-bour market and networks of social exchange. The general inattention to FH in particular is an outcome not only of the unwillingness of the State and other development agents to intervene in matters that are culturally sensitive and ingrained, but as well of the inability of the State to redress the problem, as it has so often done, through land reallocation. Those programmes that provide productive resources to households are demonstrably targeted toward men. A third of the population, or FH, are thus ‘left out’ of the development equation.
Common lands and botanical resources are essential to livelihoods, even in heavily de-graded and drought-stricken Tigray. Access regimes have also changed repeatedly, with inevitable effects on livelihoods. Development dynamics have led to the fragmentation and diminution of individual farm holdings. Drought, the conversion of common lands for agriculture, and increas-ing livestock populations have led to the reduction and degradation of grazing lands. Traditional control over forest and tree resources are also eroded: forests and woodlots were often convert-ed to farmland, and deforestation of remaining areas proceeded apace. Enclosures led to environmental enhancement, but policies have not promoted linkages between environmental sus-tainability and livelihoods, and do not recognize that local populations are heavily dependent up-on resources other than grass and timber. Although at times disadvantaged groups, such as the landless and FH, have been permitted to benefit economically from enclosures, in general the economic benefits perceived have been either unequally distributed, in the case of restricted grazing lands, or minimal or negative, in the case of enclosed woodlots.
All common land areas and all uses are entailed in and affected by resource degradation and all must also be considered in resource management. People seek specific botanical resources that are important to them no matter where they occur in the landscape. If restrictions on resource access are created in one area, then demand shifts to another. Species restrictions provide a partial response to this: it is only by restricting or preventing use of the most threat-ened species anywhere they can be found that their disappearance can be prevented. But formally declaring an activity illegal does not prevent it from occurring. If ‘open access’ areas and use of restricted species are not adequately dealt with, these areas are likely to become deserts, with area enclosures dotting the landscape like tiny oases. If the material resources that are produced in area enclosures continue to largely fail to meet the most pressing needs of the population, their destiny can only be likewise to disappear. These neglected resources and common land areas, we argue, constitute the forgotten third of development resources in the region, and their neglect threatens to undermine the other two-thirds: farming and area enclosures. Another set of issues that is crucial to address in common property resources management in Adiarbaetu and all other villages in the highlands is that of destitution and social equity. Highland political culture has, for centuries, upheld principles of equitable distribution of key livelihood assets, and has both formally, and to a degree in practice, recognized women’s entitlements. However, many cultural and economic factors have recently combined to generate very high levels of poverty, especially among particular types of households: those headed by divorced or widowed women and those that are young. It can be demonstrated empirically that these households rely more on common resources and are the major users of the ‘minor’, if not ‘major’ resources.
Both FH and the plant resources that are essential to them have been largely neglected in development efforts: this ‘third’ of the population, and this ‘third’ of the livelihood resource base, have either gone unrecognized, been culturally defined as useless (often called ‘wasteland’), or simply been neglected. FH are often forced into destitution due to higher dependency ratios, unequal division of household assets (with women accessing fewer resources of lower quality), and unequal opportunities to farm and to participate in civil life. FH are more dependent on common resources, but enclosures are not governed with their resource requirements in mind, and those that remain open are under increasing pressure precisely because they are relatively free access and increasing numbers of people, both female headed and young households, de-pend upon them for bare subsistence. The unintended but very real marginalization and neglect of these households, both in terms of access to private assets and of access to ‘major’ common resource benefits, can only result in an increasing environmental and human toll, as well as increasing inequality.
Pages: 298 pp., 566 refs., tables, graphs, botanical index, subject index
Binding: Paperback/Hardback
ISBN: 1 84277 156 6 cased; 1 84277 157 4 limp
Price: £16.95 (US$29.95) paper; £49.95 (US$75.00) hardbound
Readership: Ethnobotany, biodiversity conservation, forestry, indigenous knowledge, gender studies, and development studies.
This unique collection of largely unpublished, in-depth case studies drawn from Latin America, Asia, Africa, Europe and North America aims to increase our understanding of the importance of women and gender relations in plant biodiversity management and conservation. It provides a state-of-the-art overview of the concepts, relationships and contexts that help explain the relatively hidden gender dimensions of people-plant relations.
The contributors come from a rich range of disciplines including ethnobotany, geography, agronomy, anthropology, plant breeding, nutrition, development economics and women’s studies. They demonstrate how crucial women are to plant genetic resource management and conservation at household, village, and community levels; and how gender relations have a strong influence on the ways in which local people understand, manage, and conserve biodiversity. Continued access to plant biodiversity is crucial to rural women’s status and welfare, and their motivations therefore are a principal driving force countering processes of genetic erosion.
The volume covers the following broad areas:
* Women, the domestic arena and plant conservation
* Gender relations, women’s rights and plant management
* Gendered plant knowledge in science and society
* Plants, women’s status and welfare
* Gender, biodiversity loss and conservation.
The contributors highlight the gender biases evident in much contemporary scientific research, policy and development practice relating to biodiversity management. And they seek to contribute to a number of important debates, including the determinants of genetic erosion, the significance of gender in ethnobotanical knowledge systems, traditional intellectual property rights systems and women’s entitlements therein, and other debates about the nature of gender-environment relations.
Here’s what renowned commentators have to say about the book:
Dr. Jane Goodall, world-renowned primatologist, conservationist, and anthropologist
“THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT BOOK [that] presents a rich picture of the vital role played by peasant women around the world. They are struggling to preserve, in the face of modern agribusiness, the agricultural wisdom of the past and the diversity of plants that have been used for both food and medicine. It is vital that decision makers heed the knowledge of these women who understand so well the art of a sustainable lifestyle. Women and Plants must be in the library of every individual who cares about the future of our planet.”
Dr. Hamdallah Zedan, Executive Secretary to the Convention on Biodiversity
‘FOCUSING ON TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE of indigenous people and local communities, and especially on the relationship between biodiversity and women in traditional societies worldwide, this book provides a well-marked path for the better understanding of biodiversity, its values and its importance for humans while at the same time highlighting community and ecosystem inter-relations’.
Prof. José Esquinas Alcazar, Secretary of the Commission on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture of the Food and Agriculture Organization of The United Nations, and Father of 'Farmers' Rights'
"AT LONG LAST, the predominant role of women in the management of plant genetic resources has begun to be scientifically documented in this highly important book. . . All those with responsibilities for promoting the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources should certainly read this book."
Dr. Bina Agarwal, Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University, and author of A Field of Ones Own; Gender and Land Rights in South Asia
“WONDERFULLY RICH IN EVIDENCE, persuasive in its argument, and wide-ranging in coverage, this timely edited volume on the gendered nature of knowledge about biodiversity enriches both scholarship and policy. It points to the critical need not only to recognize the specificity of women’s knowledge about plant species, but to strengthen their conservation efforts and bring their interests to bear in arrangements for biodiversity development and benefit sharing.”
Professor Nina L. Etkin, Associate Editor, Pharmaceutical Biology.
“WOMEN AND PLAnts offers a uniquely gender-sensitive perspective on the management of biodiversity . . . and offers keen insights for policy development and application.”
The book can be ordered at http://zedweb.hypermart.net/home.htm or at Amazon.com or through Palgrave-Macmillan at http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalogue/index.asp? isbn=1842771574
Table of contents
Preface
1. PATRICIA HOWARD, “Women and the plant world: an exploration.”
Section I. Culture, Kitchen and Conservation
2. LAURIE GREENBURG, “Women in the garden and kitchen: the role of cuisine in the conservation of traditional house lot crops among Yucatec Mayan immigrants.”
3. ANDREA PIERONI, “Wild food plants and Arbëresh women in Lucania, Southern Italy.”
4. EPHROSINE DANIGGELIS, “Women and ‘wild’ foods: nutrition and household security among Rai and Sherpa forager-farmers in Eastern Nepal.”
Section II. Gender Relations, Women’s Rights, and Plant Management
4. LISA LEIMAR PRICE, “Farm women's rights and roles in wild plant food gathering and management in northeast Thailand.”
5. ALLISON GOEBEL, “Gender and entitlements in the Zimbabwean woodlands: a case study of resettlement.”
Section III. Gendered Plant Knowledge in Science and Society.
6. NANCY TURNER, ‘Passing on the news’: women’s work, traditional knowledge and plant resource management in indigenous societies of Northwestern North America.”
7. BRIJ KOTHARI, “The invisible queen in the plant kingdom: gender perspectives in medical ethnobotany.”
8. PAUL SILLITOE, “The gender of crops in the Papua New Guinea highlands.”
Section IV. Plants, Women’s Status and Welfare
10. FÜSUN ERTUĞ, “Gendering the tradition of plant gathering in Central Anatolia (Turkey)”.
11. LINDA DICK BISSONNETTE, “The basket-makers of the Central California Interior.”
12. MARGOT WILSON, “Exchange, patriarchy, and status: Women’s homegardens in Bangladesh.”
Section V. Gender, Biodiversity Loss and Conservation
13. STEPHEN WOOTEN, “Losing ground: gender relations, commercial horticulture, and threats to local plant diversity in rural Mali.”
14. MILLICENT MALAZA, “Modernization and gender dynamics in the loss of agrobiodiversity in Swaziland’s food system.”
15. SHIRLEY HOFFMANN, “Arawakan women and the erosion of traditional food production in Amazonas Venezuela.”
16. YICHING SONG & JANICE JIGGINS, “Women and Maize Breeding: The Development of New Seed Systems in a Marginal Area of Southwest China.”
Botanical Index
Subject Index
It is clear that our world is changing with a rapidity that is unprecedented in human history. Our impacts on the biosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere are so great that many scientists are now calling this period in the Earth’s history the ‘anthropocene’. The Earth’s social-ecological systems are also characterised by unprecedented integration and inter-dependency: the actions of populations living in highly developed, urban and industrial parts of the globe have extensive repercussions far across the planet, and it has thus become exceedingly difficult for them to see and understand the ecological and social repercussions. People living in GIAHS-type systems have the advantage that they can still witness and, to a great extent, understand the implications of their actions for their environments, but their great disadvantage is that they have virtually no power to affect those global drivers that are changing their status and the state of their systems so rapidly.
It is in this context, where both scientific and local knowledge are of such great importance, that we have attempted to bring to bear the state-of-the art of scientific knowledge to conceptualise GIAHS. We have sought to exploit those perspectives that are informing global policy debates about means to understand the earth’s social-ecological systems and the dynamics of global change. The choice has been made to adopt a social-ecological systems’ resilience approach, while integrating into it those perspectives that have contributed most strongly to understanding the nature and dynamics of traditional societies. All of the topics that are addressed herein represent brief summaries of such perspectives, that highlight some of the most important general insights. All of the literature cited represents only a fraction of that which is relevant.
We have drawn on GIAHS background documents, participated in several meetings with FAO staff and GIAHS partners, and consulted with scientific experts who have provided valuable comments and critiques.2 In this process, much of the early GIAHS thinking has been critiqued and revised, and the current effort, represented in these pages, will in turn be subjected to scrutiny and debate. Invariably there are perspectives and issues that are glossed over or missed entirely. The development of the Scientific Conceptual Framework for GIAHS, like the GIAHS initiative itself, must be understood as a social learning process. As the GIAHS Programme continues to develop, a Scientific Advisory Committee and, as necessary, Working Groups, should have the tasks of validating and updating the Scientific Framework and Strategic Principles. The most crucial forum for validation and adjustment, however, resides at local level within GIAHS project sites, among the stewards of GIAHS who hold the greatest wealth of knowledge about their own systems and whose knowledge and volition must constitute the wellsprings of decision-making.
What is presented in these pages is not a plan of action for the GIAHS Programme, which must draw upon an additional substantial body of knowledge dealing with experiences in supporting traditional communities in adaptive co-management, and which must reflect broad consultation with indigenous and traditional peoples as well as with governments, donors, and the relevant NGO community. Rather, an effort has been made to derive Strategic Principles from the body of scientific knowledge that can guide implementation, and to provide a framework of concepts and issues that need to be considered when developing such plans. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no previous attempt to develop such a comprehensive framework, and therefore errors are inevitable. The authors accept full responsibility for such errors and express our gratitude to FAO, and especially to Parviz Koohafkan and David Boerma, for entrusting us with such a challenging task.
"
All of this work and much not cited has served to bring attention to the problems involved in beef production in Latin America. The massive expansion of beef production which occurred over the decades of the 1950S, 1960s and 1970s as a result of the boom in the world beef market brought with it the most extensive changes in lCL'1d use of the region's history. Deforestation, environmental degradation, population expulsion, land concentration, displacement of basic food crops, increasing hunger, foreign market dependency, monopolization and finally, world and internal market crises are the basic processes which have characterized the historical development of many of the beef subsystems in Latin America. Yet nowhere have these different elements been drawn together, theorized and put forth as explanatory factors in the overall structural changes in agriculture and in the social formations of Latin America as a whole. Nor is beef production ever mentioned as an important element of the social and economic crises that plague Latin American social formations. In Central America, where literally 'cattle is king', this productive activity is mentioned only occasionally as having importance in agriculture and exports. Traditional economic indicators 3 show that coffee and bananas have far more importance, so these are the branches that are given attention when analyzing changes in the Central American agrarian structure over the last century. Williams (1986) is the first to begin to place cattle production in its rightful place in a global analysis of exports and crisis in central America, when he shows the intimate relationship between pasture expansion and rural class struggle which has been one of the material bases for central American revolutionary movements.
This investigation aims at developing a political economy of beef production and at revealing the relations between this branch and the social formation by examining the structural changes in the agrarian societies of Central America that have participated in its expansion. We examine in depth only the case of Honduras, but we draw heavily on experience gained in the investigation of the Nicaraguan case. And research which has been per formed on Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama tends to sup port the idea that there is very little variation between Central American countries in terms of the processes involved in the expansion of beef production. The particular characteristics of each country provide more variations on a theme than significant divergences.1
Beef production seems a mundane topic at best. The empirical specificity of the political economy of beef in Central America would cause most theorists of imperialism, capitalist crisis, Third World agrarian structure and political class struggle to respire deeply and pass on to other topics. Yet the study of the microcosm which is beef production, set within the macrocosm which is central American reality, has important contributions to make to the understanding of the processes of surplus transfer at the international level, of monopoly capitalist development within Third World social formations, of the creation of a 'free' labour force and a relative surplus population, of agrarian social class formation and differentiation, of rent formation, of surplus transfers within branches of production and finally, of the lack of dynamism in the development of the productive forces characteristic of many Latin American economies. The in-depth study of the major productive systems of Third World countries, their forms of social organization, the processes of generation and distribution of surplus value, the particular insertion of these systems in their 1. See, for example, ClCA (1987), INIES (1986), and Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganaderia y Alimentaci6n (1984). 5 respective world markets, the role of the respective states in their development, organization and expansion, the imperialist interests and their means of influencing these productive systems, provides a secure basis upon which to analyze the broader processes of the subordination of labour to capital on a world scale. We apply a rather unique methodology. As far as we know, only DTIES (1982) and Harriet Friedmann (1980, 1982) have attempted to develop and apply a similar approach to the understanding of particular commodity systems and their social relations of production. Our work focuses on a branch of production, or in more modern terms, a production subsystem, which incorporates the entire process of production, circulation and distribution of exchange value in the creation of a single use value, which in this case is beef. But further, we trace the movement of a commodity which is traded internationally, and whose basic characteristics as an exchange~ value are therefore determined internationally.
To understand fully the characteristics of beef as an international exchange value, we have also researched, albeit in less detail, the beef subsystem of the world's largest beef importing nation, the United States. An additional benefit rendered by the investigation of this totality is that it reveals one of the means by which the working classes and agricultural sectors of the US and Central America are linked through their mutual subordination to monopoly capital. The work is presented in six lengthy chapters. The first chapter briefly discusses recent debates and controversies about the roots of the crisis in Central America, and presents some alternative hypotheses. The theoretical and methodological perspectives that guide the overall analysis are put forth by means of a brief critical contrast of some of the basic premises of neo-Marxist analysis of 'underdeveloped' social formations, with recent contributions made around the problem of a 'generic' concept of petty commodity (peasant) production. We introduce our research methods and summarize the basic arguments with respect to the changes in the Honduran social formation that we attribute to the expansion of beef production and its particular social relations. The second chapter builds a significant part of the theoretical framework employed to analyze the relations between monopoly capital and agricultural producing classes in the Honduran beef subsystem, where we focus specifically on the 'problematic' class, petty commodity producers, and attempt to reformulate some recent contributions toward a generic concept of petty commodity 7 production, as well as clarify the concepts involved in surplus transfers. Chapter three explores the US market for beef and its relation .to the world and Central American markets. We examine the global determinants of supply and demand in the world market, and the reasons for US hegemony in this market. We then discuss the social relations within the US beef subsystem which gave rise to US beef imports, as well as the impacts of these imports on the social classes involved, including consumers, emphasizing the role of monopoly agro industrial and commercial capital. We then discuss the origins and nature of the crises in the world beef market. Subsequently, all of these are related to the development of the export beef market in Central America, where in addition the role of foreign capital and international lending agencies in the expansion of beef exports is explored. The relation of beef exports and monopoly capital to price formation and consumption within the Central American region is then discussed, and finally we make some assertions about the nature and direction of surplus transfers that occur as a function of U.S. Central American trade. Chapter four discusses the evolution of beef cattle ranching from 1950 1982 in Honduras, the development of 'cattle rent', the concentration and centralization of 8 land and capital in agriculture and the role of cattle ranching expansion in this process, and tJ."1e broad outlines of rural class differentiation over the period. We then develop a typology of cattle producers and relate this to the technical division of labour that arose in cattle production. The relations between cattle producing classes, and between these and agro industrial and commercial monopoly capital, are presented as explanatory features of the processes of social differentiation and surplus distribution. Chapter five focuses on the relationships between the organic composition of capital, labour use and the creation of a relative surplus population within the Honduran social formation. We briefly outline the historical processes of change in the organic composition of capital in agriculture and structural change in the labour force, and relate these to the expansion of cattle ranching which is seen as the primary force behind the expulsion of the rural population and the creation of a relative surplus population. The analysis of migratory flows over the period 1950 1974 is related to changes in the economically active population and land use change as basic empirical indicators. In the sixth chapter we discuss the current crisis, the growing antagonisms between fractions of capital 9 within the beef subsystem, the role of the state and the limits imposed by its class character, and the principal and secondary contradictions within the Honduran social formation, as well as the role of cattle ranching in their development. The contradictions that arose over control of the means of production in land, and the relation of these to agrarian reform, are discussed in the Honduran context. The principal contradiction between labour and monopoly capital, which has been sharpened by beef subsystem expansion, is examined in relation to the lack of development of the productive forces and increasing class struggle. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the crisis for the Honduran social formation, and of different possible alternative responses to the crisis depending upon the class practices of the social agents involved in the subsystem.
Characteristics of 'traditional' rural subsistence food systems
The rural subsistence food chain: links between agrobiodiversity, food storage, processing, preparation and culinary traditions in the domestic sphere
Gender and post-harvest processes leading to decreasing use and maintenance of agrobiodiversity
Conclusions and recommendations
problems related to intra-cultural variation and gender, and to (d) show that ethnobotanists are beginning to overcome such biases by incorporating gender into their research.
Methods: Review of selected literature and case studies. Results: Gender bias results in (1) under-estimations of plant diversity and its uses; (2) the improper identification of plants, their management, characteristics, uses or names; and (3) the misunderstanding of people-plant relationships. Each of these biases is illustrated through literature case studies. A review of citations in CAB over time is used to analyze the changes in the use of gender analysis and gender disaggregation of data to illustrate how bias is being overcome, and what types of bias are still prevalent.
Conclusions: Much progress has been made recently in overcoming the bias resulting from the failure to investigate women's knowledge and use of plants but there is still a relative dearth of gender analysis that can overcome the third bias, which results in a partial misunderstanding of human-plant relations. This latter bias is more difficult to overcome because it relies on a stronger anthropological or sociological approach to social relations but, as these disciplines are increasingly involved, we can expect this bias to be overcome.