Changing the culture
CHRISTINA AMOAKO-NUAMA
describes efforts to empower women in environmental
decision-making through cultural change
Women in Ghana, as
in other parts of Africa, are the primary resource managers, especially in
rural areas. Their daily economic and nurturing activities as subsistence
farmers are responsible for some 70 per cent of national food crop output,
quite apart from their roles as household managers and educators. But some
cultural practices have tended to place them at a disadvantage.
While there are no laws in Ghana discriminating against women's
involvement in socio-economic development, there are numerous areas where
discriminatory practices exist as a consequence of the conditions of
women's work, cultural beliefs and attitudes, value systems and
behavioural norms, and folklore and folksongs. Such practices give men
greater leverage in education and training (and therefore higher
educational attainment and status), and greater political and
decision-making power - thereby perpetuating women's inferior status.
Often marginalized in decision-making, women have not been empowered to
incorporate sound environmental management practices into their
activities. Reversing this trend would require a frontal attack from
various sectors of our society.
Special emphasis on women
Attempts by policy makers to address this social inequality have not been
successful or sustainable in the past, mainly because women have been
treated as recipients of welfare benefits rather than as producers and
agents of development. But over the last decade, and especially in the
past three years of democratic constitutional rule in Ghana, a major focus
of the Government's development programmes has been decentralization and
poverty alleviation, with special emphasis on women as central players in
the family set-up and in resource management. Political commitment to
programmes for decentralization, poverty reduction and the empowerment of
women through environmental resource conservation is a high priority and
is evident in the actions of the country's political leadership.
A Ministry to coordinate environmental activities was created, for the
first time, in 1993, and later enlarged into the Ministry of Environment,
Science and Technology.
In 1994 the former advisory Environmental Protection Council was
transformed into an Agency with regulatory and compliance enforcement
powers.
Ghana's environmental policy, fully documented in a National Environmental
Action Plan (NEAP) adopted in 1992, is to ensure that socio-economic
development is undertaken in a way that avoids creating environmental
problems. Current environmental concerns are mainly over land degradation
(from poor traditional agricultural practices and mining), deforestation,
waste management and the pollution of water, air and soil.
Implementation of the NEAP is based on key considerations including:
- The inter-sectoral nature of many environmental
concerns.
- The major programme of decentralization of the
public administration to local authorities.
- The importance of community, and especially women's,
involvement in decisions about the use of
environmental resources.
The Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies, the key players in
the current decentralized Government system, are being assisted to
integrate environmental considerations into their development planning by
following environmental impact assessment procedures for all development
projects.
We realized during the early phases of implementing the NEAP in 1994 that
poor environmental management was a consequence of weak or non-existent
enforcement capability. There is now a cross-sectoral Environmental
Compliance Enforcement Network. Made up of personnel from various sectors
including the security services, this is expected to facilitate the work
of the Environmental Protection Agency in implementing the various
environmental regulations through a national strategy for environmental
management.
Capacity-building is a critical requirement for achieving success in
environmental or resource management. Delivering Agenda 21 at the national
level depends to a large extent on our capacity to implement the
programmes we design. So the strategy also incorporates capacity-building
for such key participants as public officers and members of assemblies,
law enforcement agencies, environmental non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), traditional rulers, media practitioners, entrepreneurs in commerce
and industry, and some local consultants. Many organizations and
institutions now include the environment in their programmes, not as an
afterthought, but from a realization that we are all stakeholders with
equal responsibility for environmental management.
Widespread involvement
Programme initiatives specifically geared towards raising the status of
women over the past decade have involved both governmental and
non-governmental agencies. Working together with the National Council on
Women and Development (NCWD), many NGOs (including the 31st December
Women's Movement and workplace and religious bodies' women's associations
- World Vision International, Adventist Development and Relief Agency,
YWCA, and the International Federation of Women Lawyers) have embarked on
programmes, especially in such areas as economic empowerment, human
rights, and issues of national and international concern.
Economic and other constraints have hampered progress on a 15-year
programme of action by the NCWD for the Integration of Women in
Development (1986-2000), but intensive consultations have resulted in the
drawing up of future strategies for achieving its goals and objectives.
Among the major areas of concern identified for priority attention are:
power sharing and decision-making (political participation), mechanisms
for promoting women's advancement, legal issues, poverty, access to
resources, education, health, employment, violence against women, national
and international conflict, environment and social perception and cultural
practices. Overall goals, set targets and institutional mechanisms for
implementation up to the year 2000 have been outlined for each area.
Goals and objectives identified to enhance women's participation and
advancement in the specific area of the environment include: the
introduction of bye-laws to protect local environments, increased
awareness of environmental degradation, increased participation in
environmental management, improvement in the monitoring of waste
management, increasing the direct access of women to housing construction
and improved credit, and improving the environmental conditions of market
places.
The Ministries of Environment, Science and Technology and Local Government
and Rural Development are key actors in putting these objectives into
operation - with the support of the NCWD; the Environmental Protection
Agency; Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies; NGOs; and
community-based organizations.
The Ghana Education Service, religious bodies, NGOs and the traditional
authorities are expected to carry out awareness campaigns to combat
harmful practices against women. More research to expose degrading
cultural practices is expected to be carried out by NGOs, universities and
local assemblies. The Ghana National Commission on Culture is committed to
promoting science and technology in Ghana's cultural development and
inculcating the culture of scientific planning in the population. We
envisage that the regional Centres of National Culture should be involved
in the regional and district Resource Management Committees.
Attempts are being made to revive and promote traditional cultural
practices which help to protect and preserve the environment - such as the
maintenance of sacred groves in forests and traditional conservation sites
or burial grounds, which are believed to house gods and ancestral spirits.
Folkloric groups are to be encouraged to incorporate sustainable
development themes into their works so as to make it easy for people to
imbibe the concept and practice of environmental protection as part of
their daily lives.
Women have been encouraged to compete in the tourism industry, and are
successfully operating as tour operators and managers, and as participants
in rural industries that promote cultural and environmental tourism.
Programmes to benefit women by the generation of capital through rural
industrialization, by the improvement of family and community life, and by
the general enhancement of self-confidence among women, have been
incorporated into a recently launched five-year (1996-2000) Tourism
Development Action Programme.
Recent laws and discussions in Parliament (and by other public and private
sector institutions) have been geared towards eliminating some of the
cultural practices that not only violate the human rights of women and
keep them under subjugation, but undermine their confidence and limit them
from realizing their full potential as equal partners in the
socio-economic development of our nation.
The need to increase the participation of women in decision-making cuts
across all areas of socio-economic activity, whether in agriculture,
education, administration of justice, politics, tourism or environmental
management. It is intrinsically linked with training and education. The
female illiteracy rate is higher, at 65 per cent, than the male one
(44 per cent), though it is improving. Women made up 54 per cent of
enrolled learners in 1992 in adult literacy classes and have a lower
drop-out rate.
Under Ghana's current education reforms environmental concepts are being
taught to students from nursery to senior secondary levels by
incorporating them in core science and social studies subjects. New
programmes on Population and Family Life Education (PFLE) have been
introduced to address environmental issues, and emphasize the links
between human activities, population growth, the environment, quality of
life and the sustainable use of resources. Courses dealing with various
aspects of environment and development are handled in different university
faculties. Gender issues are key components of the PFLE and environmental
studies programmes, with a view to empowering women to play their roles
effectively.
Capacity-building for resource management by professional women's groups
in such fields as science and technology, management and economics and
agriculture and forestry have focused on special programmes designed, for
example, to encourage girls to take up science and technology education
and careers. They have also concentrated on better management and use of
resources in such areas as nutrition and health status, improved food
production and security, housing and environmental sanitation, consumer
behaviour, and education and communication. All these have proved very
popular with women in secondary schools.
There have been modest gains in creating awareness about Ghana's pervasive
environmental problems through various policy initiatives and
inter-sectoral and inter-agency collaboration. But much more remains to be
done to sensitize the population in order to change the negative cultural
perceptions and stereotyping of women, and to empower them to play
leadership roles in promoting sound environmental management.
These modest gains reflect the political direction and total commitment of
the Government of Ghana to the ideals and goals of Agenda 21. Its success
will depend to a large extent on the contribution of women.
Dr. Christina Amoako-Nuama is Minister of Environment, Science and
Technology, Ghana.
