Nolivaranfaru farmers and their chilli plants photo by Erin McKinnon

Environment and Natural Resource Program

This programmatic area focuses on strengthening women’s right to decision making in natural resource management for more equitable and environmentally sustainable development outcomes. Natural resource management encompasses subsistance based livelihoods, land, forestry, marine and water resource management and indigenous knowledge. It is working towards increased recognition and value being placed on women’s knowledge and roles in natural resource management within development discourse, policy and legislative frameworks and community governance. Increasingly in the face of larger scale cash driven developments - such as logging, extractive industries and oil palm plantations - women are at risk of being excluded in decision-making about the management and use of natural resources that are so central to well-being and livelihoods.

IWDA’s progam will focus on project partnerships that enable women to participate more effectively in decision making processes in land and natural resource management, predominantly with our Pacific Partners. We have established a partnership with Tulele Peisa, an organisation headed by Ursula Rakova that is coordinating the relocation of Carteret Islanders off the coast of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, as climate change and rising sea levels are making it impossible to sustain the current population.  IWDA recognises that the impacts of climate change are gendered and women’s active involvement is essential to an effective global response.

IWDA supports projects in the areas of:

• Women’s rights to access and control of natural resources, including land
• Strengthening awareness and analysis of the gendered impacts of climate change
• Strengthening the integration of gender in water and sanitation practice

IWDA’s current program partners include Live and Learn Environment Education in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Maldives, Tulele Peisa and Wide Bay Conservation Association in Papua New Guinea. In 2009-10 a new research partnership with the Institute of Sustainable Futures, World Vision Vanuatu and Live and Learn Environmental Education Fiji has been established focusing on engendering NGO’s water and sanitation initatives in the Pacific.