LAW MANTRA

THINK BEYOND OTHERS

(National Monthly Journal, I.S.S.N 23216417)

WOMEN IN GREEN: Developer of Environmental Sustainability

Introduction:
Probably no other group is more affected by environmental destruction than poor village women. Every dawn brings with it a long march in search of fuel, fodder and water. It does not matter if the women are old, young or pregnant: crucial household needs have to be met day after weary day, every time longer and more tiresome. (CSE, 1985, p.172)

India being a developing country, facing many environmental problems due to industrialization, urbanization, over exploitation of resources etc. These problems can be mitigated either by the laws or by the judicial interpretations. The judiciary has created a new environmental jurisprudence.2 In the development process, the society has to prosper, but not at the cost of the environment and vice versa. Therefore, sustainable development is the only answer and administrative actions ought to proceed in accordance therewith and not dehors the same.3 Sustainable development can be achieved only through long-term investments in all aspects including human capital. Though female are half of the worlds populations, they have been either undervalued or underutilized. Better use of the worlds female population could increase economic growth and enhance societal well-being thus ensuring sustainable development.

The sustainable development and its legal framework: An Indian Scenario The Brundtland Commissions brief definition of sustainable development as the ability to make development sustainableto ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs4 is surely the standard definition when judged by its widespread use and frequency of citation. As a global coalition of young people committed to promoting the dignity of the person, the World Youth
1

Anitha K N and Dr. B.S. Reddy Research Scholar, Kuvempu University , Karnataka, Assistant Professor in Law, Govt. Law College, Ramnangar, Karnataka. and Registrar (Evaluation), Karnataka State Law University, Hubli, Karnataka
2 3

Paramjeet S. Jaswal, Directive Principles on Jurisprudence and Socio-Economic Justice in India, 543 (1996). People untied for Better Living in Calcutta Vs. State of West Bengal, AIR 1993 Cal.215. 4 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), Our Common Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 8.

Alliance affirms Principle 1 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, which states that,human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development.5 Responsible stewardship of the earth is a critical obligation for all; however, the human person is never secondary to the protection of the environment. Human dignity is the starting point for the pursuit of a sustainable world and the foundation of human rights. 6 Sustainable development law principles are slowly, but surely, acquiring a certain persuasive force as reflected by the commitment of various nations to implement these in their own jurisdictions. In India, post Stockholm and particularly, post Rio, a plethora of laws has been enacted and implemented pertaining to the three pillars of sustainable development7 to which person centred response be applied. Those pillars are Economic Development: The aim of authentic economic development is to create social, political and economic conditions that allow each person to reach his or her full potential. Social Development: When societies are built upon respect for human dignity and the family, sustainable economic growth and environmental protection become achievable. Environmental Protection: Each person is called to recognize his or her personal responsibility to be an effective steward of our natural environment.

The Bhopal disaster of 1984 is a landmark in the evolution of sustainable development which has been imperative in many cases The Honble Supreme Court of India. While earlier, Indian legal initiatives have focused more on the environment, of late, there have been a number of initiatives that address social and economic issues and a higher level of integration between the different pillars. The legal provisions on sustainable development in the Indian context can be reviewed in four broad phases, each characterized by distinct priorities and policy goals. These are as follows. First phase (19721983): The policy focus of this phase was largely the environment and its protection. Its key highlights are constitutional amendments to protect the environment and the enactment of legislation on wildlife and to arrest pollution of air and water. Second phase (19841997): In the aftermath of the Bhopal disaster of 1984, India entered a proactive phase of legal reform and initiatives, targeted towards prevention of

5 6

Rio Declaration on Environment and Development Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Preamble 7 http://www.wya.net/SustainableDevelopmentStatement.pdf

recurrence of such an event and better preparedness. The focus still continued to be the environment, but increasingly oriented to issues of social justice and equity.

Third phase (19982004): The third phase, coinciding with Indias membership of the WTO in 1998, has a strong focus on reconciling the economic with the environment and social imperatives.

Fourth phase (2005 and beyond):This phase is characterized by a marked pro-active rights based approach to social welfare, justice and equity and a high degree of integration between the different pillars of sustainable development.

Table 1.4 Key Indian legislations relevant to sustainable development Legal framework on environment: An Indian Scenario The CEDAW is the only international legally binding instrument which attempts for the equality between men and women. The CEDAW incorporates the statement that ... in the belief that the full and complete development of a country, the welfare of the world and the cause of peace require the maximum participation of women on equal terms with men in all fields ... the states parties ... have agreed on the following ... Presently, for the sustainable development protection of environment is very importance. Moreover, as stated in the CEDAW, development requires the provision of equality between men and women in all fields. In this framework, the environmental policies in India should be designed and effectuated with due observation of equality between men and women. A special section is provided for rural women in Article 14 of CEDAW8 that incorporates the statement that ... States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in rural areas in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, that they participate in and benefit from rural development and, in particular, shall ensure to such women the right ..., followed by to enjoy adequate living conditions, particularly in relation to housing, sanitation, electricity and water supply, transport and communications in the sub-clause (h). Attainment by rural women of the standards of living in the fields in question will not be independent from their attainment of liveable environmental conditions. India is one of the few countries of the world that have made a specific reference in the constitution for the need for environmental protection, control and preservation. The constitution (42nd Amendment) Act of 19769 has made it a Fundamental duty to protect and improve the natural environment.

8
9

http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ProfessionalInterest/cedaw.pdf http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/amend/amend42.htm

Article 51 (a) provides that it shall be the duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life and have compassion for living creatures.
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Article 21 of Constitution guarantee the right to life; a life of dignity, to be

lived in a proper environment, free from danger of disease and infection.11 Besides there are number of Directive Principles, which give indirect emphasis for protection of environment. In addition to Indian Constitutional aspect, certain special legislations are also available in India for Environmental protection such as: The Air (Prevention and control of pollution) Act,1981, The Water (Prevention and control of Pollution) Act, 1974, The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, The India Forest Act, 1927, The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 and the comprehensive legislation The Environmental protection Act, 1986.

Women and nature: a comparison Women have always been associated with nature. So nature is always been considered as Mother. No doubt womens role has always been as that of nature. When it comes to caring for the environment, research works suggests that there is a gender difference between men and women. Women consistently rank values strongly linked to environmental concern things such as altruism, personal responsibility and empathy as more important than men do. They also say they see environmentalism as important to protecting themselves and their families.12 People are connected with earth for one or the other reason. The earth has been always considered as a female having two faces i.e., calm and wild. Being calm the Mother Nature nurtures and being wild, nature becomes uncontrollably a disaster. Women, with their biological connections with life-giving are constant reminder of the reality of human mortality. Women, Environment and Development: A brief analysis Women has always been considered closer to the environment as they share similar functions of nature such as
10 11

giving birth, nurturing, nourishing and producing. These

http://www.constitution.org/cons/india/a1.html http://www.voiceofresearch.org/Doc/Sep-2013/Sep-2013_14.pdf 12 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/13/opinion/la-oe-polakovic-gender-and-the-environment-20120613 by Gary Polacovic in an article Are women greener than men?

approaches also underscore the notion that women care for the regeneration and sustainability of nature, as well as understand, internalise and protect it. Since the early 1980s the relationship between environment and women has achieved special attention worldwide within the context of gender. Studies have been initiated especially by international institutions with the aim of determining the effects of environmental crises on women in the light of rapidly increasing environmental problems. Environment and women has gained importance following the First World Conference on Women held in Mexico in 197513 to remind the international community that

discrimination against women continued to be a persistent problem in much of the world. The Conference, along with the United Nations Decade for Women (1976-1985) proclaimed by the General Assembly, launched a new era in global efforts to promote the advancement of women by opening a worldwide dialogue on gender equality and Third World Conference on Women,14 aimed at attaining the goals of Equality, Development and Peace, the relationship between the concepts of women and environment came to the agenda within the context of women and development. The activities reached a peak during the finalisation of the Womens Action Agenda 21,15 which was developed after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. In this context, special emphasis was placed on the relationship between women and environment. Considering the concept Women and Environment from a gender perspective, three main issues can be distinguished: i) Women as parties affecting environment; ii) Women as parties affected by environment; iii) Under-representation of women in policy development and decision-making processes pertaining to environment. At the First World Conference on Women,1975, the women and environment issue was brought into public consciousness by the Indian physicist Vandana Shiva. She reported the struggle of the Chipko movement in the Himalaya region, which became a very prominent example in this debate. This illustration reiterates the fact that land rights are vital to environmental justice. Since the First World Conference on Women 1975 until today there have been strong women for the environment movements in third world countries. They struggle for land ownership by women, and for preserving subsistence economies, in which
13 14

http://www.5wwc.org/conference_background/1975_WCW.html http://www.un.org/esa/gopher-data/conf/fwcw/nfls/nfls.en 15 http://www.bundestag.de/htdocs_e/bundestag/international/gph/un_habitat/agenda21.pdf

women mostly have a more powerful position. They fight against the pollution of rural and urban environments, the depletion of resources and against hazardous and big technical projects. The environmental issue in international womens movements is often connected with the fight of ethnic groups. Rosi Braidotti explains the strong involvement of third world women in the environmental issue as follows: Because women are more directly exposed to the negative effects of environmental degradation in developing countries, they have taken up the issue as the main political point.
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As stated by Dankelman/Davidson, Women of third

world countries see themselves in an alliance with the environment which is often called Alliance for the Future. In the last decade this kind of environmental activism by women has become more and more connected with questions of womens rights, environmental rights and environmental justice.

The World Conference on Women in Beijing, 1995: The last World Conference on Women in Beijing 199517: It identified major obstacles in the way of advancing womens status in the world and adopted strategic goals and concrete steps to remove these obstacles. The Beijing Declaration, with equality, development and peace as its base, tried to raise the status of women and identified existing problems. It reiterated the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and dealt with issues such as poverty, health care, education and violence against women that were of special concern to developing countries. It also called for mobilizing sufficient resources at both national and international level to implement the Platform of Action and particularly providing additional fund to developing countries to help them enhance the status of women. The Platform of Action detailed major problems facing women in various countries and laid out strategies and measures to resolve these problems. It focused on poverty, education and health care which are of greatest concern to developing countries, affirmed the important role of women in economic and social development and called for eliminating womens poverty, advancing education and health care and eliminating all forms of discrimination and violence against women so as to create necessary conditions for womens equal participation in economic and social development and in decision making. Owing to differences in religion, ethnic background, culture and level of development, the conference participants voiced different views on issues as womens basic rights, the concept of equality, abortion and the womens movement itself.
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17

ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/eesd/docs/wp1_endversion_complete.pdf http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/ziliao/3602/3604/t18026.htm

The other issues that were discussed were: the interdependencies between poverty of women and environmental degradations in their living conditions, the important role of women in preserving healthy food and nutrition, the preservation of womens traditional knowledge against the commercialisation by Biotechnological firms, the effect of organic pollutants on womens reproductive health, the debate on population policies, which were discussed in Beijing in the context of human rights, of reproductive and sexual rights and self-determination for women. The women, environment and development debate is anchored in a critical view of development policies where the link between modernisation/industrialization and technology on the one hand and environmental deterioration on the other is focused. The so-called stand point feminists argue for a change in the development model and for a new perspective on development. They state that mainstream development strategies are destroying the environment and the living conditions for more and more people. Discussing this from the perspective of women means arguing from a standpoint of being placed at the periphery of a development model that puts first world countries at the centre and privileges the position of white men. Thus, these feminists connect the women, environment and development issue with an anticolonial perspective. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action identified three strategic objectives in the critical area of women and the environment: Involve women actively in environmental decision-making at all levels.

-Integrate gender concerns and perspectives in policies and programmes for sustainable development. Strengthen or establish mechanisms at the national, regional and international levels to assess the impact of development and environmental policies on women. Following the 5year review of the Beijing Platform for Action, major achievements in the field of women and the environment are: A positive, albeit tentative, trend towards greater participation and involvement of women in Environmental decision-making positions Steps to incorporate a gender perspective in (inter) national and local environmental activities, policies, plans and legislation, as well as in institutional arrangements.

Increase in women's capabilities in the environmental field, including their knowledge, skills and organization.

A growing quantity and quality of gender-sensitive environmental research and data A more holistic approach that incorporates poverty eradication and women's economic empowerment in environmental conservation and management However, number of obstacles to further progress on women and the environment were

identified. These include: Low participation of women in environmental protection and management and in the formulation, planning and execution of environmental policies Insufficient numbers and inadequate influence of women in responsible positions and a male monopoly in the management of environmental resources Under-representation of women in research and teaching in the natural sciences Lack of gender-sensitive environmental policies, programmes and research Absence of deliberate strategies to ensure women's participation in decision-making, including lack of funding and monitoring Low level of management and technical skills among women Women's limited access to resources, information, education and training

Some instances of womens initiative: Bishnois can be called as the First Environmentalist of India since they have been religiously following rules of Environment. Nearly 2 centuries back, when Maharajah Abhay Singh of Jodhpur required some woods for the construction of his new palace sent his soldiers to cut trees in the nearby region of Khejarli, where the village is filled with the large number of trees. Amrita Devi and local villagers opposed the king's men. She died along with 363 people while protesting and protecting Khejari trees. Every year, in September, the Bishnois assemble there to commemorate the extreme sacrifice made by their people to preserve their faith and religion. The Amrita Devi Bishnoi Wildlife Protection Award is given to those for their significant contribution to the protection of wildlife.18

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http://www.bishnoism.com/thefirst.php

The Chipko movement is a social-ecological movement through the act of hugging trees to protect them from falling. Chipko literally means to stick to or to hug something The Chipko movement started in the early 1970s in the Garhwal Himalayas of Uttarakhand , with growing awareness towards rapid deforestation. The movement picked up momentum in the mid 1970s, mainly under the leadership of Gaura Devi, a 50-year old illiterate woman. On March 26, 1974, when a group of peasant women in Reni village, Hemwalghati, in Chamoli district , Uttarakhand , India, acted to prevent the cutting of trees and reclaim their traditional forest rights that were threatened by the contractor system of the state Forest Department. Their actions inspired hundreds of such actions at the grassroots level throughout the region. By the 1980s the movement had spread throughout India and led to formulation of people-sensitive forest policies, which put a stop to the open felling of trees in regions as far reaching as Vindhyas and the Western Ghats .19

In Japan, in the 1950s women started to raise their voices to alert environmental problems when it began to threaten the health of local citizens. They organised an increasingly powerful movement. The Nokabaru Women,s Society and Sanroku Womens Society protested loudly against pollution from industries and power plants in the Tobata region. The women held meetings and discussed how to prevent the environmental problems. They also conducted field studies, collecting scientific data on pollution through several years of research. This resulted in significant pollution prevention measures taken by the local government and corporations.20 In Nigeria, since 1984, women have led remarkable initiatives to stop the exploitation of oil, the massive and dangerous burning gas and the increasing violence in the Niger Delta. The Niger Delta Women for Judyticer, play a major role in keeping big oil companies accountable.21 In Ukraine, a consortium of 17 womens groups in the major cities called MAMA-86, work for environmental health and womens empowerment. It was registered in 2001.Now they focus more on promotion of safe drinking water, sanitation, promotion of more ecological lifestyles and products.22

19 20

http://www.pucl.org/from-archives/Gender/chipko.htm Gender and Climate Change: An Introduction by Irene Dankelman 21 Ibid 22 www.mama-86.org.ua

In Brazil, the womens organisation Ao Democrtica Feminina Gacha (ADFG) was founded in 1964. Its main objective was to promote social change for equal opportunities. It emphasized educational work with girls and women, especially in poor urban areas. Since 1974, another important issue has been added to ADFGs agenda: environmental protection. Its projects and campaigns began to oppose chemical-based agriculture, and lobby for environmental protection laws. 23 In Thailand, Tunjai Deetes has been working with Thai people since 1970 and n 1986, she, with a group of field workers, academics and government officials, started the Hill Area Development Foundation (HADF) to promote sustainable development efforts in 28 villages of five tribal group in North Thailand. As a result of her leadership and dedication, many of the hill tribes have developed into self-reliant communities that now serve as national models in sustainable agriculture and resource conservation.24 Dr.Wangari Muta Maathai25, was the first African women who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her actions to promote sustainable development, democracy and peace. In 1976 she introduced the idea of community based tree planting. She continued to develop this idea into a broad based grassroots organizations whose main focus is poverty reduction and environmental conservation through tree planting. The organization eventually became known as the Green Belt Movement (GBM). In June of 2008 the Congo Basin Forest Fund was launched. The fund protects the forests of the Congo Basin by supporting projects that make the forest worth more as a living resource, than it would be cut down. Professor Maathai acted as co chair and goodwill ambassador for the initiative. Spotlighting several women from southwestern Pennsylvania, an ecology group hopes to showcase Pittsburgh's eco-tourism and "environmental friendliness." At a luncheon at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown, six women were honored by the American Forest Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based group working for sustainable forests. The Pittsburgh chapter of the foundation's Women's Group, established in 2010, was the first in the AFF, and was spearheaded by Laura Tuel, vice president of development for the AFF. Betsy Benson is publisher and vice president of Pittsburgh Magazine. Benson was instrumental in transforming the magazine into an environmentally conscious publication by showcasing "eco-friendly" places around the city and reducing paper waste through ancillary Internet publishing. Caren

23 24

http://aaws07.org/english3/speech/5.2.IreneDankelman.pdf http://www.global500.org/Roll-of-Honour-/-Laureate-Database/Tuenjai-Deetes.html 25 http://nobelwomensinitiative.org/meet-the-laureates/wangari-maathai/

Glotfelty is director of The Heinz Endowments' Environment Program. Glotfelty's grantmaking work has expanded to promote smart developmental expansion and land use at regional and state levels. She also helped create the foundation's focus on environmental health, supporting efforts to clean up the region's industrial legacy of contaminated land, water and air.
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Conclusion:
A sense of ownership is a crucial factor in sustaining natural resources management and other initiatives. Womens participation should be fully ensured in all aspects from conceptualization to the enjoyment of results and benefits...Eleanor Dictaan-Bang, Philippines; in: UNEP/DAW, 2005. The above said statement is true beyond second thought. Having equal rights to live, women have all the rights and duties towards protection of environment. There are many women organizations who have been gathering women and propagating the importance of environment protection thus involving them in their activities. There are provisions made to protect women from unhealthy environment. But those works will be futile in case of women not showing interest.

By:Anitha K N, Research Scholar, Kuvempu University , Karnataka, Assistant Professor in Law, Govt. Law College, Ramnangar, Karnataka. Dr. B.S. Reddy, Registrar (Evaluation), Karnataka State Law University, Hubli, Karnataka

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http://www.campos.com/PDFs/PG_AFF_Honors_YC_04032011.pdf