M. KANE,
Project Women in Development Adviser
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THIS CASE STUDY FOCUSES on the achievements and lessons learned from women's participation in the Pakistan component of the Inter-Regional Project for Participatory Upland Conservation and Development (GCP/INT/ 542/ITA). In particular, it concentrates on how to integrate a gender perspective into natural resource conservation when resource conservation is not a normal priority in the lives of rural people. The project, which ran from 1992 until October 1997 in Pakistan, covers five countries in three regions: Burundi, Rwanda (until 1994) and Tunisia, in Africa; Nepal and Pakistan in Asia; and Bolivia in Latin America. Its principle aim was to promote and consolidate people's participation in the conservation and development of upland resources, in accordance with government policies and priorities. The adaptation and application of participatory methods and the promotion of an integrated approach to watershed management were the central elements of this multicomponent project.
Although it was not a specific objective of the project, a gender perspective on the key elements necessary for the participation of rural women in natural resource conservation became a major component. In Pakistan, men and women are segregated, and two separate project field teams had to be established to implement the project. When an initial strategy of implementation was formulated, taking into account the results of the first participatory rural appraisal (PRA), the full participation of women was considered vital to the project's success.
A participatory methodology was developed that centred on promoting the empowerment of rural women through the formation of village-level associations. Women's associations were the fora through which women had access to information and training. They provided support to women, allowing them to develop self-confidence in expressing opinions and in contributing to decision-making. Access to credit and income from income-generating activities also gave women recognition and confidence.
Side by side with the formation of women's associations and attention to the needs expressed by rural women in the PRAs, a programme was integrated to increase women's involvement with and awareness of environmental issues.
The project's Pakistan component introduced gender awareness training at three levels: the community level; the mid-level of extensionists and field workers; and the top management or department director level.
Another project will have to be designed to introduce the importance of integrating gender concerns into the planning of participatory watershed management programmes in the government's forestry or soil and water conservation departments.
THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF PAKISTAN was formed on 14 August 1947. It has a geographical area of 79.61 million ha. About 20 million ha are under crop cultivation and approximately 3.5 million ha are forested.1
Uplands represent 40 percent of Pakistan's land base and are the key to the country's development and resource security (FAO, 1991). The main water sources originate in the upland regions, where most animals graze, the majority of forests are found and about 25 percent of the population lives. The uplands are the main source of water for extensive irrigation systems throughout the country and hydro-electric power plants provide about 70 percent of the total electric power generated.
During the Eighth Five-Year Plan period (1993 to 1997), the Government of Pakistan decided to adopt a more balanced approach to the development of remote areas. The Pakistan component of the project was initiated in response to a formal recognition of the importance of watershed management.
Pakistan is divided into four provinces. The project site is located in the province of Balochistan which is the largest and covers about 44 percent of Pakistan or 34.72 million ha. It is characterized as arid and semi-arid with a wide range of interrelated desert ecosystems that vary in terms of precipitation, temperature and altitude.
The pattern of land use in much of semi-arid upland Balochistan has a traditional emphasis on livestock, supplemented, where possible, by subsistence cropping. Rangelands are typically utilized by communal groups or extended families.
Water remains the principal constraint for agricultural land use in upland Balochistan. Several systems have evolved for capturing water for agricultural use. One traditional strategy is the construction of elaborate underground water channel systems (karez) that tap and direct subsurface groundwater to areas of cultivation. Sailaba are lands irrigated by seasonal floodwater and temporary streams, while khushkaba land depends on direct rainfall or localized runoff from a very small catchment area.
Since the 1960s, the number of power-driven pumps and tubewells has rapidly increased, and there has been a change in production emphasis from food crops to high water-demanding (and highly profitable) horticultural cash crops (especially apples), resulting in rapidly declining aquifers. The general trend is towards the progressive settlement and concentration of populations in the fertile, irrigated but limited valley bottom areas of watersheds. This is leading to unsustainably high levels of groundwater extraction for irrigation and to increasing degradation of the vegetative cover of surrounding mountains and dry and stony rangelands, caused by overgrazing, both by local flocks and by transhumant herds.
Kanak Valley was selected as the project site in late 1991, and Noza sub-watershed was subsequently selected for implementation of the first project phase, which began in December 1992.
Kanak Valley is in the Mastung district, some 45 kilometres southwest of the city of Quetta. The entire valley covers about 40 000 ha and has a population estimated at 20 000 people living in 40 villages. Altitudes range from about 1 600 to 2 500 m, from north to south.
Specific data for Kanak Valley are mostly based on estimates or on information obtained during the PRA that was carried out at the beginning of 1993. The last national census in Pakistan was taken in 1981.
Kanak Valley is a Brahui/Baloch tribal area. Within Kanak Valley, the Noza sub-watershed covers an area of 8 100 ha and has a population of 3 200 people.
The lands these people cultivate were given by the Khan of Kalat in the eighteenth century to tribes who had supplied him with soldiers, as compensation for relatives killed in battle. Some of these lands were tax-free, while in others a proportion of production had to be paid to the Khan to feed his warriors. Generally, the best land was given to the tribes who fought best. Some tribes started to cultivate the lands themselves, others had the land cultivated by tenants. Tenant rights of cultivation were hereditary.
The more recent villages were gradually established in the second half of the twentieth century, when transhumant people started to settle. These groups used to spend the summer on or close to the fan areas, where they grazed their livestock and raised rainfed subsistence crops. In the late autumn, when fodder for the animals became scarce, they moved with their flocks to lower, warmer parts of Balochistan to feed the animals, work the fields and escape the winter cold.
The degradation of pastures in the lower areas forced many people to reduce their herds or to sell them in order to buy land, shifting to rainfed or irrigated agriculture. The steady lowering of the water table has forced most people to adopt rainfed agriculture but, for many the land produces too little and they have to work as daily wage labourers or try to obtain government jobs in Quetta. In most cases, orchards are under modern private ownership, rainfed agriculture is under traditional communal ownership, and irrigated lands are under a combination of both.
Some of the larger villages have basic services such as schools, telephones and post offices. The area is connected by roads to other parts of the country and also to the Islamic Republic of Iran and Afghanistan. Access is guaranteed by the Regional Cooperation for Development highway connecting Quetta to Karachi and by all-season gravel roads connecting all major villages.
The Quetta-Karachi and Quetta-Iran border railway lines cut across the southern part of the valley where the Dringar railway station is located. Local buses provide daily transport to and from the cities of Quetta and Mastung.
Apart from the elders, to whom respect is due and who have special duties on certain occasions, few other specialized positions or roles exist. There is a strong, common feeling of economic deprivation and marginalization, and this is expressed by both old and young men, regardless of educational level. Most people in the communities attach great value to education and aspire to integration into the outside world, as long as traditions are kept alive.
Agriculture is the main economic activity in the project area. The majority of farmers grow wheat for food security. Other important crops, in terms of the area under cultivation are: barley, onions, potatoes and vegetables. Wheat, cumin and barley are the main winter crops. Onions, potatoes and other vegetables are the most important summer ones.
Wheat and barley cultivation is a high-risk, low-return enterprise, in this environment. The practice of growing wheat as a dual-purpose crop, providing both fodder for animals and, if conditions are favourable, grain for human consumption, increases the chances of getting returns.
The most productive enterprises in the project area are irrigated orchards. Only large- and medium-scale farmers have orchards, but the trend of growing fruit trees is increasing rapidly. The remarkable growth in orchard production is also related to the Afghan refugee phenomenon, which has made available the cheap and abundant labour required for excavation work, tubewell installation and reclamation and preparation of lands for planting.
The main fruit trees are apple (golden delicious, red delicious, mushhadi, amir and kashmiri), peach, plum and apricot. Apples are the most common fruit and are harvested from September to November and marketed in Quetta and Karachi or sold to local contractors.
Vegetables and lucerne are grown as intercrops in newly established orchards. Fodder such as alfalfa is grown in the orchards where flood irrigation is practised and sufficient water is available.
The main livestock raised in the valley are sheep and goats, which form 88 percent of the total. The remainder includes poultry, rabbits and camels.
The mobility of women is restricted in Brahui culture. Brahui women observe purdah, which literally translates as "curtain" from the Urdu language. Purdah is the segregation of women - keeping them behind the curtain for their own protection and to ensure that family honour is maintained. This means that women live in compounds behind mud walls where they are virtually hidden from view. Women must avoid being seen by strangers, especially men. Access to compounds is restricted and a woman's mobility outside the compound is controlled by her husband and male relatives.
Nevertheless, most women in the project area work in the fields. During the productive season from March until mid-November, women may spend as much as 60 percent of their time in productive gender roles. A typical work day for a Brahui farmer's wife is 17 hours long. Her work is sheer drudgery because it is repetitive and includes no decision-making regarding how land and other resources are to be utilized. Women are responsible for transplanting, weeding and harvesting. Official statistics are very few (the last national census was conducted in 1984) and grossly underestimate the contribution of women to the agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) in rural areas of Pakistan.
In addition to farm work, women collect fuel and water and are responsible for storing and managing grain. Almost 90 percent of rural families store foodgrains in jute bags, while the remaining 10 percent use mud bins and wool bags. The absence of rodent- and pest-control measures can cause storage losses of up to 20 percent.
Besides food and feedgrain storage and management, Kanak Valley women also dry vegetables, mainly tomatoes, and fruits such as grapes during sunny autumn days and store these products for family consumption in winter months.
A large majority of Kanak Valley women are engaged in poultry and livestock production. This includes health care, shed cleaning, feeding and care of pregnant and lactating animals, milk processing and preparation of milk products such as butter oil (ghee) and buttermilk (lassi). Collection and processing of farm manure and hay and silage making are also the responsibilities of women, although most training in improved silage making offered by the Livestock Department is directed towards men. Very few government departments or even projects collect gender-disaggregated data.
Handicrafts, such as making woollen mats, knitting and embroidery, are also a source of income for women, particularly during the winter months when they are less involved in agriculture.
THE PROJECT, WHICH WAS EXTENDED to October 1997, was implemented through FAO with the Balochistan Forest and Wildlife Department.
In the past, the Forest Department's upland watershed management actions focused on attempts to recharge the rapidly depleting groundwater table. The Forest Department, working usually on state lands, did not develop an extension service and consequently did not develop methodologies to approach farmers or messages to be delivered to farmers. Instead, a major section of the Department's personnel is made up of forest guards.
However, the sectoral priorities proposed in the Eighth Five-Year Plan by the Balochistan Forest Department included the reorientation of forest policy towards a more participatory approach, and public education with a view to bettering the management of forest and land resources.
The project was introduced as a pilot project to develop participatory methodologies in Balochistan. Its main objective was to promote the participation of local communities in conservation and development of upland resources, in accordance with government policies and priorities.
Noza sub-watershed, selected as the project site in Kanak Valley, is privately owned rather than state land. The main problems in this area are that rangelands have been overexploited by transhumant and other flocks and the remaining vegetation has been uprooted as fuelwood. The removal of almost all vegetation has had a negative affect on water infiltration rates and increased soil erosion, with the consequence that little of the original topsoil is left.
Owing to the increasing number of tubewells installed in Noza, a drop in the groundwater level, from about 15 to 80 m below the surface, has occurred over the last 30 years. All traditional water supply systems (karezes), have slowly dried up. Commonly owned and maintained karezes were replaced by individually owned wells, which are now concentrated in the hands of a few owners. Irrigated agriculture, especially orchards, is entirely dependent on groundwater utilization and the area covered by orchards has steadily increased as a result of the high market value of orchard products.
A participatory and integrated approach to watershed management and natural resources use and conservation was promoted by the project both within the Forest and Wildlife Department and through much needed coordination with the Agriculture and Livestock Departments.
The project was designed so that a strategy could be based on the results of the PRA. The strategy evolved through assessment of local physical and socio-economic realities, problems and potentials, and the identification of priority activities to support implementation by the population. The project strategy adopted the following lines of action:
THE PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS was the most important element in the overall project design because it was the evolutionary process through which a participatory methodology came into being for promoting people's participation in watershed management in Kanak Valley. The project design did not include fixed targets, but rather the identification of a process or methodology.
A new figure, the group promoter, was suggested to carry out the task of contacting, and motivating the participation of, local communities in the identification of development opportunities. Segregation of men and women in the Noza sub-watershed meant that two project teams (and two group promoters) had to be established, one for men and one for women.
The Balochistan Forestry and Wildlife department employs no professional women so, in March 1993, the project hired young, Brahui-speaking Matriculation graduates (the equivalent of about tenth-grade school students) living near Karnak Valley who were willing to travel every day to Noza as group promoters. Older women were hired to work with the group promoters in a supervisory capacity.
Group promoters were first given training in how to use PRA. At the time, very few national and provincial development projects in Pakistan used PRA, and none of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were capable of training for PRA or administering the PRAs themselves.
Since the literacy rate for women in the immediate project area is only 3.6 percent, time was given to developing interactive PRA tools. The use of PRA was iterative in that it was repeated with women in each new village added to the project area. Eventually, PRA became a part of the process of forming women's associations and of building a partnership with the women of Kanak Valley.
The PRA tools adapted and selected as most appropriate for use in Noza sub-watershed included:
The first year of the project with the women's team was spent in identifying and refining PRA tools, carrying out the PRAs and training staff.
Early in 1994, an international consultant in communications from FAO held a workshop with participants from the project, NGOs and government departments to look at "slide language" and other participatory communication techniques to be used in the project area, particularly for highlighting conservation problems.
There was concern about how to communicate the project's objective and conservation strategies to the population in Noza because the results of the PRA clearly demonstrated that natural resource conservation, which is a long-term proposition, was not a priority for the people.
The slide language communication technique was adapted by group promoters to suit their own presentation styles. Group promoters presented sets of slides with a common theme, which proved to be a very popular and highly effective communication tool. In fact, a group of women from the community in Noza, who conducted a community evaluation of the project in June 1997, said that slide language was worth a thousand words in defining the project's objective and recommended that each project develop sets of slides to use as "calling cards".
An explicit aim of the project was to involve not only local populations but also relevant government agencies, the private sector, NGOs and others. In 1993 and 1994, the project had a contract with an NGO, the Balochistan Rural Support Programme (BRSP), to assist in training group promoters and forestry staff in communication skills, group management, record-keeping and rural finance.
In the first villages where the PRA was conducted, women set the tone by identifying development priorities for improved services such as health, education, sanitation and access to clean drinking-water. Income-generating activities, although of lesser importance, were also of interest to women.
Although the priorities outlined in PRAs were not among the project's objectives, drinking-water schemes were introduced as entry point activities in 1993-94, but were maintained by only one community. Eventually, project staff were able to use slide language to tell women in the first introductory meetings that the project could not address health, education or drinking-water problems, but would work with income-generating activities. In 1993-94, poultry rearing for egg production was developed as an income-generating activity.
This programme set a precedent and all future income-generating, and other, activities were structured to include village-level training.
By 1997, training was regularly being offered in basic hygiene, basic sewing, jam making, tree pruning and pest management, reproductive health and leadership skills.
These training programmes, associated primarily with health, sanitation or income-generating activities, were useful for two main reasons. First, the project needed simple, well-designed and useful programmes that could be put in place at the end of the PRA. The drinking-water schemes did not work, so these training programmes were developed to answer other needs identified in the PRAs.
PRA is an intense experience that raises expectations. Women get tired of meetings and what they see as paperwork. Without well-designed, tested programmes adapted to the local situation, the project women's team would have difficulties in Kanak, because women are far too busy to participate in ten weeks of PRA without getting an immediate return.
Second, women in Kanak had never been exposed to training programmes and this training in new skills gave them more self-confidence.
It was difficult to identify women extension agents who were able and willing to travel to Kanak Valley to deliver training or extension messages. Since a secondary objective of the project was to involve staff from line departments, NGOs and others organizations, the project team tried to avoid giving the training themselves, except when it was absolutely necessary.
The practice in Balochistan has been to train group promoters as subject matter specialists because government extension agents have a very poor delivery record (and also because there are very few women extension agents, all of whom are in the Agriculture Department and employed as poultry technicians in the Livestock Department.)
An attempt was made to use a woman poultry technician from the Mastung district livestock office as a trainer but, even though she was paid an honorarium by the project and provided with transport, she did not relish the idea of fieldwork.
In 1994-95, project staff identified a young Brahui woman who was given training in poultry raising and basic animal health and nutrition by the veterinary staff of another FAO project (FAO-Pak/88/050). The course was designed by project staff with assistance from an NGO and a freelance artist, Fauzia Minullah. It was delivered to two villages as a test. Village women appreciated the course very much but, unfortunately, the newly trained Brahui woman did not enjoy field work.
The Agriculture Department in Quetta has a women's extension section that employs about 20 women trained in food processing. As in all government departments, women extensionists have less access to transport, so most of them had never visited rural areas to give training. The project staff developed a good relationship with these women extensionists, who took part in all project training, including gender awareness training. Two extensionists have been holding jam and chutney making courses in the project area for the past three years.
It was decided to work with women in groups, or "associations". Individually, women who are uneducated or illiterate, have limited mobility and are isolated from information exchange have difficulty following ideas and understanding concepts. They lack self-confidence in expressing their opinions and thoughts, but they gain from the group interaction and support extended through associations. Women leaders and activists serve as role models for them.2
Forming women's associations became the final step of the PRA for the women's programme. When a new association is inaugurated, the group selects a name, a chairperson and secretary/treasurer are elected for a period of one year and all association members pay a membership fee of Rs.100 (US$2.50), then contributing at least Rs.10 (25 cents) to monthly savings. Each group member decides how much she will save and the treasurer records individual savings every month. If the treasurer lacks the necessary literacy or numeracy skills, recording is done by a school-age son or literate spouse. Project staff have emphasized saving as a process and not an end in itself.
In 1995, village activists, chairpersons and other office bearers of associations were given leadership training by the NGO BRSP. Later, this training was done by the project group promoters because the project had always insisted that all training and interaction with women should be in their native language, Brahui. Most NGOs are accustomed to using the national language, Urdu, and sometimes cannot understand that in rural areas this limits group participation. When group promoters took over leadership training, they added a session on gender issues, another area that was receiving scant attention from local NGOs in Balochistan in 1995.
The project sponsored the first gender and development (GAD) training to be held in Balochistan which took place in March 1995. The field staff of NGOs, projects and government department extensionists took part. In October of the same year, gender awareness training was given at the village level in Kanak Valley by a husband and wife team of trainers working through a national NGO, the Aurat Foundation. The training was very successful and much appreciated by both men and women.
An exercise that the men found particularly informative was the daily routine profile. Profiles of the daily work of men, women and children were drawn on flip-chart paper and men could see how much work women really do. The problem is universal - women's triple gender roles of reproductive, productive and community management are not given sufficient recognition and tend to be overlooked until people start to quantify the hours that women work every day.
Gender awareness training for senior-level management from government departments was not possible until March 1997, and even then it lasted for only one day. Nevertheless, following on from the first gender awareness training in 1995, a training of trainers (TOT) session in gender awareness for the staff of NGOs, projects and government departments was held in Quetta in 1997. A GAD network was formed, the members of which gave a one-day introduction to gender issues in an FAO training session for forestry and agriculture extensionists. The same network gave district-level gender awareness training to district government employees in Mastung.
In 1995, a microcredit programme, similar to a parallel banking system, was put into place. The established banking system is not prepared to give loans to women without using land or property as collateral, and women do not usually own land or other resources.
The project team introduced a graded system of loans based on the Grameen Bank model using peer pressure for security, instead of collateral. An initial loan, for Rs. 700 (about US$17), is available to all the members of an association and is to be used for income-generating activities or small enterprises. The second loan is for US$22 and the third for US$25. Interest is charged on each loan and is described as a "service charge" so as not to offend against Islamic religious teaching. The interest is graded, with a 1 percent fee for the first loan, 12 percent for the second loan and the bank rate of 18 percent for the final loan. Interest is deposited in the association's savings account. All members are issued passbooks by the association chairperson. Monthly savings are recorded in the passbooks as well as loans taken and repayment schedules. If a member does not repay a loan, the entire association is disqualified from receiving further loans; as a result, the repayment rate for the microcredit programme is 99 percent. A certain amount is set aside by the association to be used for loans so that business loans can be kept entirely for business.
The procedure for making loans is formal. Amounts, terms and conditions are recorded on official stamped paper and members taking loans must sign or put their thumbprint on this record. No exceptions are made in loan disbursement or repayment.
A feasability study is done with women to help them decide how to use the loans. Generally, loans are used for income-generating activities such as sheep rearing, embroidery, poultry raising or other field-tested activities that the project has developed. After the loan is repaid, a cost benefit analysis is done.
The process used when working with women in Kanak Valley begins with the formation of an association after the PRA. The women elected as association leaders are given leadership training. Once association members have saved roughly Rs. 1 000 (US$25) through membership fees and monthly contributions, project staff help the chairperson to open a bank account with a commercial bank near the project site. Before receiving the initial microcredit programme loan, associations usually undergo a six-month training period in such areas as sewing, jam making or other food processing, or basic hygiene, which is given before introducing the pit latrine programme.
In exposure tours, groups of rural women from one village are taken to visit another village, a national park or another site. The first trip, in 1993, was to the demonstration plots of salt bush (Atriplex) at the Arid Zone Research Institute (AZRI) in Quetta. At that time, only eight women got permission from their husbands to join the tour, but three years later, 35 women were able to travel by bus through the Bolan Pass to search for and identify medicinal plants.
Exposure tours have also been held with smaller groups of older women visiting markets to meet shopkeepers and see what sort of products are in demand. Tours have become one of the most popular activities in the project and are always included in annual association work plans (FAO, 1997a).
While the project was developing a methodology or process to address women's priority needs through training, income-generating activities and microcredit, elements of resource conservation and management were being incorporated into the formation of women's associations in Kanak Valley.
The project's natural resource management objective was first presented at introductory village meetings held before the PRAs and, during the PRAs, groups discussed natural resources and produced resource maps.
A thematic slide show on natural resource conservation in Kanak Valley was given as a way of introducing this important project objective to women. In 1995, the issues of the lowering of the groundwater table and the "mining" of water that was taking place in Kanak Valley were discussed with women in an area-wide convention. Through the slide shows and the convention, women began to see the issue of water as a common cause of concern.
In 1996, women from four villages made their own slides, using the project camera, and prepared thematic slide shows about their environment for a competition. A story about the winning slide show was published (FAO, 1996) and the slide show itself has been used to discuss natural resource conservation in associations.
In one village, the use of a solar oven, which an NGO had designed and made in Pakistan for Afghan refugees, was demonstrated to 30 women from different associations. Gradually, the use of solar ovens for cooking bread and rice, foods that require high temperatures and a lot of fuel, became very popular and there is now great demand for solar ovens in the project area.
Compound tree planting by women and children was introduced in 1995, when project staff held competitions, giving prizes for the best surviving trees. Only a limited number of trees can be planted and properly cared for because of the water shortage.
Also in 1995, women in two villages volunteered to care for demonstration plots of dwarf apple trees using stock that had been imported from France for the project's men's programme. The trees assigned to these two women thrived even though one woman had to water her trees by hand using buckets. In 1997, the trees produced a lot of large, tasty apples and throughout the area demand has risen for this variety of apple, which bears fruit after only three years instead of the usual seven.
Although there is no immediate market for medicinal plants, in 1995, women decided that they wanted to gather indigeneous knowledge about medicinal plants with their uses to be recorded in each association. Village specialists in medicinal plants and their uses participated in walks to collect and identify species, and participants then tested and recorded recipes. This information will be published as a project publication, and will also be preserved in each association.
In 1997, two literate women from one association wrote a case study about participatory upland or rangeland rehabilitation, which was to be published in a national women's magazine called the "Torch" distributed by the NGO Aurat Foundation. This interest in natural resource conservation on the part of the women illustrates that, although income-generating activities and training for women in Kanak were not directly linked to natural resource conservation, the strategy of raising awareness about the environment while addressing other community-felt needs was successful.
Finally, women's associations in Kanak Valley have begun to participate in grassroots meetings with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with the aim of designing a conservation strategy for Balochistan. This means that women in Kanak will participate in decisions about how the resources of Balochistan are conserved.
A secondary output of the project was to have been an overall development plan for the project area or, in this case, the sub-watershed. However, this could not be achieved for three main reasons. First, district-level government department planning was centralized in the provincial capital during the life of the project. Second, it was not possible to bring villages together for a combined village or territorial work plan; the relative absence of government department extensionists and locally managed development activities in Kanak Valley meant that the population had only limited experience in planning for or demanding services. Third, the operating social system supports individual appeals to tribal leaders or patrons rather than community action.
Village-level monitoring and evaluation of project activities was instituted from the very start of the project. Initially, a woman in each village was elected as a village monitor for the poultry programme. Initially, this position was perceived as a form of punishment and was scorned because villagers still did not really trust the project. The village monitor was seen as someone who sided with project staff and reported relatives or friends who were eating or selling chickens instead of getting on with the egg production business.
Gradually, the monitoring role was accepted and viewed as non-threatening, or even helpful when it was linked to the cost-benefits of the income-generating activities that association members funded with microcredit. Each village association now has an association monitor.
Participatory evaluation began with a "village photo album". To get round cultural taboos against photographing women, the project team used a Polaroid camera, allowing then to demonstrate that no extra copies of photos could be made and passed on to strangers, who should not be looking at women who observe purdah. (Polaroid prints have their original negatives attached - the photos themselves were put into village albums which were not removed from the village.) Periodically, all the photos were removed from the album and women were asked to plot the progress made and evaluate the project process. The problem with this first evaluation process arose from the fact that this was the first project in the area, so women had nothing with which to compare it. When one woman in the room had expressed an opinion about an activity there was a tendency for the entire group to repeat what she had said, rather than give their own views.
With time, the photo album approach was semi-retired and replaced by a more sophisticated "ex-post activity" evaluation format, which had to be administered by project staff because it is written. This type of evaluation is particularly useful for on-going activities because not only do participants evaluate an activity, but they also propose solutions to the problems found during implementation of that activity.
In June 1997, the project staff hired a community evaluation team to evaluate the women's programme. This team was composed of ten women from five women's associations. Activities to be evaluated were proposed by all the associations and the following shortlist was drawn up:
The community evaluation team selected indicators for the activities to be evaluated and, to broaden the scope of the evaluation, interviewed 20 people who had not participated in the project. The results are published in FAO, 1997b.
The entry point for this project was the communities and villages in the Noza sub-watershed, and this was appropriate for a project aimed at developing a methodology to promote people's participation in watershed management or upland conservation and development. However, there were problems with the physical site, and these contributed to the Italian Government's reluctance to extend funding for the project for an additional two years, until 1999. The lesson learned was that site selection is critical to the successful adoption and further institutionalization of the participatory approach.
Noza sub-watershed is not typical of most watershed project sites because of its extreme arid or semi-arid climatic conditions, but an even greater constraint to the successful implementation of the project was the severe water problem. The fact that water is being mined in the area - pumped for 24 hours a day by non-metered pumps, with no apparent enforcement of a provincial or federal government policy against unlimited pumping or the sinking of new wells - means that any amount of community participation is unlikely to have much impact on improving water supplies. Community-level entry point activities, such as drinking-water schemes, identified as priorities during PRAs, does not motivate people to participate in long-term conservation activities that provide no immediate benefit.
The following is a summary of the main lessons learned concerning the entry point for natural resources conservation projects:
PRAs. The PRA was a starting point for developing a participatory methodology for watershed management, but the result was that the PRA was used more as a process than as a means of gathering data.
The original intention had been to carry out broad-based PRAs that were not specifically directed towards natural resource conservation. However, because natural resource conservation is not a priority for rural people, the PRAs had to be adapted and specific tools had to be linked to the process of preparing an upland use plan as the final PRA step with men's groups. With women, the final step in the PRA process was the creation of a women's association. In other words, it was found that: PRAs worked better as a structure, with ten to 12 weeks of intensive exercises in villages aimed at establishing a partnership, than they did as a means of obtaining information; and the outcome of the PRAs had to be directed, because the priority needs of rural people are vested in obtaining services such access to drinking-water, sanitation, health services and education and do not encompass natural resource conservation which is a long-term proposition without demonstrated economic benefit.
An additional lesson learned is that senior project management and consultants often need to be trained in gender analysis and on how to integrate the collection of gender-disaggregated data into the PRA process. In addition, expertise in using the information obtained in project planning and implementation strategies also needs to be developed. A major weakness in the project was that many people did not know how to use the information that is obtained through the PRA.
It is also very important to train group promoters and field staff in using and interpreting PRA results. This takes time, and project implementation schedules often do not include enough time during the first year of a participatory project to allow for adequate staff training.
Tools.The project team took time to learn communication skills and develop interactive tools for both the PRA and other uses, such as the slide show on natural resource conservation. In participatory projects it is important that time and finances are given to learning how to communicate most effectively with communities - and this project did.
LESSONS LEARNED: TOOLS AND METHODS |
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The PRA proved to be more useful as a process for developing women's associations and partnerships than as a method of collecting information. |
When designing training courses, keep in mind the objective of the training, what materials will be needed and how the training can be delivered in the simplest fashion. |
In natural resource conservation projects, PRAs have to be directed to resource conservation because it is not a priority for rural people. |
Presentations or training sessions should never be longer than two hours and, for the best results, remember that the average individual's maximum comprehension span is one hour. |
Senior project and government department management, consultants and group promoters need to be trained in how to integrate tools for collecting gender-disaggregated data into PRAs. |
Always train with the aims of transferring action to the community and establishing community ownership. This means that the group promoter's role will change from being that of an actor to that of a facilitator. |
Before designing anything new, always investigate what has already been developed or used by other projects to save time and energy. |
Let farmers and their wives train each other. |
Always use the local language for communicating messages and in training programmes. |
Group promoters should be trained in using cameras, audiocassettes and audiovisual equipment. |
Use visual, interactive tools when training or delivering messages to an illiterate audience, and use visual aids or other tools to involve participants because lecturing generally leads to talking at, instead of with, people. |
Projects should maintain image banks and slides, and other visual material should be labelled and stored for easy access and use. |
Always field test visual and other communication material to get the best results and avoid making mistakes. |
Communication and training tools should be disseminated as widely as possible. The tendency is for projects to devote less time to the dissemination of information and more time to implementation, but the two are equally important especially in participatory projects. |
One of the project's outputs was to be a work plan for the watershed, so capacity building should have taken place at the local government as well as the community level.
As there were no women in the Forestry Department, the project invested in capacity building with group promoters - the concept of the group promoter is relatively new. Working with communities is a very complex matter and effective administration of PRAs demands such skills as: listening; interviewing, including probing for less immediate responses; and encouraging people to speak for themselves and become involved in planning their own development (and this requires patience). These skills take time and practice to learn. The project women's team spent three months, alternating between the classroom and the field, just learning how to operate PRA in a village.
It was found that, when group promoters are trained and have become skilled in PRA and community organization, they are capable of assisting communities in taking control of their own development.
At the community level, the women's programme decided to concentrate on forming village associations at the end of the PRA. It was found that women respond well to a group setting and that they gain more confidence when they work as a group.
In addition to training in leadership management skills, literacy training is important for building confidence within rural women's groups. For rural women in three of the inter-regional project countries (Pakistan, Nepal and Tunisia), literacy training courses were of key importance.
Another lesson learned in transferring management skills to women's groups is that villagers move at different paces, and those who are the poorest with the least access to resources require the most amount of time and patience. When projects have to meet deadlines and demonstrate success, the temptation is to spend more time with the wealthier and better educated, who respond more quickly to new ideas and change. A balance must be found in which the poorest are given a chance; positive changes in empowerment occur even at the lowest level of society, but take longer.
Access to microcredit and the subsequent earning of an income are powerful tools in building self-confidence among rural women. In terms of gender issues, rural men find it much easier to accept women's associations and activities if women are earning money while they organize. In fact, an income gives women community-wide recognition. Village women's associations evolve and eventually need to establish a neutral meeting place that is outside the home or compound.
Meeting rooms or women's centres, therefore, need to be established. It tends to be assumed that, while men should have access to a school or other community room for their meetings, women can meet in each other's homes, but women also need a place to meet and work.
It is important for women to visit each other's associations and to hold intervillage meetings or conferences. This is a good way for women to learn from each other and gain confidence. Members are also exposed to a greater number and a wider variety of role models.
A final lesson learned is that exposure tours or organized trips out of the village build women's self-confidence and broaden their information base. Capacity building at the district level was limited to working with the very few women employed by district government.
LESSONS LEARNED: CAPACITY BUILDING |
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Group promoters need at least one year of training in order to become effective community organizers who facilitate self-reliance rather than create dependence. Rural women gain the most in terms of self-confidence, management skills and decision-making ability in groups such as organizations or associations. Projects need to target the poorest of the poor, who are the most difficult to reach. |
Microcredit is a powerful tool for giving women community recognition and personal self-confidence. Women's groups need neutral meeting places. In natural resource conservation projects, group promoters fill a gender gap that exists in most forestry departments, i.e. the lack of women forestry extensionists. Exposure tours, especially for natural resources conservation, are worth a thousand words in terms of gaining access to information. |
Gender analysis training was not an expected output of the project, but it was given at three levels:
Gender analysis training should be an expected output of all natural resource conservation projects.
It was found that, for gender awareness or gender issues to be integrated into programmes for participatory natural resource conservation, training needs to be focussed at the policy-making level or integrated into school and technical courses. Little is likely to happen unless governments and bureaucracies decide to integrate gender information into their programmes. The best way of raising awareness is to make gender analysis training widely available. The highest resistance and greatest level of fear regarding gender analysis are at the top level of planning and development.
The project developed tools, as mentioned earlier, for integrating the collection of gender-disaggregated data into PRAs, and these were were widely dessiminated.
LESSONS LEARNED: GENDER INFORMATION |
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Project planners should include gender analysis training among the outputs of natural resource conservation projects. |
GAD networks help to widen awareness in development work. |
Gender analysis training needs to be focused at the policy-/decision-making level and should be integrated into school (university) and technical courses. |
To make gender analysis training widely available, it is a good idea to create a local GAD network. The project supported and participated in a programme to provide TOT in gender analysis. |
Establishing linkages between rural women in Kanak Valley and policy-makers, women in government departments, women in NGOs and women in other communities was the most difficult aspect of the project to develop.
The project had contracts and a rapport with BRSP, the main NGO operating in Balochistan, but unfortunately BRSP suffered internal management problems and almost went out of business.
Any linkages the project women's team managed to forge with district-level departments and agricultural extensionists to provide training and communication for women's associations in Kanak Valley were the result of the project's ability to provide honorariums and transport.
When there is no real functioning government presence at the community level, more time needs to be given to local capacity building in villages so that intervillage associations can be strengthened and develop their own capital to pay "outsiders" to provide services or information and technology.
The Agha Khan Rural Support Programme, which has been working for over ten years in the northern areas of Pakistan where there is little government presence, also promotes the establishment of village and intervillage organizations that save money and invest in their own development - building roads, irrigation canals and hydro-electric plants.
It was found that promoting people's participation in watershed management and encouraging them to plan for the management of their watersheds takes time. The process should be reviewed after ten to 20 years segments, and not every two to five years.
LESSONS LEARNED: LINKAGES |
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In countries where government extension services do not intervene at the community level, projects need to focus more energy on local capacity building, helping communities to take control of their own development and forge their own links to information and technology. |
The establishment of lasting community participation in natural resources conservation (watershed management) takes much longer than is allowed for by projects' two- to five-year life spans. |
The weakest part of the Pakistan project component was institutionalization of the participatory methodology for upland conservation and development.
The project women's programme is a strong positive achievement. It promotes rural women's participation in natural resource conservation by integrating the needs identified by the PRAs with awareness of, and activities related to, resource conservation. Nevertheless, the Balochistan Forestry Department employs no women professional staff at all.
Efforts were made to encourage the department to create positions for women group promoters, but this proved to be an impossible task. Women are not in the department because, in the normal career track, professional staff agree to become district forest officers, willing to move around a province, and women throughout Pakistan face constraints to their mobility. However, in natural resource conservation projects, women cannot be left out of the process for institutionalization of the participatory methodology.
LESSONS LEARNED: INSTITUTIONALIZATION |
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Women belong in the mainstream of natural resource conservation projects. They should be given complete equity and not WID component status or some other ineffectual role. Project planners should ensure that it will be possible to institutionalize the position of women extension agents in government departments. |
Project planners and policy-makers should not initiate natural resource conservation projects with government departments that do not plan to employ women extension agents. |
THE STRIKING RESULTS THE PROJECT obtained by integrating a gender perspective into natural resource conservation would not have materialized had women's participation not been mainstreamed as a part of the project implementation strategy.
Even though PRA tools such as the daily time profile, designed to collect gender-disaggregated data, indicate clearly that women are responsible for much agricultural work, fuel and fodder collection, carrying water and feeding and caring for animals, there is still no place for gender-related information to be integrated directly into project planning, unless projects and governments give the work that rural women do technical recognition and representation.
The Pakistan project illustrated how rural women can be involved in natural resource conservation. The following are a few points to keep in mind while developing programmes with a gender perspective on natural resource conservation:
This case study was funded by the Italian Cooperation Department. The original language version was edited by Sally Sontheimer.
1 Background material gleaned from project reports. The final report of the initial participatory assessment planning phase was written by Marco Miagostovich, February 1993.
2 Benezir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, served as a powerful role model to women in rural areas across the country. Her photograph adorns many mud walls.
FAO. 1991. Upland degraded watershed component of Forestry Sector Master Plan for Pakistan. Technical Report FO:PAK/88/081.
FAO. 1996. A slide competition on natural resource conservation. Report GCP/INT/542/ITA. Quetta.
FAO. 1997a. The credit programme and income-generating activities of Brahui women, by M. Kane. Working Paper No. 3 (GCP/INT/542/ITA). Quetta.
FAO. 1997b. Rural women's evaluation of an environmental project. Quetta.
Theis & Grady. 1991. Participatory rural appraisal for community development. London, IIED, the Save the Children Federation and the Ford Foundation.
