
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, October 12, 1995                   TAG: 9510120046
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEXT, ECO-FEMINISM?

WOMEN WORLDWIDE already carry most of the burden for sustaining families. Now environmentalists see them as crucial for sustaining the environment, as well. One could hardly blame them if they were to respond, en masse: "No way do we need to take care of this, too."

But government recognition of the crucial role that women play in managing natural resources could make their lives easier, not harder. And it could help to slow - or even reverse - the steady degradation of the global environment.

In the industrialized, consumer world, it is hard to fully appreciate how heavy is the load for poor, rural women who are responsible for the traditional duties of running the household, just as are their wealthier counterparts in other countries. For the poor, this means gathering the firewood, planting the crops, finding and toting the water - providing the essentials to keep their families alive and, increasingly, growing food for export.

Yet governments and organizations dispensing aid have, till now, failed to recognize their crucial role and the expertise they have accumulated from generations of working so close to the land.

That's because, worldwide, women lack status. Seldom do they own or have property rights to the land they work. They are shut out of decision-making, yet depend absolutely on wise land use. They and their families are suffering as a result.

Lands whose soil, air, water and fuel reserves have been degraded or depleted - unable anymore to support the people who have lived on them - are creating environmental refugees, as many as 25 million, by some estimates. The urgency to meet day-to-day needs for mere survival has forced many to hasten the downward spiral, as overuse makes deserts of cropland and deforestation hastens erosion.

UNICEF has developed a strategy, called primary environmental care, aimed at helping poor, rural areas create the conditions needed for sustainable livelihoods. It assumes that families first must be able to meet its members' basic requirements for nutrition, water, sanitation, health and education, then figure out how to get the optimum use out of renewable resources.

Key to these will be fully involving the community, especially its women and girls. They are a resource the world can no longer afford to waste by relegating them to the status of dumb beasts.

by CNB