Arora Jonsson, Seema
- Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Research article2015Peer reviewedOpen access
Westholm, Lisa; Arora-Jonsson, Seema
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) is a policy instrument meant to mitigate climate change while also achieving poverty reduction in tropical countries. It has garnered critics for homogenising environmental and development governance and for ignoring how similar efforts have tended to exacerbate gender inequalities. Nonetheless, regarding such schemes as inevitable, some feminists argue for requirements that include womens empowerment and participation. In this paper we move beyond discussions about safeguards and examine whether the very framing of REDD programs can provide openings for a transformation as argued for by its proponents. Following the REDD policy process in Burkina Faso, we come to two important insights: REDD is a solution in need of a problem. Assumptions about gender are at the heart of creating actionable knowledge that enabled REDD to be presented as a policy solution to the problems of deforestation, poverty and gender inequality. Second, despite its safeguards, REDD appears to be perpetuating gendered divisions of labour, as formal environmental decision-making moves upwards; and responsibility and the burden of actual environmental labour shifts further down in particularly gendered ways. We explore how this is enabled by the development of policies whose stated aims are to tackle inequalities.
deforestation; gender; global governance; REDD; World Bank; Burkina Faso
Conservation and Society
2015, Volume: 13, number: 2, pages: 189-199
Publisher: MEDKNOW PUBLICATIONS & MEDIA PVT LTD
Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
End poverty in all its forms everywhere
Gender Studies
Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.164203
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/69889