Oftentimes the talks about gender feel like a good old fight: Each of the sides seems so deeply blinded by their own hurt and sure of their righteousness, that none of them wishes to hear out the other side of the story.
Lost in quarrels and power struggles, some diverge paths. Others manage to find common ground and move forward together. Those who manage to do that are stronger than before because reconciling different views under the same vision is a leverage, it enables a more robust strategy and action. In this respect, if we are to realize the Sustainable Development Goals, failing to understand the needs and fulfil the aspirations of about the half of the world’s populations seems rather reckless.
Ultimately, the ability to understand each other and to accept that the other party can have a different way of looking at things, just because of the way they are, determines success of a union, be it a marriage or a business partnership or any other organization of people.
So, is it really about gender? Or is it about accepting and understanding another human being?
During the side event “Feminism, Forests and Food Security” at the 44th session of the Committee on World Food security, Linda Andersson (Vi-Agroforestry) presented the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project (KACP), which is a well-known success story of improving farmers’ livelihoods through sustainable agriculture and agroforestry with a carbon credit add-on.
In Kenya, like in many African countries, very few women own land. Vi-Agroforestry came up with the way around it: Anyone can participate in the project as long they have access to family land. From there on, the rate of women participation went up to 60%. Women could decide how to use the land and started to get payments for carbon credits.
Read the full post on the CFS blog here.
Blogpost by Ekaterina Bessonova, #CFS44 Social Reporter – ekaterina.bessonova(at)sei-international.org
Photo Credit: Gwenael Piaser via Flick
This post is part of the live coverage during the 44rd Session of the Committee on World Food Security, a joint project between GFAR and CFS. This post is written by one of our social reporters, and represents the author’s views only.