Women as Agents of Change
Ideas on how to change the narrative on water management in Africa; think global, act local
Imagine you are widow living in a rural village in Kenya; how would your life look like in a predominantly patriarchal society? To follow-up on the fourth blog post on gender mainstreaming in water management, this blog post takes you to Onjiko which is a farming community located near Lake Victoria in western Kenya. Partly due to AIDS-related deaths, the community knows many widows (local sources suggest half of the households are headed by a widow). What makes this case striking, however, is the way how Onjiko's widows have adopted innovative livelihood strategies to respond to insecurities related to climate change and water management in restrictive political, ecological and economic circumstances. Onjiko's widows have collaborated and formed the Kobongo Farmer's Group (KFG), as a platform to share experiences and to develop collaborative livelihood changes. Within the KFG a deliberative democracy approach is used during decision-making which ensures all members' voices to be heard, and as a result the KFG also exerts power on people outside the group (Gabrielsson & Ramasar, 2013).
An interesting insight is that the KFG has adopted some improved water management approaches which include rain water harvesting from rooftops and drip irrigation, water ponds to reduce water withdrawal, and agroforestry techniques. Consequently, access and availability of water was increased for households resulting in improved family health and well-being and an enhanced control system for floods and sustainability of the water supply in the community. One of the most important drivers for Onjiko's widows to collaborate is the fact that their lives as they used to know it did not exist anymore, which required them to find new ways of making a living for their families. In this sense, the KFG has successfully applied sustainability principles due to their shared vision of securing a livelihood not only for themselves and their family but also for future generations through the emphasis on conscious use of natural resources and the engagement in management related to e.g. water resources. So the story of the KFG shows how widows have become agents of change through their ability to access and manage resources previously inaccessible to them due to their circumstances in a predominantly patriarchal society. It shows how women have managed to empower themselves by working together (Gabrielsson & Ramasar, 2013).
However, when looking at the general image of East Africa's rural areas, local agency is still largely missing. Even though climate change is a global phenomena, impacts and therefore adaptation and the creation of resilience should take place on local levels (Figueiredo & Perkins, 2013). Therefore, some community-based engagement processes which can be applied during local water management decision-making processes, especially to enhance participation of women, are given below in Table 2. An approach worth considering in further blog posts and which relates to the processes in Table 2, is that of Participatory Action Research, which entails inclusive research by, with, and for the people affected by a particular problem in collaboration with academic researchers (Eeldering et al., 2017; Figueiredo & Perkins, 2013). This approach can also enhance gender mainstreaming in Africa through the democratization of knowledge production and the empowerment of those involved e.g. Africa's Water Women.
Table 2. Participatory and inclusive processes; ways of bringing women into water management, starting at the community level in the context of rural Africa (Figueiredo & Perkins, 2013).
Participation and inclusion are certainly desirable components of any form of "action research" (or "research into action") but what do you think are some of the challenges of implementing these components in practice?
ReplyDeleteThank your for your feedback! In blog post 8 I delve deeper into the challenges and consequences related to the adaptation of Participatory Action Research in the African context. It is indeed important to stay critical, especially with methodologies developed in the 'west'.
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