- Impact of Logging on Women

Women around the world suffer greatly. They suffer from all kinds of situations such as wars and sexual discriminations by men. Children suffer as a consequent of their sufferings. In many cultures, men look upon women as inferior and as such they are forced to do all the heavy and hard work.

Ninety percent or 4.5 million Papua New Guineans depend on the forests for their livelihoods and have done so for hundreds and even thousands of years. The forests provide food, building materials, medicine and a source of culture and spirituality for the people.

Within the various cultures in Papua New Guinea, there is very little variation in the role that women play. While men act as the head of the family, their role is quite minimal. They act as the guardian of the family, and possibly the hunter or the fisherman depending where they live. The man will also spend a considerable amount of time at the men's house in some cultures and can be away from their families for weeks, even months, leaving the women by their own to fend for themselves and their families.

A day in the life of women in the communities may start with cooking food for the family very early in the morning, almost at the crack of dawn, and then it is off to the garden to tend to the crops or to the forests to gather food, often with the young ones in tow. Then she has to go and collect firewood and water to prepare the evening meal.

Women hardly ever have time to try and sort their personal problems out and on many occasions, they will endure these problems in order to carry out their responsibilities. A woman has to try and fulfil these tasks without failure for if she doesn't, she can be deemed to be an unfit wife and mother. In some customs, a man can get a new wife if he or his people feel that the current wife is not performing her traditional obligations.

Women are traditional collectors and gatherers of the many foods found in the forests. As primary forests are cleared through large-scale logging or for commercial developments such as plantations, their traditional harvesting and gathering grounds can be greatly affected by such large scale activities in the forests so again, they must walk very long distances in order to satisfy the needs of the family.

The destruction of forests by logging also results in the depletion of water resources, meaning that women will need to walk many kilometres to fetch good and clean drinking water, thus resulting in added work burdens for women. During dry seasons, women can spend 10-12 hours a day making more than two trips for water.

The activities of logging can destroy suitable land for gardening through the effect of top soil erosion, so again women have to wander far from their homes to find suitable land to plant their food.

The social impact of large scale logging on a forest dependent community is yet another area that women and the community in general are forced to face.

Logging activities generate money within a community not often familiar with the cash economy, especially through the payment of royalty money. This can lead to increased drunkenness not only amongst grown men but also youths and teenagers, prostitution, greater levels of sexually transmitted diseases and an increase in malnutrition, low birth weight babies and malaria. Such activities can also lead to law and order problems like armed robbery, stealing and crimes committed against women. Examples of these kinds of problems have been documented in many parts of Papua New Guinea where logging has taken place.

Women bear the brunt of the negative effects of industrial logging as it is their task to supply their families with water and collect food while they hardly participate in the decision-making on logging and in the distribution of timber royalties.

The introduction of other foreign methods of living such as style of clothing, diets, entertainment and social activities can have an adverse effect on women and the community in general.

In the words of Baida Bamesa, a women's representative from the Kiunga/Aiambak area of Western province where a large-scale road and logging project exists, "Our bush was really green and healthy before the arrival of the logging company, but nowadays, it is black. The company came and spoilt our environment and the animals are now very far away. We are very worried because we women are facing a very hard problem. They did not benefit us with any good things, nothing".

Excerpted from: “Women Suffer the Most from Large Scale Logging”, by Joe Meava, Echoes from the Forests 12, http://www.ecoforestry.org.pg/Women_Logging.doc

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- The Impact of Dams and Resettlement on Women's Lives

This article highlights the vulnerability of dam-affected peoples -especially women- being displaced from their homes and lands, and relocated elsewhere. Due to the need to clear forests and divert the river, dams can effectively deprive those in the way of dams of rights to their traditional resources. It highlights some dam-related issues which are apparently shared the world over. But first some examples of on-going and completed dam projects in Malaysia, to show the price tag for 'development':

- The controversial Bakun hydro-electric power project across the Balui River in Sarawak, Borneo, cleared 70,000 hectares of tropical rainforest and forcibly resettled nearly 10,000 indigenous people to make way for the reservoir.

- The Sabah State government compulsorily acquired 169.860 hectares (419.732 acres) of land to construct the 70 metres high Babagon Dam and relocated about 200 Kadazandusun people to the Tampasak Resettlement Site in Penampang, Sabah, Borneo.

- The construction of numerous dams in Peninsular Malaysia affected many Orang Asli (First Peoples). For example, the 127 metres high Temenggor dam –which boasts of being the largest human-made lake in the Temenggor-Belum forests of Upper Perak in the north- covered an area of 15,200 hectares, and when constructed in 1979 for power generating facilities it affected about 1,500 Orang Asli. Other dams that displaced Orang Asli include the Linggiu Dam in Johor, the Kenyir Dam in Trengganu, and the Nenggiri Dam in Kelantan. The damming of the Selangor River in 1999 uprooted two Temuan (a subgroup of Proto-Malay Orang Asli) settlements with approximately 339 persons and inundated 600 hectares of land.

Yet dams keep growing, the latest being the proposed Kelau Dam water supply project to transfer water from the east coast (Pahang) to the west (Selangor) probably with Japanese Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) financing reported as RM3.8 billion (US$1 billion).

The construction of dams in Malaysia endanger indigenous and rural communities living on ancestral lands and near river ecosystems or forests, as happened around the world, who invariably have to pay a higher price for development. This plot is a story familiar to uprooted peoples who possibly might have some gains, but largely, dams have severely affected the lives, livelihoods, culture, identity and spiritual existence of indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, in particular those who have been confronted by forced displacement. In many cases a majority of indigenous peoples do not have land or legal titles, so this makes it even easier for them to lose the right to their traditional resources.

Specifically, dams and resettlement have implications for women in several aspects.

Resettlement undermines the position of indigenous women and their power to exercise control over their lands and resources without official titles or deeds. Although recognised under customary law; these lands have been often excluded from compensation payment. For example, my study in 1998 on the Kadazandusun community in Sabah displaced by the Babagon Dam revealed that 61% females and 65% males had land without official titles or deeds. Of these, women whose lands were acquired for the dam without any due compensation. accounted for 88% while 78% of men were in that situation. While women and men had little recourse to the government’s claims on their untitled lands, the men normally have greater mobility to seek waged work in towns or alternative jobs as compared to women.

Without land, subsistence and forest-dependent families lose an essential resource on which to grow food, which in turn leads to the destruction of their traditional subsistence base and a scarcity of natural resources. When this happens, the burden of finding alternative sources for the scarce resources, such as water, fuel wood, fodder or wild vegetables often falls on the shoulders of women. A young mother displaced by the Selangor Dam from her ancestral village in Gerachi told me in April 2003, "Before we were moved to this resettlement site (Kampung Gerachi Jaya) in 2001, we lived on what we gathered from the forest and rivers. Now, we have to walk further to catch fish or collect edible shoots and petai [Pakia speciosa]. Life is so much harder now."

Ironically though, hunting trips where women and children often accompany the men are now curtailed due to the distance from the forest so the men now carry out these excursions alone. The impact of 'modern' gender roles have impacted on women, so they now stay at home to mind the children or engage themselves in home-based work such as making joss-sticks from bamboo sticks.

Nutritional problems such as poor diet, low growth achievement, underweight, anaemia and diarrhea reflect the poor health of displaced women and children more than men. This is because women are faced with greater obligations and responsibility towards the children and the elderly which are more demanding on their time and energy.

Women and the older generation generally suffer greater stresses in trying to cope with the changes brought about by resettlement, particularly the stress that arises from being uprooted from homes, property and other losses of cultural or religious significance. In mid 2003 I visited Upper Perak where some 1,500 persons mainly from the Jahai sub-ethnic group (Negrito) and a small number from the sub-ethnic Temiar, Semai (Senoi) and Lanoh (Negrito) were resettled in the Pulau Tujuh Resettlement Scheme in the mid-1970s “as a military strategy to isolate the 1,508 Orang Asli villagers from the communist insurgents” (during the Emergency period, 1948-1960, these regions were hotbeds of the communist insurgency). They were resettled again in 1979 to the present site known administratively as the Banun Regroupment Scheme, when the Temenggor Dam being constructed then inundated the site. I found the elderly folks in the scheme constantly reminiscing about the 'old days with our forests and rivers'.

In sum, dams are tied to poverty at best and destruction of not only the economic base but also the identity, spirituality and cultural traditions of indigenous peoples at worst. Dams and resettlement have harsh consequences for women, hence the call for greater attention to be given to women’s needs to enable them to cope with the changes brought about by resettlement.

By: Carol Yong, e-mail: rakit98@yahoo.co.uk

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- Women Victims of Oil and Protagonists of Resistance

The gypsy people say that when their women are standing on street-corners, offering themselves and when their old people die alone in old-peoples’ homes, the gypsy people will no longer be a people. The women in these oil zones have been cast to the street corners, punished with violence and are literally submerged in contamination.

The Sarayacu community in Ecuador would have been subdued by the oil companies long ago, if it had not been for their women. Victims and protagonists of resistance to oil, that is what the women are.

There is abundant data and evidence showing the impact of oil activities on the environment and the economy. We ecologists have shown, with data, the impact on ecosystems, health and biodiversity. With their testimonials, local peoples have described the state of their impoverishment and humiliation, and even the IMF has had to recognize that “we have found that over the past 30 years, the Ecuador’s oil reserves have dropped, while its debt has increased, gradually impoverishing the country.”

In spite of the fact that a considerable part of the environmental and social disasters has been recognized and recorded, little is said about the impacts suffered by women and there is even less reflection on these impacts in the long term that is to say, on future generations.

Oil activities have destroyed thousands of millions of hectares in the world. In Ecuador alone, 5 million hectares have been given in concessions, including protected areas and indigenous territories. Contamination is permanent, accidental and a matter of routine. In Ecuador alone, in the year 2001, 75 oil spills took place, lasting 5 days each, with a loss of over 31,000 barrels of oil.

Women have had the worst lot, and are more vulnerable than men to disease. According to a study carried out by Acción Ecológica, which analysed, well by well, the impact of cancer, 32% of the deaths in the oil zone can be attributed to cancer, three times more than the national average (12%) and five times more than in the province studied, and mainly affect women.

People know it, they say there is a lot of cancer, a lot of deaths. For example, the wife of Mr. Masache, 8 months pregnant and healthy, had internal bleeding and died. Afterwards it was know that she had cancer; he said that women are more affected by cancer because they are more delicate, they have children and work.

At Lago Agrio, the oil city of the Ecuadorian Amazon, 65% of the mothers are single, as the oil companies reach the city with single men having resources and offers of a prosperous life. It is the zone with most complaints about violence, in spite of the fact that most of the victims of violence remain silent.

“Years ago, when Shell was exploring the Kichwa territory, an incident took place. Three young women went to the camp to sell chicha (a local fermented beverage), the oil workers followed them to the woods and raped them. They went back to the community, and out of shame did not say anything. Days later one of the husbands heard the oil workers laughing at them… then the men hit their wives in a rage.” I was told this story a while ago by Cristina Gualing, from Sarayacu.

Seventy-five percent of the population living in oil exploitation areas uses contaminated foul-smelling, salty water, with a colour and with oil on the surface. The oil companies say that there is no problem in using it, that the water is healthy, that it has proteins and as it froths, it must even have milk in it.

Women suffer from this contamination and end up by offering it to their families. They are in permanent contact with the water, they wash the clothes, go to the river for the children to bathe, prepare the chichi. Furthermore they are carrying a heavier burden as not only do they have to walk further to fetch water to drink and firewood to cook, but very often have to look after the vegetable garden as the men take part in the circuit of the oil company demands, as daily workers or bargaining and changing their hunting territory to supply the oil camps with meat.

The first time I entered Huaorani territory I was surprised that for four days I never heard a child cry, not one single time. It seems of little importance and perhaps only other women will understand what it means, but those kids were really well off, almost in collective care, and did not need to cry.

Today, after the entry of the oil companies, the Huaorani women tend the Shell Mera bar. The almost drunk men take rides in the company vehicle, before waking up, injured in hospitals as has already happened. And the children, at modern speed, must adapt themselves to these new conditions which separate them from their parents, that destroy their land and therefore mutilate the future of this people.

The Huaorani women and old people fell, like people fall in the midst of a battle. There was too much pressure, making them sign a “friendly agreement” with the U.S. Company, Maxus –an agreement signed in English for a 20 year period. In this agreement, oil operations were permitted on their territory, ending months of resistance. The signing of the agreement was done in the presence of the daughter of the president of the republic and the business attaché of the United States Embassy, and recorded by the press. Alicia Durán Ballen gave her ear-rings to a Huaorani woman and received in exchange a Huaorani pectoral plate. Do you think we won in the exchange she asked the American advisor with a smile. “We won Manhattan like this,” was his reply.

Not far from where this capitulation took place, another people are still continuing with a seven year struggle. The people of Sarayacu are resisting the Argentine company CGC and the U.S. company, Burlington.

The women organized themselves and said that if the men decided to let the companies in, they would have to start looking for other women… and another territory. They said they would not allow their children and the young people of Sarayacu to become workers and slaves of the big oil companies. This was a non-negotiable decision.

The company has responded by creating inter-community disputes, bribing, manipulating and putting pressure on the government to turn the area into a military zone. A little while ago they told the population that the paths had been mined to prevent the population from leaving the community.

The women of Sarayacu decided to walk along those paths so than none of their children would loose their lives. They started the walk with the weight of the fear of imminent death, and ended the walk with the relief of having recovered their right and that of their children, to walk in their territory.

In Sarayacu it is the women who, by resisting, are defending the possible future of their people.

By: Esperanza Martinez, Oilwatch, e-mail: tegantai@oilwatch.org.ec

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- Large Scale Shrimp Farming and Impacts on Women

Inland aquaculture has been practiced in Asian countries, namely in Indonesia, China, India and Thailand for hundreds of years. Shrimps were traditionally cultivated in paddy fields or in ponds combined with fishes, without significantly altering the mangrove forest, which for centuries has been used communally by local people providing them a number of products such as commercial fish, shrimp, game, timber, honey, fuel, medicine. Women have played a key role in taking the advantage of mangrove resources. In Papua Island, indigenous knowledge regulates woman’s role in mangrove forest.

Recent increase in market demand have pressed for a change into intensive and semi-intensive shrimp farming, with much less respect to local ecosystems and people. Multinational corporations, coupled with the support of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, have expanded intensive shrimp aquaculture in Asia, taking all the access and blocking traditional users’ access to coastal resources. This has meant loss of food, health, income and social and cultural welfare for them.

Shrimp cultivation is the most high-risk process in the shrimp industry, especially after virus attacks that began in 1993 and continue until today. In spite of that, small farmers were encouraged by the government and influenced by the industry to continue investing in this activity. Most of the small farmers became indebted and did not continue the business anymore. The current shrimp owner is mostly the local businessman who bought the ponds from several small indebted farmers.

This modern and large scale shrimp farming creates major socio-economic problems to the local people, including land conflicts, exploitation of the poor by large corporations, and changes in social structures of local communities.

Although coastal communities may in fact have used and cared for the land over a long period, they do not posses formal landownership documents. So, most resistance against shrimp industry has been related to land taking by government and corporations.

Farmer families who lose the land will leave to the cities for low-skill jobs. Woman and children are the most fragile group related to changing in social structures, and in some cases may end up in prostitution. Employment opportunities of shrimp processing factories for the local people are often limited to unskilled and low-paid jobs, such as watchman and harvester. Only few jobs are available to local women, who can be employed as cleaning service and other low skill and part time works.

The current trend in Indonesia is that the traditional farmers are directed to join as satellite farmers in a Nucleus Estate Smallholders Scheme (NESS). Large scale NEES is usually supported by government and provided with high technology. The NESS system is also very biased against women. In large-scale shrimp farming only adult and educated men can hope to get a job. In case of death or inability to work of the smallholder males, women must leave the farming estate, leaving behind all the assets that they had been paying for by credit instalment.

The change from traditional to industrial shrimp farming that is rapidly taking place might in the short term benefit the government and the large-scale shrimp investors due to foreign currency generation, but the environmental and social costs associated with the industry by far outstrip the benefits. Local communities are particularly marginalised and exploited and local social structures are threatened by growing tensions and conflicts.

Adapted and excerpted from “Large Scale Shrimp Farming and Impacts on women”, by P. Raja Siregar, Campaigner of WALHI (Friends of The Earth- Indonesia) and Coordinator of Coalition of Anti-Debt Movement. Sent by the author. E-mail: radja@walhi.or.id . The full document is available at http://www.wrm.org.uy/deforestation/shrimp/women.rtf

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- Women’s Life Devastated by Mining

More than 35 % of Indonesian upland territory has been licensed as mining concessions, of which 11.4 million hectares is located within protected areas. However, the mine sector’s contribution to the Indonesian government’ s net income is only 2% -4%. The amount is unequal to the impacts caused by the sector toward local people and the environment across the Indonesian archipelago.

One of the islands most suffering from mining activities is Kalimantan (Borneo), and particularly eastern Kalimantan. The island of Borneo has a width of 10% of the total area of Indonesia and is inhabited by 2.5 million people who live in 1,276 villages. The male and female population is balanced. The main livelihood of the people is farming, artisan fishing and nursery shrimp breeding.

There are at least 106 mining companies operating in Kaltim (East Kalimantan) with a total concession area of 44.85% of the island’s width. With the addition of areas of private forest concessions (HPH and HTI) these extractive industries manage concession areas of up to 73.07 % of East Kalimantan’s territory.

Although men and women together have been impoverished by the invasion of capital, women tend to be more affected by it than men do. They have been evicted from their plantations so that they cannot earn an income and become dependent on other family members.

The impoverishment of women mostly takes place in villages. Based on information from the Central Bureau for Statistics (BPS), 75% of citizen poverty is found in rural areas, while urban poverty only accounts for 25%. Thus, it is suggested that the exploitation of natural resources does not significantly increase people’s wealth and even causes poverty.

Cases of poverty are also found in locations where mine companies operate. According to field investigations carried out by the Work Team on Mine and Women (TKPT) Kaltim, women suffer problems that are brought about by mining companies’ operational activities.

* Economic impacts:
Mine industry concessions always overlap with the sites of people’s livelihoods. The theft of people’s lands has taken place at oil and gas mining and also at coal mining locations. For example, the people of the village of Sekerat have been victimized by PT. Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC)/ Rio Tinto, the biggest coalmine company in South-east Asia. Some 20,482 hectares belonging to 287 households have been taken, which implies that there are 287 women whose livelihoods have been destroyed or altered. Female artisan fishers living in Bagang kampong, near to the oil and gas mine location of PT UNOCAL, have received the impact of fluid waste dumped by the company into sea water. The fish catch of artisan fishers in the village of Rapak Lama declined for this reason.

The women of the village of Terusan work as Benur (shrimp offspring) collectors, now earn lower income as well. Women and children use Porok and Rumpong to collecting shrimps. They used to place this equipment on the coast, or in deeper places, such as the edge of mangroves and the Nipah forest around the river mouth. The decline of this shrimp collecting has reached 95%

* Social impacts:
Mining operations have resulted in an alteration of the traditional rules that used to be respected. Facts suggest that prostitution is now present in all mining concession areas to serve the needs of male mine workers. Families frequently quarrel internally at places where there is prostitution, usually ending up with violence against women.
Violence against women that has taken place includes violence, either carried out in terms of state/military power or in terms of sexual violence such as sexual harassment and rape. Of all 21 cases of sexual violence against women, 17 are cases of extreme violence against women (rape), and 16 of all cases were conducted by KEM employees. Those cases all happened between 1987-1997.

Land occupation by PT. KPC has also brought about impacts by increasing women’s work volume because men who used to work on farms, now work as loggers or fishermen, making them stay out of home longer. As a result, more household problems are handled by women themselves, while in fact they have lost their access to economic independence due to eviction. Women’s economic self-reliance has vanished. This has placed women in a lower position than men.

* Environmental Impacts:
PT KEM/Rio Tinto operations have devastated women’s environment. Air pollution from dust from the company’s roads has caused respiratory, eye, and stomach diseases. It has also disrupted people’s businesses such as that of shops selling food and beverages, the growth of crops, landscapes and has also resulted in water contamination by cyanide, causing death to fish.

The presence of mining companies has in fact threatened both women’s productive and reproductive roles. A significant reproductive role of women is maintaining the family’s quality of health by increasing traditional knowledge on herbal medicinal and health keeping. However, since much community land was occupied by companies, many medicinal plant species have become rare or even extinct. Now they must pay to purchase medicines at drugstores.

The loss of women’s cultivation sites has eliminated the productive role of women and women’s access and control to the economic sector where principally, the people’s access to production assets such land also supports their access to things like politics, information and decision-making as well as other social relationships.

The dark picture of women victimized by mining in east Kalimantan has been worsened by the scant contribution provided by all parties, including state, public, even NGOs to women’s matters. This is understandable, since the State or capital paradigm still uses a family-based approach when discussing mining problems. This paradigm is originated by the generalized idea that men usually act as the family head, democratically representing all members’ interests. Ratification of “the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)” has apparently contributed nothing to defend the interests of women victimized by mining operations.

Scant government attention is given to problems relating to women. This is obvious in the fact that there is no women’s perspective in the newly established mining Act. Even though the president of Indonesia is a woman, the newly established oil and gas Act no. 22/2001 has no such regard of women’s problems and interests.

Adapted and excerpted from: “Picture of Women’s Life Devastation by Mining In East Kalimantan, Indonesia”, by Haris Retno Susmiyati, sent by Siti Maimunah, JATAM, E-mail: mai@jatam.org , http://www.jatam.org/english/index.html . The full version of the article is available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/deforestation/Mining_Women.rtf