ECOFEMINISM AND THE FOREST CONNECTION

 

A lady working in her agricultural field, Sirmour, HP

Women have always been an intricate part of traditional forest conservation practices in India. Apart from the feminine deities and Goddesses venerated in relation to nature and sacred groves dedicated to Goddesses, women have always lead the path of conservation. The ever-respected Amrita Devi led the villagers to save khejri trees from axe in a village of Rajasthan about three centuries ago. The Chipko movement in Western Himalayas saw momentum only with the participation of women in large numbers. There are numerous occasions when women exemplified the theory that forests are better protected by them. The feminine gender is always associated with compassion, care, love and benevolence. It is this very character of women that prompted communities to attribute feminine values to earth as Mother Earth and nature as Mother Nature. The definite connection between forests and women though conspicuous, is still less understood.

Fetching water, Baunal, Renuka Ji

A decade ago, while being posted as a forest officer in Renuka Ji of Sirmour in Himachal Pradesh, the sight of village women carrying head loads of fodder and firewood from the forests was common almost everyday. With first ray of the sun, their day begins only to extend into long and arduous chores. A typical Sirmouri women would wake up at break of dawn and start with cleaning the kitchen and utensils. In a while she would walk up to the cattle shed located away from clustered houses usually closer to agricultural land, milk the cows, clean the shed and carry the cow dung in a basket off to the fields. Thus most of the cow dung mixed with left over fodder reaches agricultural field enriching it with organic manure. While returning back, she would make a stopover at the village baori – a natural spring – to fetch water for her house. She delicately balances the steel milk can in one hand, a bucket of water in the other and a pot on her head. Such baoris or their recharge zones are situated inside the forests, ensuring spring recharge and availability of water throughout the year. A survey of around 78 natural springs in the forests of the Division during 2013-14 unravelled the role forests play in ensuring steady water supply for drinking, domestic and irrigation purposes. The average peak flow was found to be twenty two litres per minute while the lean period water yield was recorded to be ten litres per minute. Considering the average water yield to be sixteen litres per minute, each spring would discharge a plenteous eighty four lakhs litres of water a year. It was agonizing to learn that about thirty percentage of the natural springs had either become seasonal or disappeared completely over the past decade. The situation can get exacerbated in the light of climate change and unsustainable land use pattern that modernization and globalization have brought into the hills. Thus it becomes imperative to identify the recharge zones of such springs, protect the forest cover in their catchments and take up restoration works in the degraded recharge zones. Intensive spring rejuvenation activities should be taken up with community involvement. The entire house and courtyard would be clean and the chulha would be lit up while the men folk just yawn and groan out of their deep slumber. Once the entire menfolk in the family have had their breakfast cooked by the lady, she would have her share and soon would leave to the fields for agricultural works like planting and sowing, staking, mulching, manuring and weeding. Studies have revealed that women constituted sixty two per cent of agricultural labour force in Himachal.

Ban oak leaves as fodder, Sangrah, Renuka Ji

Collecting fodder, Shillai, HP

Soon she takes the treacherous steep uphill trail leading to the forests – this time to collect fodder. She has already planned the quantities of leaf fodder and grass fodder she requires. The villagers have their own unwritten rules of benefit sharing of grasses that they mostly harvest and store to tide over the dry season. The system in place is never violated. At other times, especially during winter, forest trees like the oaks would be lopped for fodder. Several villages adopt the prudent method of rotational lopping that ensures rest to the lopped trees for a couple of years or more so that they recuperate and regenerate. This unscripted wisdom paves way for sustainable utilization of fodder resources in the village. The estimated 1.45 lakhs cattle of Renuka Ji Forest Division depended on the forests for their survival while 1.70 lakh people depended on these cattle for farm power, milk and products that formed the base of their livelihoods. The decipher the women – forest connection, we organised a field survey in 76 Gram Panchayats falling within jurisdiction of the Division. Analysis and interpretation of the data threw some light on the extent of forest dependence patterns. On any given day, a woman walks an average of two 

Young woman with firewood, Shillai

kilometres to collect fodder, the quantity varying from 15 kg per day to 35 kg per day. Some households, more women collected more fodder to the tune 50-70 kgs per day. The fodder bearing forests were being subjected to intensive extraction of almost 25 kg per day per hectare, notwithstanding the estimated 200 cattle units grazing over a kilometre square area, astronomically beyond the permissible limits. Women were solely responsible for fodder collection from forests in almost 70 per cent of the households surveyed. Thirty-five to forty percentage of all fodder was extracted from forests only. Women between the age of 25 to 50 years constituted a large proportion of the women who went to the forests for fodder, spending two to four hours a day! Households having larger land holdings grew scattered fodder trees on their lands like Grewia optiva (bhimal, behul, beul), Celtis australis (kharik) and Morus alba (shahtoot). As far as division of labour within the household is concerned, the women are tasked with looking after every aspect of livestock. In spite of the time-consuming hard work, and lopping of trees, the results are not encouraging. The average milk yield was recorded in the survey to be just half a kilogram to two kilogrammes only. It was also observed that almost forty percentage of the fodder that a woman carried home is wasted by the cattle as the fodder is just spread in front of the animals inside cow shed. Providing fodder choppers and mangers can improve feed intake efficiency by reducing wastage. Thus the burden of fodder the women have to carry would reduce, and the pressure of lopping on the forests would also ease by forty percent! Encouraging people to grow protein rich high nutrition fodder grass on the bunds of agricultural fields would also augment fodder availability. Maintaining a balanced number of livestock asset in the form of native gene pool and hybrid breeds would be an additional support mechanism for women-centric rural livelihood security.

Keeping the chulha burning is yet another challenge that the rural women meet everyday. As the survey progressed, our team of foresters realised that in the Division, about fifty percentage of firewood requirement is met from the forests. The same women follow the same treacherous path to the forest at least twice in a week, and more frequently during winters to gather firewood. Though dry branches and twigs are mostly collected, scarcity sometimes push the women to cut green branches, young trees and at time, girdling of trees also. Carrying about 15 to 30 kilograms of firewood leads to extraction of an estimated whopping quantity 79 quintals over a unit square kilometre on a given day. The traditional firewood chulhas are placed inside a very small poorly ventilated kitchen appended to the main house. Burning firewood in such kitchens that lack ventilation produces more smoke due to incomplete combustion that might cause health hazards for the women affecting their eyes and respiratory system. Besides, more quantity of firewood is consumed in the process over a longer cooking duration, thus ultimately directing the pressure of firewood collection to the forests. Though as an alternative, cooking LPG stoves have made inroads to several households, these are seldom used. Remoteness, uncertain supply of LPG cylinders and affordability of poor households restrict the regular 

Keeping the chulha burning

usage of LPG based cooking fuel. The culturally preferred traditional way of cooking roti on chulha is yet another reason why the rural households in hills prefer firewood to LPG. Hence it would take pretty long time for the rural people to adopt LPG as preferred source of energy for cooking, and that too while the cost is not prohibitive. In the meanwhile, low-cost high efficiency firewood based chulhas that emit lesser smoke should be incentivised. In a pilot experiment done by the field staff in a village, we found that such smokeless chulha requires 30-40 percent less firewood, cooking time is reduced by 30-40 percent. The chulha was designed with the help of a local entrepreneur and did not involve any maintenance issues. This approach would ease the burden of carrying firewood, release the pressure for firewood off the forests and also save time and reduce health hazards for the women.

Tribal women selling NTFP in Keonjhar, Odisha
(Courtesy: Tatini Sethi, OFS)

A field study conducted in 2017 by Mrs Bhavana Desai, one of the Officers whom I trained at Central Academy for State Forest Service, Dehradun, pointed out the fault lines in Non-Timber Forest Produce (NTFP) based rural economy in Chota Udaipur district of Gujarat. She observed and analysed socio-economic patterns of a tribal village - Rajawant – only to find that all works related to agriculture on marginal lands, firewood and fodder collection and animal husbandry was mostly done by tribal women while the men were merrily involved only in sales of the produce and custodianship of money so earned. By organizing the women and men as well, and providing market support, returns from custard apple collected from forests increased manifolds. Women gained more control over financial resources and decision making. A similar study by another Officer Trainee, Miss Tatini Sethi during 2019 in a tribal village of Keonjhar District of Odisha laid bare the glaring inequalities that exist in the forest fringe villages. All the tribal women surveyed had savings accounts opened in their names in banks as a result Government interventions. Surprisingly, only twenty percent of the women were sole custodians of the money they earned while only thirty-five percentage of women knew to do transactions even using a pass book. A mere five percentage of women knew how to use an ATM card! Though forty percent of the women had immovable assets in their names, they could hardly take any independent decision related to use or purchase or sale of such property. 

Women sidelined in a JFM meeting, Bambrar, Shillai, HP

Addressing the issues that encircle women in the rural areas of hills is as important as realizing that the women are directly connected to the betterment of forests and vice versa. The very concept of ecofeminism relies on the belief that most of the problems of environment and evils in the society that were are facing today is a result of a patriarchal-centric governance and decision making process that civilizations have adopted over a period of time. Forest governance requires a complete overhaul by devolving decision making, implementation and social auditing women-centric. Joint Forest Management (JFM) is seen to be more successful in villages where women are active participants. There is a dire need go miles beyond the rules, or even change the rules to accommodate women in JFM efforts. With more than 1.70 lakhs fringe forest villages in India, JFM offers a strong and very often underutilized platform for women empowerment through forestry interventions. A truly decentralized JFM combined with women-centric income generation activities to achieve financial independence, micro-financing, education and awareness, motivation and continued and dedicated hand holding for longer periods can yield good results in addressing the concerns raised by the ecofeminism school of thought. Our team of foresters had put in some efforts to realize this dream in 2013-14 by forming All Women JFM Committee in a small village named Pedua. Resources being limited, we explored the possibility of converging welfare and income generation schemes of various departments. The women were motivated and enthusiastic. Unfortunately, field staff comprising of ‘mighty’ men disapproved the womens’ capability to protect and manage forests. Small time local politicians ensured that convergence doesn’t happen. The JFMC Pedua survived till 2015. In an hostile environment, they just disappeared into oblivion. People say, women should be trained to get empowered, but, it’s equally important to educate the men first!

All Women JFMC members planting lemon grass for income generation

Women of Pedua eradicating lantana to make way for fodder grass

Fodder tree planting by women

Post lantana eradication, the forest floor teemed with lemon grass and fodder grass