by Jessica Sherman, Greengrants Intern
Women in an Indonesian coastal community are learning how to protect mangroves, restore local fisheries and find economic alternatives to ecosystem destruction. Creative approaches such as this promise to help halt cycles of poverty and habitat loss that afflict coastal communities around the world.
Imagine you are a poor widow living in coastal Indonesia. You have three children to support and only the most basic education. You live in an area forested with mangroves – as much of Indonesia’s coast used to be – and you can collect the wood freely to sell for cash. Despite your vague awareness of the harm you are causing, you see no choice but to continue until the forest runs out.
Mangrove destruction is a growing concern in Indonesia, and it is a focus of the Women’s Union for Equality (Persatuan Perempuan Sama or PPS), a grassroots organization working to help coastal women find alternatives to cycles of resource depletion and deepening poverty. Loss of mangroves destroys nursery grounds for local fisheries and makes coastal communities far more vulnerable to storms.
Women in Indonesia, as in other developing countries, are disproportionately affected by poverty. They often lack access to services, such as family planning, that could greatly contribute to their quality of life. Violence against women is a continuing problem in Indonesia, as is persistent social, political and economic discrimination. Women are excluded from decision-making positions, holding only eight percent of Indonesia’s parliamentary seats.
While women in Indonesia tend to be the resource managers for their families and communities, they have less access than men to sources of technical help. In response to this problem, PPS has developed programs to help poor women who harvest wood in mangrove forests to make a more sustainable living. In southeast Sulawesi, PPS created an initiative in 2003 to help expand womenís choices through training in alternative livelihoods.
Wangkolabu Village on Tobea Island, Muna – where the project is taking place – used to be surrounded by an extensive mangrove forest of more than 500 hectares. Indeed, the village was originally named after a type of mangrove tree. Today, the forest has been reduced to a highly degraded 150 hectares due to exploitation for local housing materials and the fuel wood trade. Fishing has traditionally been the primary source of livelihood here, but in recent years people have had to engage in other income generating activities, such as the sale of fuel wood, to make ends meet. This feeds a vicious cycle, since loss of mangroves causes further harm to local fisheries, which depend on mangrove habitat for spawning and nursery grounds.
With the help of a $1,000 grant from Greengrants, PPS was able to develop a program designed to halt this cycle of poverty and environmental degradation. Aimed at helping women initiate income-generating projects, PPS conducted a four-day participatory workshop in which twenty women learned about the ecological importance of the mangrove and were trained in alternative livelihood practices, enabling them to leave the fuel wood trade.
PPS recruited participants for this workshop from the ranks of Wangkolabuís poorest inhabitants for whom cutting mangroves had become an economic necessity. Of the ninety-one families in Wangkolabu, nearly half are headed by single mothers. These women struggle to provide for their families in a society that devalues women’s work, and more than half of these households depend on the sale of mangrove trees for fuel wood.
This group of women, with the aid of PPS facilitation, set a goal of increasing fish habitat in the village through mangrove restoration and reduced fuel wood cutting. They decided also to work toward a ban on the fuel wood trade. PPS was able to return for a follow-up workshop in 2004 in which some of the women were trained in organic vegetable farming, while others were trained in business planning, bookkeeping and entrepreneurship with the goal of selling their colleagues’ products and other items. As of April 2004, the women were already reaping the benefits of their new enterprises, successfully managing their businesses without having to return to the fuel wood trade.
PPS has set up revolving micro-loan funds for the women (around $20 per woman) that allow them to have access to capital in the beginning stages of their business projects. These loans are projected to extend through April 2005. PPS maintains a relationship with another organization, the Rural Institution for Women’s Empowerment, which will follow up with ongoing support and further training. PPS hopes to return to Wangkolabu in 2005 to set up a wood garden for non-mangrove fuel wood harvesting and to introduce energy-saving charcoal stoves, with the aim of further reducing the unsustainable use of mangrove forests.
A previous Greengrants grant to PPS also brought creative approaches to mangrove restoration, this time with womenís groups in Kuala Sungai Pinang on Penang island. The project laid the groundwork – literally – for ecosystem restoration through construction of what are known as “empang parit.” These dredged coastal ponds are planted with mangroves and designed to create attractive nursery habitat that can replenish local fisheries and can be harvested directly for shrimp and other species. Participants have planted more than 5,000 mangrove saplings so far, and local womenís groups are working to expand the project. Thanks to the success of this project, PPS received a grant from the Indonesian government to continue the work on Muna.
The goal of PPS is to ensure equal participation of women, a greater role in natural resource management, and an end to the “feminization” of poverty. As women increase their leadership in resource management and take better control of their economic choices, PPS hopes that the cycle of environmental degradation and poverty can be broken.