NEW REPORT FAILS THE GENDER TEST

By Zarina Geloo

View this article at the Inter Press Service News Agency website

Activists are disgruntled over the way a new report on the Environment and the MDGs fails to emphasise the link between gender, poverty and the environment.

Mary Robinson explained that one of the biggest challenges in tackling the environmental issues and their effects on poverty reduction was that the long term challenge competed with short term priorities.

Gender activist June Zeitlin has criticised a new report on Environment for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for not making a strong enough link between gender and poverty and the environment.

"It is women who suffer the worst when there is environmental degradation, because it is they that till the land, fetch water and firewood. And yet the report glosses over them, " says Zeitlin from the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO).

The report that did not find favour with Zeitlin was prepared by the Poverty Environment Partnership (PEP). She was speaking yesterday at a panel discussion on the case for investing in environment to reduce poverty, one of the issues addressed in the report.

Former President of the Republic of Ireland Mary Robinson who was the moderator of the discussion agreed with Zeitlin saying it was not 'untypical' of reports of this nature not to be strong on the gender dimension and agreed there should be more emphasis on gender. Robinson, who now chairs the board of the International Institute for Environment and Development, said on the other hand, judging from the discussion, it was clear that the report offered sound and helpful analysis on the issue of the environment and its link to reducing poverty.

She explained that one of the biggest challenges in tackling the environmental issues and their effects on poverty reduction was that the long term challenge competed with short term priorities. "Governments have to grapple with stopping logging for example, so that forests can grow. Its benefits will not be immediate, but the export of timber will have immediate benefits, even though in the long run it would harm the country."

Earlier, panelists gave their opinion on the PEP report. The panel consisted of Olav Kj¿rven, Director of Energy and Environment Group at the UNDP; British Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Benn; World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development Ian Johnson; Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute; and Jane Weru, from the Slum and Shack Dwellers of Kenya.

Weru said the lack of water would cause wars in Africa in years to come. She illustrated her warning by recounting what happened in Kenya recently when the Masai, who are cow herders and the Kikuyu, a farming community, fought pitched battles over water resources. The Kikuyu had dammed the water supply for irrigation, which raised the ire of the Masaii who wanted to use the water to feed their animals.

"We have a problem of water in Kenya, it is inadequate. You can imagine each family is entitled to only 40 litres of waters a day, if someone has an AIDS patients, who has to be bathed and cleaned often, how can they manage on that amount of water?"

When the El Nino hurricane swept through Kenya in the late 1990s, the country suffered greatly because it experienced, floods then a drought which led to power shortages. The country's GDP fell, and there were losses of over $14m in trade.

Also expressing his own fears was Sachs, who is the Director of the United Nations Millennium Project. His concern was how little people in the various regions knew about climate change and its negative effects.

"In all the countries I have visited, I do not receive briefs on the environment. Officials will tell me about debt, trade, economy or HIV and AIDS, but I never hear about water tables, pollution. It's just not part of the official process." He says people are not addressing the issues of environment in a way that would help reduce the effects of ecological degradation or that would ease climate change. No country had made an assessment of their environmental conservation measures with respect to climate change, neither was there any way to assess the environment's contribution to poverty reduction.

In Sachs' view, there was a general lack of knowledge about the environment, which had led to a dearth of practical alternative solutions to environmental degradation. He also said there was a disconnect in information dissemination on environment and its impact on poverty.