Home  

Indigenous Wetland Knowledge Local Institutions Wetland Policy Wetlands and Desertification Wetlands and Food Security Sustainable Wetland Management Climate Change and Wetlands Forests Training and Consultancy Staff and Associates Partners CWEL Publications Contact CWEL Participatory Methods
The benefits from natural resources are not evenly distributed. Particular skills, divisions of labour or access rights often determine that certain groups within a community gain more or less from the natural resource base.

Click to enlarge

Supplementing farm income with craft production using papyrus

  

With economic changes, there is a tendency for certain powerful groups to try to appropriate open access resources and to exclude weaker groups.

Such trends have been identified through CWEL work with respect to wetlands and also non-timber forest resources. Wetland agriculture for instance often leads to the drying out of springs so that women have to walk further to get water supplies, or have to use other less pure sources of water. It is the rich who usually gain access to the wetlands for farming and have the resources to use these areas while the poor are the ones who lose access to collected products, such as craft materials and thatching when wetlands are drained.

In forest areas, access to sites for hanging hives for honey production or the collecting of spices is often determined by political power within communities and then becomes part of institutional arrangements which determine access rights.

  
       
 
Links:            
  • Summary report of NTFP project
    
  • Paper on Wetlands, Gender and Poverty
 Gender paper    
  • Women, Water and Wetlands