MLRF21: Session 1 Breakout group Regional

1. Gender and Customary Tenure in Asia
Status and prospects for knowledge-building, policy and
practice
Dr. Kalpana Giri, RECOFTC
Vanessa Hongsathavij, RECOFTC
26 May 2021

2. Gender, Customary Tenure, Forest
Landscape: A win-win discourse

3. Status of knowledge and
patterns on gender and CT
• Knowledge on gender and CT exists, but is disparate.
• Knowledge patching of different topics is required to
make analysis.
• Topics: women’s traditional/customary knowledge,
roles, needs, legal rights, dynamics of decision-making,
social practice, impacts on forest condition, impacts on
women’s agency and political empowerment
• Countries: widely discussed cases are from Nepal,
India and Indonesia; limited discussion in CLMV
• Regional condensed knowledge products are rare and
outnumbered.
GENDER
Women
Forests
TENURE
Traditional Knowledge
Local customs
Dynamics of decision making
Needs
Legal mechanisms
Forest & landuse plans
Political empowerment
Indigenous women
Rights

4. Key Findings
• Women have limited ownership and rights to forest land & resources
• Women’s knowledge, needs, and preferences of forest resources is
often unaccounted and not included in forest management plans.
• Forestry institutions and actors regulating forestry and land policies and
management do not adequately tailor extension services that cater
to women’s needs.
• Both the scope of legal rights and the social and cultural norms- in
particular gendered ideologies and power relations- shape the exercise
and security of women’s rights in practice.
• Mixed results: Improved access to forest spaces, some economic
benefits; to complicated power hierarchies, and restricted access and
usage. Limited results to women’s political empowerment.
• At risk groups: local women without land/domicile rights; poor women;

5. • Documentation of traditional knowledge for advocacy
• Women’s agency and leadership through community /social forestry
and women’s/indigenous women’s networks
• Clear, explicit legal rights useful to demand inclusive response
• Women’s participation in land management commissions and
decision-making bodies
• Provision of joint titling options for women & targeted extension
mechanisms that deter the structural bias/gaps plus legal literacy
• Access to credit and land-related services for investment, income and
economic empowerment of women
• Transdisciplinary knowledge to integrate traditional/customary
knowledge into forest management plans
• Gender leaders within forestry institutions to drive change
• Safe spaces, risk mitigation, empowerment and psycho-social
support, male engagement as an ally
Evidence-based Interventions

6. • Emerging aspects of commercial forestry with
market-based approaches such as forest-based
enterprises, REDD+ and FLEGT are not able to
address gender & tenure issues properly.
• The effects of migration on land-use changes and
its links to women’s tenure security, especially
through intersectional approach that integrates
gender with age/generation, ethnicity and
indigeneity, and marital status.
• Resistance to gender has become nuanced and
more challenged in forestry sector for moving the
discourse beyond numbers to political
empowerment.
Emerging transitions

7. Photo credits:
Thank you.
To follow up, please reach out to: Dr. Kalpana Giri at
kalpana.giri@recoftc.org or Vanessa Hongsathavij at
vanessa.hongsathavij@recoftc.org

8. Sophoan Phean
Gender Expert, Cambodia
MRLG

10. Women’s Customary Tenure: a
case from Indonesia
Mardha Tillah
The Indonesian Institute for Forest and Environment (RMI)

11. Context
• Indigenous peoples’ communities
in Indonesia: 2,359 communities
(AMAN members only)—++
• Different situations and context
one another
• Women always play significant
roles, yet limited recognition over
their roles

12. What we know
• Women’s specific roles in natural resources
management: very significant, but not generally
considered as valuable as men’s. We need paradigm
shift in order to be able to understand it!
• Women’s knowledge on natural resources
management and their concern, especially in regards
with the impacts to their children, is very unique – as
unique as the men, if you want to put it
• This is linked with their roles in forest/natural
resources management: nurturing, nursing,
reproduction roles that are KEYS to production roles,
including of the men’s

13. What are still missing
• Personal level understanding on gender equality that can lead to:
• New paradigm in understanding “so-called-development”
▪ Pushing the non-timber paradigm in forest sector, this can give wider space for
inclusion to women
• Do we want to give bigger space for the community-based ones?
▪ Bunch of researches have been done to prove that we can rely on this. But do we want
to? How far do we want to push it through? How persistent are we in putting this
agenda as priority
RECOGNITION
Crucial

14. What are still
missing
Continuous awareness that
gender inequality rooted from
existing development paradigm
and structure, and it happens in
every level
Development paradigm that
prioritising economic growth
State - Community
Business – Community
Within the Community itself
Listen
Think that
communities
have their own
knowledge
Thinking that we
know everything
better and come
with solution
Start from their point
of view/domain: Food?
Medicine?
Community-based
enterprise?

15. What does not work?
• Postponing gender equality works—comes on second
place after gender-blind struggle over recognitions
• Assuming that community is one homogenous entity
• Prolonging status quo -- not challenging power
relations
• Unsustainable impacts

16. What are the opportunities
• Pushing gender equality agenda
from the start
• Alliance building, also with men
• Safeguards: always aware of the
possible unintended consequences
(positive or negative) even if you
already prepare risk-analysis
• Embrace small positive changes
• Recognition: formal (state-based),
non-formal (eg. within customary
institution)

17. Thank you

18. INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S ACCESS AND POLITICAL RIGHTS TO FOREST SPACES
AND TERRITORIES
ASIA INDIGENOUS PEOPLES PACT, 2021

19. A regional organization promoting and
defending Indigenous Peoples Rights
movements since 1992.

20. 65% OF THE GLOBAL LAND AREA IS INHABITED BY
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
260 million indigenous peoples with more than 2000 distinct civilizations and languages In Asia.
Safe to estimate that 50% are Indigenous Women.
Indigenous Communities mostly live in or nearby forests and are highly dependent on natural resources. Our
body, spirit, culture and traditions are intricately linked to forest spaces, nature and territories.

21. DE PAW THOO
•Umbilical cord and the placenta of the
newborns are placed into a bamboo box.
•The bamboo box then is tied to a tree.
•Believed that the baby's soul and its
development is connected to the tree
forever.
OUR CONNECTION TO NATURE IS BUILT FROM BIRTH

22. INDIGENOUS WOMEN
AS KNOWLEDGE HOLDERS AND
PROTECTORS OF FOREST SPACES
• Use natural resources only as
required (no over exploitation)
• Traditional planting methods
prevents soil erosion
• First ones to discover the
threats or destruction to forest
• Passing on the knowledge to
younger generations

23. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER THEREFORE IT
NEEDS TO BE ACCEPTED AND
RECOGNISED

24. • Criminalization of customary
practices (National parks)
• Non-recognition of Indigenous
Knowledge and skills

25. GAPS
Research and
documentation (lack of
quantitative and
qualitative data regarding
wider impact research on
land tenure and gender
specific data.
Indigenous Women's
agency and
empowerment
Meaningful
representation of
Indigenous Women in
decision making.

26. AIPP INTERVENTIONS
Documenting best
practices of Indigenous
Communities, Indigenous
Women's roles and
contributions. For eg: Her
Story 5.
Building and
strengthening
Indigenous Women's
Organizations and
Network in Asia
Advocating for Indigenous
Women's rights to land,
customary practices, justice
and other issues in decision
making platforms : EMRIP,
UNPFII, APFSD etc

27. THANK YOU!
Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact
Presentation for MRLF, Breakout session, 26th May 2021