Recognizing
rural women as ‘farmers’ and as ‘leaders’in adopting climate resilience
agriculture technology and practices
Sri
Lanka is a lower-middle-income country with total population of 21.8 million of
which 77.4% of the population is largely rural.
Overall, poverty level of the country is 6.7%, and poverty remains concentrated
in rural areas - of the poor, 82 percent are rural residents. While
agriculture sector contributes 6.9 percent to GDP, the sector employs
approximately 27% of the population, which is mostly rural..
While the share of women in agriculture has remained between 30-33% for over
two and a half decades,
women play a key role in agricultural production and processing, both in family
and farms outside; though women’s role have been mostly limited to home
gardening and small-scale farming activities.
The
World Bank funded “Climate Smart irrigated Agriculture Project (CSIAP)” targets
farmers in climatically vulnerable hotpot areas to improve the productivity and
resilience of smallholder agriculture activities. As part of the project’s strategic and
operational design, it seeks to address gender gaps and risks in order to
empower women as ‘farmers’ and as ‘leaders’ in their communities for adopting
climate resilience practices.
Rural
women in farming communities face multiple challenges,
which risks them of being excluded from benefiting from project
activities
During
the project preparation and assessment phase, many issues were identified which
limits and prevents women from equitably benefiting from and participating in
agriculture activities. These issues include: lack of land and asset ownership
which limits women’s ability to engage and grow their agricultural production
and livelihoods (e.g. in Sri Lanka, only 16 % of all privately-owned land
belongs to women),
lack of access to climate smart agriculture production technologies and
marketing, lack of decision-making power as most of the farmer organizations
are led by male farmers, inability to fully participate in agriculture activities
due household and care responsibilities, additional
requirements to hire labour, difficulties in traveling to agriculture lands
which are generally away from residential locations, greater risks of impact
from the Human elephant conflict (HEC) as women mostly engage in cultivation
work during day time when HEC is most prevalent and impacts linked to domestic
abuse/gender based violence with increased consumption of alcohol by men. With all these setbacks
for rural women, the current COVID pandemic situation increases their
vulnerability affecting household income, food security and nutrition.
Rural women benefited from gender informed approaches in climate smart sub
projects.
The
project has taken multiplicity of actions to ensure the inclusion rural women
in project activities. Thus the project has taken measures to:
1.
reformulate
project strategies during COVID19 period to implement several subprojects
specially targeting rural women farmers to ensure their food and nutrition
security.
2.
assess
gender gaps, issues and risks during participatory rural needs assessments and
social screening.
3.
incorporate
measures in hot-spot area development plans and social impact management plans to
ensure women’s participation and inclusion.
4.
revise
beneficiary selection criteria to be inclusive giving priority to women
beneficiaries including vulnerable groups (such as women who are living under
the poverty level, widows, families with young children and those living with
elderly & disable persons)
5.
establish
minimum targets for female beneficiaries in project interventions
6.
build
capacities of project staff on gender issues and sensitize communities (both
males and females) on principals of gender equity in line with the training
manual developed.
7.
build
capacities of women on climate-resilient agricultural technologies
8.
support
to address risks of Human-Elephant conflict
9.
provide
support to purchases assets, hire labour and access services (such as credit,
childcare facilities, etc.)
10. strengthen links with
community-based organizations to receive project implementation support
11. implement GBV prevention
measures (i.e. Code of Conduct for Communities etc.) and strengthen GRM
reporting measures for GBV.
12. increase women's
engagement in decision making in Farmer’s Organizations, Producer’s Groups
& Social Audit Committees including acting on issues affecting them
Over 5,500 rural women farmers involved climate resilience agriculture practices
CSIAP strategies that are formulated
and are being implemented have generated favorable outcomes for rural women
farmers to ensure these groups are benefiting from climate resilience
agriculture practices in an equitable manner. Therefore, in addition to
increasing participation of women in project activities, the project has exceeded
its target of 30% of beneficiaries to be women in all its programs and is also
successfully implementing programs targeting 100% women as beneficiaries through
its climate smart nutrition sensitive home gardening program.
Gender Development Officer and Acting Social Safeguarded Officer, PMU, CSIAP.
