POVERTY – ENVIRONMENT INITIATIVE
GENDER – ENVIRONMENT MAINSTREAMING IN TAJIKISTAN: BASELINE ANALYSIS
Henrieta Martonakova Zumrad Kataeva September 2015
Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives
Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 1
GLOSSARY ...... 2
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... 3
I. INTRODUCTION ...... 5
I.1 Context and purpose of the baseline study ...... 5
I.2 Scope, approach and structure of baseline study ...... 5
I.3 Explanatory notes...... 6
II. INTRODCUTION TO THE GENDER - ENVIRONMENT CONTEXT ...... 7
II.1 Key gender – environment issues ...... 7
II.2 Why to address gender – environment issues? ...... 8
II.3 How to address gender – environment issues? ...... 8
III. TAJIKISTAN GENDER, POVERTY AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS ...... 11
IV. GENDER, ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATE CHANGE LINKS IN TAJIKISTAN ...... 15
IV.1 Gender aspects of land use and land management ...... 17
IV.2 Gender aspects of access to water and water management ...... 19
IV.3 Gender aspects of access to energy ...... 21
IV.4 Gender aspects of natural disaster risk and management...... 22
V. ENABLING ENVIRONMENT FOR ‘GENDER ENVIRONMENT’ MAINSTREAMING ...... 24
V.1 Political and legal framework for gender – environment mainstreaming ...... 24
V.2 Institutional and procedural framework for gender – environment mainstreaming ...... 32
V.3 Data and knowledge base for gender mainstreaming ...... 38
V.4 Awareness and capacity development for gender mainstreaming ...... 40
VI. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 41
VI.1 Key challenges for gender – environment mainstreaming ...... 42
VI.2 Recommended actions and indicators for more effective gender – environment mainstreaming ...... 42
REFERENCES ...... 48
ANNEX 1: ENVIRONMENT GENDER INDEX: METHODOLOGY AND CRITERIA ...... 50
ANNEX 2: LIST OF THE REVIEWED NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL COMMITMENTS, POLICY AND LEGAL DOCUMENTS ...... 52 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This report was prepared within the framework of the Tajikistan UNDP – UNEP Poverty – Environment Initiative (TJ PEI) Phase I-II. It was prepared by Henrieta Martonakova, at the time the Technical Advisor to the TJ PEI, together with Zumrad Kataeva, the national expert on gender matters, who helped collecting the data both from the relevant documents and from consulting stakeholders in the number of national institutions and in the selected districts.
Elaboration of the report would not be possible without contribution of government officials in Dushanbe and the Sughd Region, representatives of the international community, and the local non-governmental organizations.
Report could have not been prepared without valuable contributions from (i) Abduvaliev Askar Kasymovich, Shukurov Olim, Barotov Rahimboy, Khasanov Ulughbek, Makhatov Sherali, and Mansurova Jannatoy, representing the Sughd regional and the Ghonchi, Jabbor Rasulov, and Isfara district governments; (ii) people from the Dushanbe and the Sughd region-based non-governmental organizations: Dmitriy Prudskikh (Youth Group for Protection of Environment), Yuriy Skochilov (Youth Ecological Center), Abdusamadova Mamlakat and Atoulloeva Habiba (Maksad), Nazirova Mavjuda and her staff (Nakhli Umed), Jamshed Kayumov (ASDP Nau), Khayrinisso Rasulova (Association “Women and Society”) , Tatiana Bozrikova (Public Foundation Platforma); and (iii) representatives of the national and local media: Zakirov Ishoqjon (Sogdiyskaya Pravda), and Tatyana Chen (Radio Vatan).
Our gratitude also goes to the representatives of the national government and international institutions: Khidirzoda Makhfirat Umar and Javohir Akobirova from the Committee on Women and Family Affairs under the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan; Roziqzoda Sherali, Abdukhalikov Akmaljon, and Najmiddinova Gulbahor from the Institute of Public Governance of the Republic of Tajikistan; Barno Mukhamadieva, Viloyat Mirzoeva from UN Women; Nazokat Isaeva, Davide Costa, and Masuda Saidova from OXFAM GB; and last but not least to Nargizakhon Usmanova, Alisher Nazirov, Tahmina Azizova, Jurabek Sattorov, Oliya Baykhanova, and Yusuf Kholov from the UNDP Tajikistan.
We would especially like to thanks to Zaitoona Naimova from UN Women Tajikistan and Nara Luvsan from the UNDP – UNEP Poverty – Environment Initiative, Europe and the CIS regional office, for providing valuable comments into the report’s final draft.
Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives
GLOSSARY Environment Climate and Natural Resources (ECNR) sectors – for the purpose of this study, the sectors and development areas that are relevant in terms of inter-linkages between poverty reduction, gender equality, environmental sustainability and climate change; ECNR sectors include: environment including climate change, water management, land management, agriculture, energy, natural disasters prevention and management, waste management, tourism and health.
Gender denotes the socially constructed roles and responsibilities ascribed to men and women and the relationship between them. Gender influences the creation, use and distribution of power. Thus, common attributes of gender- differentiated roles, rights and responsibilities include an asymmetrical distribution of and access to power between men and women. In addition, gender interacts with other societal differentiations that shape power asymmetries, such as ethnicity, age and education, etc. Gender has interpersonal, cultural, institutional, policy, political and socioeconomic dimensions.
Gender equality exists when men and women are attributed equal social value, equal rights and equal responsibilities and have equal access to the means (resources, opportunities) to exercise them.
Women’s empowerment refers to tools, strategies and approaches that seek to correct asymmetries of power, access and privilege that result from gender inequalities. Promoting gender equality may require efforts to ensure women’s empowerment.
Gender mainstreaming is a globally accepted strategy for promoting gender equality. Gender mainstreaming involves ensuring that gender perspectives and attention to the goal of gender equality are central to all activities - policy development, research, advocacy/ dialogue, legislation, resource allocation, and planning, implementation and monitoring of programmes and projects at all levels.
Gender Development Index (GDI) - female to male ratio of HDI - The new GDI measures gender gap in human development achievements in three basic dimensions of human development: health, measured by female and male life expectancy at birth; education, measured by female and male expected years of schooling for children and female and male mean years of schooling for adults ages 25 and older; and command over economic resources, measured by female and male estimated earned income. Countries are ranked based on the absolute deviation from gender parity in HDI. This means that ranking takes equally into consideration gender gaps hurting females, as well as those hurting males.
Gender Inequality Index (GII) - measures gender inequalities in three important aspects of human development— reproductive health measured by maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth rates; empowerment, measured by proportion of parliamentary seats occupied by females and proportion of adult females and males aged 25 years and older with at least some secondary education; and economic status expressed as labour market participation and measured by labour force participation rate of female and male populations aged 15 years and older. It measures the human development costs of gender inequality, thus the higher the GII value the more disparities between females and males. Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) is government planning, programming and budgeting that contributes to the advancement of gender equality and the fulfillment of women's rights. It entails identifying and reflecting needed interventions to address gender gaps in national, sector, and local government policies, plans and budgets. GRB also aims to analyze the gender-differentiated impact of revenue-raising policies and the allocation of domestic resources and Official Development Assistance.
Environment and Gender Index (EGI) – EGI monitors government progress toward gender equality and women’s empowerment in the environmental arena. It is the first-ever tool to track progress toward gender equality in the context of global environmental governance. Its pilot phase ranked 73 countries worldwide along 27 dimensions divided into six categories (Livelihood; Ecosystem; Gender-based Rights & Participation; Governance; Gender-based Education and Assets; and Country-Reported Activities). More information at http://genderandenvironment.org/egi/ Environment and gender equality is defined as equality of access to and control over natural resources and development benefits; and equality of access to decision-making and representation for environmental and natural resources management process.
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ADB Asian Development Bank CWAF Committee for Women and Family Affairs under the Government of RT CEDAW Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women CIS Commonwealth of Independent States CSO civil society organization DFID United Kingdom Department for International Development GBAO Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast GoT Government of Tajikistan IUCN GGO International Union for Conservation of Nature Global Gender Office JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency LSMS Living Standards Measurement Survey M&E Monitoring and Evaluation MDG Millennium Development Goals MSDSP Mountain Societies Development Support Program NDS National Development Strategy NGO Non-Governmental Organization OSCE Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe PEI Poverty – Environment Initiative PRSP Poverty Reduction Strategy Program RoT Republic of Tajikistan SDC Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation TAJSTAT Agency of Statistics under the President of the Republic of Tajikistan UNDP United Nations Development Program UNEP United Nations Environment Programme UNFAO United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization UNICEF United Nations Children Fund UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women (transferred to UN Women) UN Women United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women USAID US Agency for International Development WB The World Bank WHO World Health Organization WUA Water Users Association
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives
I. INTRODUCTION
I.1 Context and purpose of the baseline study Preparation of this baseline analysis was supported by the UNDP – UNEP Poverty – Environment Initiative (PEI). PEI in Tajikistan has started in 2010 (Phase I) and its main objective is to integrate links between environment, economic development and poverty reduction, further referred to as ‘poverty – environment’ (P-E) links / issues in the country development planning and budgeting.1 The overall expected outcome of the programme after the Phase II (2014 – 2017) implementation is “to have comprehensive strategies and strengthened institutions at the national and local levels enabled to better address existing poverty and environment issues and facilitating transition to greener and inclusive growth”.
PEI in Tajikistan has been formulated and implemented within the global Poverty – Environment Initiative, jointly managed by UNEP and UNDP.2 PEI recognizes the fact that due to the overall gender inequality in developing countries, women present one of the specific groups vulnerable to poverty. It understands that livelihood and income of women, who often play different roles in households and societies as men, can be more vulnerable to impact of climate change or environmental degradation or to the scarcity of natural resources. Therefore, the global PEI programmme encourages the partner countries to integrate gender aspect in the PEI country projects’ formulation and implementation.
In line with the above, PEI Tajikistan have included the following activity in its Phase II project document: “Baseline gender analysis of P-E issues will be conducted for development of policy recommendations in order to address gender gaps in formulation of gender indicators relevant for P-E mainstreaming into long- term development planning at the national level. The findings of this baseline analysis will also feed into follow up project activities on capacity development and scaling up.”
In addition, the study aims to increase an overall understanding of the linkages between gender, environment, climate change and poverty, among broad range of stakeholders.
I.2 Scope, approach and structure of baseline study Scope of the baseline study, formulated in the form of a ‘checklist’ was approved by the PEI Tajikistan country team. Study is organized into the following chapters: - Chapter I introduces the context and purpose of a study. - Chapter II introduces the topic of gender – environment as it is nowadays understood globally, with describing the key gender – environment issues, and suggesting why and how to address them. - Chapter III and IV explains gender aspect of the current socio-economic development in Tajikistan (poverty, economy, education, health, family relations) and of the current system of the natural resources management, environmental protection and natural disasters risk management - Chapter V describes existing enabling environment for gender – environment mainstreaming in Tajikistan, including the relevant political, legal and institutional framework, information and knowledge base and the existing provisions for the respective awareness raising and capacity development - Chapter VI summarizes the key challenges, recommendation and indicators for effective gender – environment mainstreaming in the country;
This is the first comprehensive study looking at the broad range of gender-environment mainstreaming aspects. Covering a rather broad scope of issues and topics the study includes mainly secondary data
1 More information on the PEI Tajikistan is available at http://www.unpei.org/what-we-do/pei-countries/tajikistan 2 http://www.unpei.org/
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives obtained through the desk review of relevant documents. These are complemented by the information collected by the national gender consultant via the semi-structured interviews and meetings with the representatives of local governments and gender and environmental CSOs from the Ghonchi, Jabbor Rasulov and Isfara districts in the Sughd region, with the local and national media, and with the representatives of the national and international institutions such as the Committee on Women and Family Affairs under the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan (RoT) and UN Women Tajikistan. Please see the acknowledgement part for the reference to all consulted people and the institutions they represent.
I.3 Explanatory notes If not explicitly specified, the term ‘environment’ refers also to climate change.
The term ‘Environment, Climate and Natural Resources (ECNR) sectors’, used in the study refers to the sectors that are directly or indirectly linked with environment, climate change and natural resources management, such as agriculture, environment, forestry, land management, water management, energy, health, tourism, disaster prevention and management.
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives
II. INTRODCUTION TO THE GENDER - ENVIRONMENT CONTEXT
II.1 Key gender – environment issues Many international and national actors in the sustainable development arena focus increasingly on the nexus of environment and gender equality (see the Glossary for a definition). Referring to such context differences between men and women may be grouped into the following categories:
Women and men interrelation with the environment and climate change Women and girls, as traditional food growers, water and fuel gatherers, and caregivers are intimately connected with natural resources and the climate, making them more vulnerable to natural disasters and worsening environmental conditions. For an illustration, anemia in women3 places them at risk for poor pregnancy outcomes including increased risk of maternal mortality, delivery complications, premature births and low birth weight. Household use of solid fuels contributes to indoor air pollution and severe health problems, especially for women and children. Lack of sanitation facilities and poor hygiene causes water-borne diseases.4 On the other hand, for the reasons described above women are also those who may either positively or negatively affect the environment they live in.
Access to and control over natural resources In many countries, women still have limited access to natural resources such as land, clean water, fuel for energy and cooking, etc. Collection of natural resources (heavy loads of wood, fodder and water) negatively affects women’s health and their economic productivity and it reduces women’s time for education, skill development, social, economic and governance activities. Women have limited access to land due to insecure land and tenure rights related to traditional roles of women in family and society. This further limits women’s access to markets, capital, training, and technologies, and presents a double burden of responsibilities inside and outside the household.
Opportunities for men and women to influence decision-making for sustainable development Despite significant improvements the gender equality has not been reached yet worldwide. On a global scale there is still no sufficient attention paid to gender related priorities and actions in policies and strategies for development, and women are still significantly underrepresented in decision- making. Share of women representation in environmental decision-making globally is best illustrated in the chart in the Figure 1 below, presenting results of the recent research conducted by the IUCN Global Gender Office and UN women. Figure 1: Women’s participation in environmental decision-making5
3 Besides the other factors, caused also by inadequate nutrition and consumption of untreated water 4 IUCN (2013), The Environment and Gender Index (EGI) 2013 Pilot. Washington, D.C., IUCN 5 https://portals.iucn.org/union/sites/union/files/doc/egi_decision_making_fs.pdf
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives
II.2 Why to address gender – environment issues? First and utmost there is unprecedented need to ensure that women live in the safe and healthy environment and enjoy the same rights as men, just as it is spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
Gender equality and women’s empowerment are prerequisites for sustainable development. Experience supported by number of studies shows that: Women possess the knowledge and skills that are critical to finding local solutions in addressing climate change and environmental degradation and sustainable use of natural resources but at the same time they do not sit at the decision-making tables. There is also evidence that the number of women’s and environmental NGOs per capita in a country have a positive correlation with reducing various forms of environmental degradation6. Equal access to use and management of natural resources for both men and women also contributes to positive environmental development as it creates more favourable conditions for efficiency in: economic performance; social welfare; women’s empowerment;7 Women often show more concern for the environment and support or vote for pro-environment policies and leaders therefore their increased involvement in politics and decision-making contributes to environmental sustainability. Countries with higher female parliamentary representation are more likely to set aside protected land areas, according to a study of 25 developed and 65 developing countries8.
Box 1: Facts demonstrating significance of women empowerment for sustainable development
- Resiliency of households and communities depends in great part on the resiliency of women. - Access to resources potentially contributes to women’s empowerment and reduces the risk of abuse and domestic violence as it makes women less economically dependent. - According to FAO, “bringing yields on the land farmed by women up to the levels achieved by men would increase agricultural output in developing countries between 2.5 and 4 percent. Increasing production by this amount could reduce the number of undernourished people in the world in the order of 12–17 percent.” - In countries where women have no access to credit, the number of malnourished children is 85% above average. A similar correlation was found between women’s access to resources and child mortality, and between levels of discrimination against women and maternal mortality
Source: Luque, V. (2013)
II.3 How to address gender – environment issues? In principle, gender – environment nexus is to be addressed by:
Collecting and exposing information and evidence on the inequalities of women in ECNR sectors, and demonstrating that women can be driving forces / agents of change for sustainable development;
In order to fill the data gap, the IUCN Global Gender Office (GGO) has recently developed the ‘Environment Gender Index’ (EGI) to track progress toward gender equality in the context of global environmental governance. Its pilot phase ranked 73 countries worldwide (including Tajikistan) along 27 dimensions
6 IUCN (2013) 7 UNDP (2015) 8 UNDP 2011 HDR
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives divided into six categories (Livelihood; Ecosystem; Gender-based Rights & Participation; Governance; Gender-based Education and Assets; and Country-Reported Activities).9
Mainstreaming gender aspect into national legislation and international environmental and climate change agreements, national, regional and global policies, as well as into budgeting and financing mechanisms supporting the ECNR sectors’ development;
For instance, in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Moldova and Armenia UN WOMEN is supporting partners to integrate gender in the agriculture, labor migration and social security, in line with the PEI efforts. In Rwanda UN Women assisted successful piloting of the Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) in four national ministries, which have produced gender-responsive budget statements submitted to Parliament. Starting in fiscal year 2011-2012, GRB is mandatory for all ministries and districts. 10
Level of mainstreaming gender perspective in the global environmental and climate change agreements and conversely mainstreaming of an environment aspect in the international gender agreements is illustrated in the Table 1 below:
Table 1: Key international agreements on gender, environment, and sustainable development11
United Nations Framework Adopts a goal of gender balance in bodies established pursuant to the Convention Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, in order to improve women’s participation and inform (UNFCCC) more effective climate change policy that addresses the needs of women and men equally. United Nations Convention on Promotes women’s knowledge and practices in the conservation and sustainable Biological Diversity (CBD) use of biological diversity in the agricultural sector. / Promotes gender-specific ways in which to document and preserve women’s knowledge of biological diversity. / Calls for gender balance in various bodies. / Points to the gender and cultural impacts of tourism. Convention on the Elimination Ensures women the opportunity to represent their Governments at the of all forms of Discrimination international level and to participate in the work of international organizations; / Against Women (CEDAW) Ensures equal rights to bank loans, mortgages and other forms of financial credit; / Ensures that women in rural areas can participate in and benefit from rural development; participate in development planning at all levels; obtain training, education, and extension services; have access to agricultural credit and loans, marketing facilities, appropriate technology; and are treated equally in land, agrarian reform, and land resettlement schemes. Rio+20 Affirms that green economy policies in the context of sustainable development The Future We Want was and poverty eradication should enhance the welfare of women and mobilize the adopted in Rio de Janeiro in full potential and ensure the equal contribution of both women and men. / June Resolves to unlock the potential of women as drivers of sustainable development, 2012. including through the repeal of discriminatory laws and the removal of formal barriers. / Commits to actively promote the collection, analysis and use of gender sensitive indicators and sex-disaggregated data.
Increasing women capacity and involvement in politics and decision-making for sustainable development
9 Explanation of the EGI calculation and the ranking results can be found in the publication: IUCN (2013), The Environment and Gender Index (EGI) 2013 Pilot. Washington, D.C., IUCN, at http://genderandenvironment.org/egi/ 10 UN Women (2011) 11 The whole table listing more environmental and gender international agreements and bodies is available in The Environment and Gender Index (EGI) 2013 Pilot. http://genderandenvironment.org/egi/
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives
For an illustration, UNDP-supported programme in Iran demonstrates that local communities can restore and sustain degraded natural resources. By setting up Village Development Groups, granting women the opportunity to play a leadership role in sustaining natural resources, the programme establishes an efficient, empowering means of distributing micro-credits to develop small businesses.
World Bank and the Government of Tajikistan (GoT) suggest supporting women involvement in water management “through deliberately inviting women to the forums, by initiating women involvement in the Social Mobilization and Institutional Development component of the IWRM Fergana project. It could be done by including 1-2 young, active women into mobilizer group. Other extreme solution can be devoting the quotas for women in the WUA membership, management and governance structures.”12
12 Shahriari, H. at all. (2009)
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives
III. TAJIKISTAN GENDER, POVERTY AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS
Relation of women and men to environment and their access to natural resources depends on their position in family, community and society and on the conditions provided for their well-being and development. Therefore, this chapter provides a brief introduction into the situation of women (and men) in Tajikistan around the relevant indicators of social and economic development.
Total population of Tajikistan is app. 8 513 826 people with 49.2% of male population and 50.8% of female population.13 Rural population makes up 73.4%.14 According to the latest National Human Development Report (NHDR, 2014), the poverty level in the country was 35.6 in 2013, what is considerable decrease against the year 1999 (81%). Unfortunately, the latest available gender disaggregated data on poverty level are from 2009 (see the Table 2 below).
Table 2: 2009 poverty level data Urban Total Women Men Rural Areas Areas Rate of relative poverty 53.6 53.9 53.1 49.4 55 Rate of extreme or absolute poverty 17.1 22.9 16.0 18.9 16.4 Source: Tajikistan Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS), 2009
Tajikistan is included into the group of countries with medium human development with its 2013 Human Development Index (HDI = 0.607), ranking 133rd out of 187 countries. The 2013 female HDI value for Tajikistan is 0.591 in contrast with 0.621 for males, resulting in a Gender Development Index (GDI) value of 0.952. Tajikistan has a Gender Inequality Index (GII)15 value of 0.383, ranking it 75 out of 149 countries in the 2013 index. The worst comes out the indicator of women representation in the parliament and in the labour market. According to GII value, based on 2013 data, the state of women in Tajikistan is better than in medium human development group of countries.16
Table 3 below provides a simple analysis of the situation and position of women in the country compared to men. It uses the indicators and data from the Gender Statistics of the Agency of Statistics under the President of RT, Indicators that show rather considerable difference between men and women have been selected for display to indicate the areas with the highest level of inequality.17. Column A lists the areas where the state of women is better than the state of men, column B shows the areas with the reverse logic. If not indicated otherwise, all the explanatory information following the Table 3 is based on the data from the respective gender statistics and refers to the year 2013.
13 http://countrymeters.info/en/Tajikistan 14 UNDP, NHDR 2014 15 Measures gender inequality in: 1. reproductive health, 2. empowerment (women in parliament and with secondary education), and 3.economic status (labour market participation). See the Glossary for a more detailed explanation. 16 UNDP, NHDR 2014 17 Table with all the indicators is available at the web page of the Agency on Statistics under the President of the RoT (TAJSTAT/SAS), at http://stat.tj/en/Gender6/Genderbaz/.
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
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Table 3: Selected indicators of social and economic development aspects of Tajik men and women (annual data for period 2008 – 2013) A: women in disadvantage B: men in disadvantage The status of women in the social and political life The proportion of seats held by women in Parliament / NA The distribution of employees in the public administration by gender Acceleration of women employment and their role in the labor market Number of self-employed / The proportion of women in NA paid jobs in the fields of labor, except agriculture / Average monthly salary Women entrepreneurship support Number of individual entrepreneurs operating on the Number of recipients of state social allowance / basis of a patent / Disaggregation of the number of pension workers of small enterprises (with staff of 10 and less workers) / Number and proportion of peasant farms, including headed by women / Average amount of assigned pensions, total, TJS (end of year) / Number of microloan recipients / Number of leaders and specialists from among the hired workforce, thousand persons (total) Problem of increasing women's educational level Population with higher education / The number of Population with primary and secondary education employees engaged in scientific research and development / Number of specialists - researchers Women and Healthcare The incidence of endemic goiter / The incidence of Life expectancy at birth18 / Number of HIV - infected infections, sexually transmitted infection by sex / Mortality from breast cancer (declining) / Morbidity of active tuberculosis / Share of births attended by skilled medical personnel (increase) Family Strengthening Factors Divorces (increase) / Households consisting of mothers Number of permanent preschool institutions with children (high increase) (increase) / Households consisting of fathers with children (decrease) Source: TAJSTAT, http://stat.tj/en/Gender6/Genderbaz/
Representation of women in Parliament and in public administration is extremely low (19 and 35.2% respectively). While overall unemployment rate of women in 2009 (the most actual data available) was lower than of men, mainly in the age category 15-24, number of self-employed women was significantly lower (326,816) compared to self-employed men (540,292). Number of women employed in agriculture is almost the same as number of men but much smaller number of women works in paid jobs, and in other than agriculture sectors. In 2013, average monthly salary of women reached only 63.6% of the men average monthly salary.
Only 21.4% of all entrepreneurs (operating on a basis of patent) are women, and only around 6 thousand of women have worked in small enterprises compared to almost 22 thousand men. Situation becomes worse when looking at women in managerial positions. Although number of female headed peasant farms is
18 The rationale is to take into account a biological advantage averaging five years of life that females have over males. For more details on computation see Technical notes. (http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/gender-development-index-gdi)
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives increasing they still form only 8% of all such farms. In general labor market, women hold only about 50% of leadership or specialist positions. In 2014, 181,615 women received microloans compared to 397,790 men.
Educational opportunities are equally open to boys and girls at the primary and secondary level, but there are serious gender disparities in the higher education attainment, especially in rural areas (see the numbers in the Figure 2 below). This is despite the fact that the ‘‘presidential quota’’ has been utilized every year since 1997 to support girls from remote regions to study at higher educational establishments. Relatively higher education levels are typical for women living in towns and cities. Number of male researchers is almost double to female researchers.
Figure 2: Working-age women by education level (2010 census data, Percentage)
Source: NHDR. 2014
Fewer women are affected by the HIV aids than men but it is still of concern that almost four out of ten women in Tajikistan have not yet heard about HIV/AIDS. There is a direct positive connection between women’s educational background and their awareness of HIV prevention methods. There is however higher incidence of sexually transmitted infection for women than men. While more men suffer from tuberculosis the incidence of endemic goitre19 is higher for women. The prevalence of protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) 20among women of fertile age in Tajikistan is 11.2%. According to the WHO recommendations, this result is considered unfavourable for public health.21
Country faces the increasing number of households consisting of only mother with children. Number of such households increased from around 49 thousand in 2008 to app. 60 thousand in 2010 (the latest available data). One of the main contributing factors is the extremely high level of male international labour migration, resulting in an increased number of divorces. The civil war (1992 – 1997) created approximately 25,000 female-headed households, predominately in Khatlon and Rasht regions.22 On the other hand, number of households consisting of fathers with children decreased significantly: from around 16 thousand in 2008 to app. 6.5 thousand in 2010. Interestingly there are more female recipients of pension but the average amount of assigned pensions for women annually is lower than for men.
As presented above, different attributes of human development are very closely interlinked (e.g. reference to connection of HIV/AIDS awareness with level of education). In the gender – environment relation context, for instance environmental problems such as land degradation and water contamination affect the agricultural production of good quality and healthy food. Access to such food is one of the factors
19 Endemic goiter is caused by the intake of inadequate amounts of dietary iodine. The goiter may grow during the winter months and shrink during the summer months when the person eats more iodine-containing fresh vegetables. It also occurs widely in population groups in geographic areas in which limited amounts of iodine are present in soil, water, and food. 20 PEM develops in children and adults whose consumption of protein and energy (measured by calories) is insufficient to satisfy the body's nutritional needs. 21 UNDP, NHDR 2014 22 Krylova L., at all. (2013)
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives influencing the incidence rate of protein- energy malnutrition or endemic goiter, what, as shown above, is much higher for women than men.
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IV. GENDER, ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATE CHANGE LINKS IN TAJIKISTAN
This section contains the information obtained mainly from the documents’ desk review. It is complemented with the boxes that contain information collected during the semi-structured interviews with the government, civil society and media representatives of the Ghonchi, Jabbor Rasulov and Isfara districts located in the Sughd region. See the Acknowledgements section above for the full list of the consulted people. Economy and human development in Tajikistan is strongly linked with its natural capital. Key country economic sectors such as agriculture, energy, water management, industry, including mining, are highly dependent on environment, and at the same time have a large impact on the environment.
Country has abundant water resource and large deposits of minerals. Though its land for cultivation is rather limited (97% of the country territory is covered with high mountains) agriculture is the key economic sector (38 % of GDP, 66% of employment, 30 % of exports and 39% of tax revenues). At the same time most of the agricultural land is degraded by erosion and high salinity. Water is being consumed predominantly by ineffective and wasteful irrigated agriculture (up to 84%). Tajikistan has one of the world’s largest hydropower potential and hydropower supplies more than 90% of the country’s energy demand. Despite of that, in autumn and winter period country faces acute energy deficit, dramatically limiting electricity supply, especially in rural areas. In addition, Tajikistan (and the whole Central Asia) is one of the climate change "hot spots" in the wider Eastern Europe and Central Asia region. Due to global warming the glaciated area of Tajikistan and water reserves in glaciers may decrease by 15-20% in 30-40 years23. Changes in water availability can have severe implication on irrigation based agriculture and hydropower based energy production.24
Referring to the above and to the many existing studies, it can be stated that the key environmental aspects affecting lives of both the Tajik women and men are land degradation, access to clean water and sanitation, access to energy, and natural disasters. These are further related to the issues of deforestation and biodiversity loss, improper waste management, air pollution, all exacerbated by climate change and ineffective environmental management and governance. This has been confirmed by the interviewed representatives of government and civil society, including women groups from the Ghonchi, Jabbor Rasulov and Isfara districts in Sughd region who name ho list the key environmental problems in the– see the Box 2 below.
Box 2: Key environmental aspects affecting development and livelihood in 3 visited districts
- Shortage of clean drinking water and water for irrigation (in rivers and reservoirs) due to draughts (climate change) and pollution; drinking water provided on an hourly basis and often containing mud due to obsolete water piping system; - High level of underground water rich with salt affecting both agriculture (mainly fruit trees and vegetables) and drinking water supplies - Non existing or ineffective waste management - Improperly disposed uranium waste (Jabbor Rasulov district) - Deforestation due to non-existing heating system - Low access to energy; (Ghonchi and Jabbor Rasulov districts have electricity3 hours in the morning and 3 in the evening in winter) - Low awareness on environmental issues, on proper waste disposal and on sustainable agriculture approaches and techniques (e.g. tree leaves burned by people could be used as fertilizers) - Extreme weather conditions and natural disasters such as strong winds and mudflows pausing threat to human
23 Kayumov, A. (2008) 24 Martonakova, H. (2015)
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lives, property and environment (e.g. damaging trees)
Despite an increasing attention paid to gender – environment linkages globally and nationally, identifying how differently environmental problems affect livelihood of men and women remains a very difficult task. This is mainly due to the lack of information and data. As already mentioned, IUCN has been trying to address the issue by recently introducing ‘Environment Gender Index’ (EGI). The aim is to assess the conditions for gender equality and women's empowerment in the environmental arena, in the six categories: Livelihood; Ecosystem; Gender-based Rights & Participation; Governance; Gender-based Education and Assets; and Country-Reported Activities. Tajikistan, with its EGI 0.48 ranks 48th out of 72 countries. Though very close to the group of ‘moderate performers’ (with EGI 0.50 and higher), the country is included in the group of ‘weakest performers’. As shown in the Table 4 below, it performs the worst among the assessed countries from the Eurasia region. Tajikistan scores the lowest in the ‘livelihood’ category measured through the following indicators: less poverty; food adequacy; fewer women with anemia; less solid fuel use; improved water; and improved sanitation.
Table 4: Highest and Lowest Performers by Region/Group, and Top Category for Region/Group
Source: IUCN (2013), http://genderandenvironment.org/egi/
For more information on the methodology and indicators used in calculating the EGI, see the Annex 2.
People interviewed in the selected districts of Sughd region were asked whether they think environmental problems and climate change affect women differently than men. A few quotes below illustrate what was the general view on the gender – environment nexus. Key environmental issues in Tajikistan are analysed from the gender perspective further down in this chapter.
“Women are most affected by the climate change and environmental issues in the region because traditionally they are responsible for everyday household activities. As many men migrated to the other countries women are becoming sensitive to the environmental issues, such as water and energy and land management. There are increased risks of infection diseases.” (Mansurova Jannatoy, Head of the Department of Women Affairs, Jabbor Rasulov district)
“Because of the increasing men labor migration women are becoming the head of households and have to take care of living, households, children. This is why they become the most vulnerable part of the population. For instance, because there is no plumbing system in the district villages, women have to bring water from the ponds. In addition to the household work women have to take care of household’s income to pay for food, education and health services.” (Representatives of the Ghonchi district)
“Unfavorable conditions of the climate change are felt particularly in those parts of the region where population is already sensitive because of gender roles, age and physical abilities. Women and children, who are larger part of the poor population, are most sensitive to climate risks. In families, they are responsible for bringing water, food and warming materials, and particularly depend from natural resources, which currently depend on the climate, building barriers and preventing them to adapt to these conditions.”
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(‘Gender Assessment of Humanitarian Situations’, UN Women, Sociological Research Center
While the text above focuses mainly on how environmental conditions affect women it is necessary to mention that women in Tajikistan also have impact on the environment, unfortunately often negative. Thanks to the abundance of and almost free (state subsidized) access to resources such as water and energy, it is women in particular who use resources such as water and energy inefficiently and as such contribute to their depletion and contamination. Therefore women shall be definitely more aware of environmental and climate change issues and educated on how to prevent or mitigate their impact.
IV.1 Gender aspects of land use and land management Major environmental problem related to land use in Tajikistan is land degradation. Main causes of land degradation and erosion are improper land management practices (e.g. intensive agriculture activities on slopes, excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers, improper organic waste storage), poor water management and irrigation practices (leading to soil salinization and increased groundwater recharge), overgrazing and deforestation. The situation is made even worse by the impact of climate change (during the drought of 2008, grain harvest totals were down between 30-40 percent compared to the previous year25). Sustainable land use by farmers is further hindered by their lack of financial resources and limited access to credit, no supply with proper and modern equipment, lack of seeds and their low quality and low knowledge and awareness of heads of farms.
Land degradation is directly linked with food security, income from agricultural production and health problems that affects primarily the poor rural population. Both rural men and women are affected by the factors listed above. Situation of women is however affected in addition by their limited access and ownership of land. While large share of agricultural workers are women (75.1%) their ownership of dhekan farms, compared to men, is significantly lower. According to the state official statistics, in 2013 women owned only 8% of dhekan farms (slight increase from the year 2012 when it was 7.8%). Interestingly, the trend has been rather negative in the last years as shown in the Figure 3 below.
Figure 3: Share of men and women in the management of dekhkan farms (%)
25 Oxfam International (2010)
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Source: TATSAT, 2014
In addition women usually head farms with small area of land where number of shareholders do not exceed 10 people. This automatically results in smaller yields. In 2005, the average land area in female-headed dhekan farms makes 10 hectares while in male-headed farms it is 38 hectares.26
There is number of mutually interlinked factors contributing to gender inequality in land access and ownership:
Existing customary norms and family relations Traditionally in Tajikistan, land titles are registered in the name of men, although it is women who predominantly work on land. In case of divorce for example woman is often left with no official entitlement for land or other property. Women may not only be stripped of land rights but may even miss ‘propiska’ (residence registration at the place of their husbands). Although the local social fabric is generally supportive of vulnerable families, many female-headed households are in essence socially excluded (for such very practical reasons as lack of time and other resources enabling them to take part in community life). Only 40.6% of women make decisions on crop cultivation themselves. While 65% of women take care of livestock, in 68% of cases men make decisions on selling the livestock and income distribution. Women also do not see themselves as suitable for managing dekhan farms. 27
Large number of female-headed households due to male labor migration and the past civil war; Female-headed households have less access to land, irrigation and livestock. As oppose to male headed farms they experience more difficulties in regard to receiving loans, equipment, extension services, and support from different relevant structures. They become less food secure and have lower income.
Limited access to information, knowledge and equipment Due to a great disparity between education level of men and women in rural areas women are less likely to be informed about land restructuring and their rights, as well as about more effective and resource efficient agricultural practices.
26 Kuvatova, A. (2014); apparently there is a problem to obtain more actual data 27 USAID (2013)
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Difficult access to finance (loans and credits) According to the results of the recent USAID gender assessment, 4.5% of the surveyed women obtain credit from micro-finance institutions or other sources. Women for instance usually have nothing to put as collateral, because often the owner of the house where she lives with her children is father in law, husband or eldest son.
All the factors explained above directly or indirectly support the fact that rural women themselves (just as men) contribute to land degradation by not being able to apply environmentally sustainable agricultural practices. Low yields, low quality and not sufficient variety of agricultural products than cause food security and health problems.
As already mentioned 11.2% of women of fertile age in Tajikistan suffer from protein-energy malnutrition (considered as unfavorable for public health by WHO), and from endemic goiter (per 10,000 of population it was 963.7 women and 526.6 men in 2013, with the similar ratio in the previous years). This is also due to not sufficient uptake of food that provides enough iodine, proteins and energy (fresh vegetables and fruits, fish, meat and dairy products). According to the ADB “Country Gender Assessment” (2006) ‘Pesticides and other toxic substances, which are transmitted to the fetus during pregnancy pass readily into breast milk. Women exposed to toxic substances face increased risk of miscarriage and of babies with defects or failing to thrive. The offspring face a long list of resulting health problems.’
According to the official statistics the situation seems to be improving and shared participation of women entrepreneurs has contributed to the increased volume of cereals, potatoes, vegetables, melons, fruit and grapes’ production. The volume of crop production, except raw cotton and wheat in 2012 compared to 2008 increased in average from 15.2 to 32.6 percent.28 The facts and numbers above show however that gender equality needs to be better reflected in agriculture and the related planning, budgeting and financing mechanisms.
IV.2 Gender aspects of access to water and water management MDGs for Tajikistan have set the target of providing 74% of people in rural areas with access to safe drinking water and 50% with safe sanitation by 2015. In 2013 that number reached only 43.4% for access to potable water and about 5% for access to safe sanitation facilities. Only 40% of the existing drinking water systems were fully functional and 63% of the supplied water did not meet WHO standards. There are also significant disparities in the quality of water available to urban and rural communities both for household use and for drinking.
Main causes of water pollution in Tajikistan are human and livestock waste, and industrial and agricultural effluents (more than 90% of surface water pollution is caused by discharge of drainage water from irrigated lands). The situation is exacerbated by a large share of non-functioning decentralized rural drinking water systems due to the lack of proper operation and maintenance arrangements (50-60 percent on average of potable water is lost in the form of leaks).29 Situation may be worsened by the increasing consumption due to population growth and growing national economic development. In addition, severe droughts the country faced in 2008 illustrate the water supply vulnerability to climate change.
Access to clean water is essential for every person. Spending most of the time by taking care of households (cooking, cleaning) and working in agriculture, rural women and girls are significantly affected by lack of clean water. In rural areas fetching of water have impact on women’s and children’s time and energy distribution, as well as their health conditions (due to carrying heavy loads). For instance in Muminabad
28 Abdulloev, M. (2013) 29 Krylova,L. at all, (2013)
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Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives and Rudaki districts30, women and children under 14 spend on average 4-6 hours daily for water carrying (in some cases up to 8 hours). This besides the effects mentioned above has negative impact on children’s school attendance. The Table 4 below shows the result of the survey conducted in the six villages of the Hissor district located in the Districts of the Republican Subordination of Tajikistan. Usually the only acceptable reason for a man to carry water is the illness of a female member of the household.31
Table 4: Persons who fetch the water in the household
Source: Stock, A. et al., Gender Livelihood and Socio Economic Study – Tajikistan, 2013, Women in Europe for a Common Future
Consumption of poor quality water and improper sanitation play a major role in the relatively high occurrence and outbreaks of mainly intestinal and diarrheal infectious diseases32. Poor water management also contributes to malaria. Among main causes of morbidity and mortality in children under-5 in Tajikistan remain diarrhea (linked also with water and sanitation quality), respiratory diseases and malnutrition. Inadequate nutrition and poor access to water in a tandem seriously undermine health conditions and level of resistance to diseases (e.g. indirectly contribute to anemia and maternal and infant mortality). Inadequate water supply and sanitation at local health facilities effect quality of health services for population in general and particularly for women in relation to maternal care and delivery. Lack of decent sanitation facilities in schools influences school attendance by girls in puberty age. From the economic point of view, improper sanitation and provision of clean water increases households’ health expenses, decreases labor activity and hinders the process of poverty reduction.
Box 3: Gender – water issues in the 3 visited districts Problems Shortage of water for drinking and irrigation is one of the main problems; Climate change shows to have an impact on water availability affecting mainly irrigated agriculture. In Ghonchi district one of the water reservoirs, “Dahanasoi”, used for irrigation, is filled by only 50% of its volume, what is far from meeting the needs of local people. It is observed that the harvest has significantly decreased in the past years. In the Jabbor Rasulov district the drainage system built in the Soviet times is getting old and broken. The water is given to population on an hourly basis. The water which goes through the obsolete drainage system and broken pipes mixes with mud and as such gets into the households.
Gender aspects In Ghonchi district women have to bring water from ponds for drinking, cleaning, laundry and other household activities. According to women-interviewees, the districts’ water issues affect more women than men because again women are responsible for cleaning the house, preparing food, laundry, and men are either working outside
30 Located in the Districts of Republican Subordination 31 Krylova,L. at all, (2013) 32 The State Statistics does not include data on such diseases.
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the households or migrated to the other countries Water affects the harvest of women involved in agriculture. Lands suitable for agriculture is not used due to lack of water. High underground water affects sanitation facilities and there is an increase in hepatitis and other diseases due to improper sanitation and no access to clean drinking water
Despite the lack of the actual and comprehensive set of the respective data it can be said that women in Tajikistan seem to be underrepresented in the water management structures (such as Water Users Associations - WUAs), irrigation and household water conservation initiatives, water management related training and other capacity and awareness rising activities. Several country studies identify low participation of water users in general and women in particular as one of the challenges to successful operation of WUAs.33 This inactivity is basically caused by all already highlighted socio-economic factors and gender stereotypes that affect position of women in society. The situation is improving but for instance in some rural areas, it is still a ‘taboo’ for women to be attending a public meetings.
IV.3 Gender aspects of access to energy As mentioned above, despite the fact that Tajikistan has abundant resources of hydropower that supplies 90 of country’s energy, for the large proportion of rural population in winter electricity is available only for up to 3 hours a day only. Meanwhile, 70% of population living in rural areas uses only 9% (!) out of total energy use. The main causes of such a low access to energy are: undeveloped and inadequate electrical energy infrastructure notwithstanding especially the harsh winter conditions; ineffective use of energy by all user groups, including households; undeveloped renewable energy sector34; and climate change induced extreme weather conditions (extremely low winter temperatures and droughts affecting water availability for electricity generation).
Just as it is with poor access to water, women and girls in rural households, and especially the female- headed ones (less income and more household work) are significantly affected by low access to energy. Lack of energy has severe negative impact on household conditions and activities (heating, cooking, cleaning), agricultural production (utilizing electric irrigation pumps), and all other types of employment and entrepreneurship women are involved in. The share of electricity for the heating of rural households is only 2-16 percent, firewood accounts for 35-85 percent. Other sources of energy come from dung cakes, coal, liquid and gaseous fuel.
Households’ expenditures for fuel in the winter (mainly for heating) make up to 50 percent of their income presenting a large burden especially for poor rural families. Allowances related to energy resources cover less than two per cent of the population. There is no information whether female headed households form a special target group and / or what proportion of that 2 percent is allocated to them.
There is also a correlation between energy and food security. To a great degree, the problem of malnutrition is linked with a shortage of adequate energy supplies for the agricultural sector which employs
33 For instance the paper “Assessing the Gender Performance of the Water Users Associations of Central Asia: Case study from IWRM Fergana Project” shows that while women form a considerable share of the WUAs’ members they are significantly underrepresented in the WUAs’ Councils and Committees. 34 At present, Tajikistan uses less than 4% of the available potential of hydropower resources and less than 1% of other renewable sources of energy (small rivers, solar, geothermal water, wind and bio energy), which would of benefit mainly to population living in remote areas far from centralized power supply systems
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Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives a considerable segment of the country`s female population. In addition, rural population, especially women and children, faces the indoor air pollution by extensive use of wood, pressed manure and anthracite (if available) in lower-efficiency stoves for cooking and heating. Moreover, country’s seventy to eighty percent of the tree belt was lost during the last 20 years because of high energy demand.35
Box 4: Gender – energy issues in the 3 visited districts Problems In both Ghonchi and Jabbor Rasulov districts reference was made to people experiencing electricity shortage. In winter, it is available for 6 hours per day: 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the evening. People have to buy coal for warming up their houses what represents quite a share of their income. Isfara district had cases of not properly using of coal consequent death due to intoxication according to the Association of Women and Society (ASW) According to the NGO “Maksad” in the Ghonchi district, tree leaves that people usually burn could be better used as fertilizers
Gender aspect Just as in case for access to water women who stay at home taking care of warming up the place, cooking food, and taking care of children are significantly affected by lack of electricity. NGO ASDP Nau (based in Isfara district), working in 10 districts of the Sughd Region, emphasized that they pay a strong attention to gender issues when implementing projects in renewable energy, sanitation, and disaster prevention areas. About 60% of people they are working with in the districts are women.
IV.4 Gender aspects of natural disaster risk and management With more than half of the country’s territory covered by high mountains above 3,000 meters, Tajikistan is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, landslides, floods, avalanches and extreme climate conditions. In Tajikistan, usually 20–30% of mountainous slopes are landslide-prone sites. To date, more than 50,000 landslide sites are registered of which 1,200 threaten human settlements, roads, irrigation and other facilities. In addition to purely natural factors, including impacts of climate change, human activities considerably increase sites’ susceptibility to natural disasters by, for instance, deforestation (cutting trees as the energy source or inquiring new agricultural land). People’s vulnerability to natural disasters’ impacts is further increased by the unwise local and special planning (settlements and industrial infrastructure located in disaster-prone areas).
Natural disasters have impact on life, health and well-being of the population, as well as on economic development at national and household level. From 1997 to 2007, Tajikistan experienced over 200 landslides, mud flows, earthquakes and other hazard events resulting in over 866 deaths. It is estimated that damages caused by natural disasters amount to about 4.8% of GDP.36 Agriculture, supporting livelihood of most of the rural population, including large proportion of rural women, is highly sensitive to climate change impacts.
Recent study on assessing gender aspects of humanitarian situation37 in Tajikistan reveals that female heads of household with no husband and the elderly are the most vulnerable during flood, because they would usually remain in their homes rescuing their belongings and children on their own, or sometimes with the help of neighbours. Women heads of households were in the most vulnerable situation since all the actions associated with the salvation of their family members and a property are on their shoulders. The same research also shows that men and women are also involved in different public rescue and
35 UNDP, NHDR 2014 36 GoT and UNDP (2012), National Human Development Report 2012. Tajikistan: Poverty in the Context of Climate Change 37 Zerkalo research Gender assessment of humanitarian situations, 2014
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Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives recovery work immediately after the flood. While men are typically searching for people and reconstructing destroyed buildings, women are more active in delivery of food, placing people in camps, providing medical help, and taking care of elderly and children. Paradoxically, when it comes to immediate aid and long-term recovery, women, especially heads of female households are most likely to be overlooked due to their limited access to information.
Box 5: Gender – natural disasters issues in the 3 visited districts
Problems Extreme weather conditions and natural disasters such as strong winds and mudflows causing threat to human lives, property and environment (e.g. damaging trees)
Gender aspect According to the gender focused NGO “Nakhli Umed” from Isfara, women who are responsible for household activities are more sensitive to impacts of natural disasters. According to the Youth Ecological Centers in Kabodiyon, Shartuz and Nosiri Khisrav districts of Khatlon region, natural disasters place pressure on land resources and agricultural production what, as already explained, affects every day life, income as well as food security and health especially of rural women and children.
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V. ENABLING ENVIRONMENT FOR ‘GENDER ENVIRONMENT’ MAINSTREAMING
Gender mainstreaming as a concept in Tajikistan is present but not sufficiently developed. The general national framework policies pay considerable attention to gender. For instance the current national long and mid-term development strategy treat gender as the ‘social’ sectors and devote full sub-chapter for describing the specific problems and measures to address them. However, they fail to suggest effective ways of mainstreaming gender throughout the whole spectrum of sectors and related indicators. Neither did gender mainstreaming become a practice in sub-national development planning (e.g. judging from the analysis of drafts DDP for Muminabad where SDC-funded drinking water projects are concentrated). Experience with strengthening the role of women emerges in the non-governmental sector, although often these are programs specifically targeting women rarely looking at changes in gender relationships. Unfortunately, little of the knowledge from the gender focused projects enters the local governance process due to lack of exchange and dialogue between NGOs and local government structures. At the national level there is also a deficit of research and analytical work related to translating gender equality principles into ongoing reforms by sectors. Gender statistics has considerably improved over the last 2-3 years, however only very small numbers of gender-focused or gender-disaggregated indicators occur in monitoring gender-related gaps and changes relevant for particular economic and social sectors. Commonly used indicators usually only reflect on women’s access to education and health, and women’s representation in governing structures.
V.1 Political and legal framework for gender – environment mainstreaming The Constitution of the Republic of Tajikistan (RoT), the Article 17, guarantees universal equal rights for men and women, however, in the context of existing inequalities special measures are required to translate these rights into reality in various sectors, including access to land, water and sanitation, and energy.
The Government of Tajikistan (GoT) has committed itself to ensure that women’s needs are explicitly addressed in policy-making and that women are represented in leadership positions. In 2001, the GoT introduced the state program “Basic directions of state policy to ensure equal rights and opportunities for men and women in the RoT for 2001–2010”. This program, inter alia, acknowledged the need to overcome social stereotypes in the Tajik society. The GoT furthermore incorporated separate gender equality sections into the Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) 2007-2009 and 2010-2012, and the National Development Strategy (NDS) to 2015. This was the first time that gender was integrated into medium and long term socio-economic planning. Additionally, in 2010, the National Strategy on Enhancing the Role of Women in Tajikistan for the period of 2011 - 2020 and its Work Plan were adopted.38
Environment / climate change responsiveness of the gender specific international commitments, national strategies, policies and laws
The government of Tajikistan has ratified several international agreements that are specifically gender focused or involve advancement of women and the protection of women rights as part of their agenda.39 One of the more comprehensive and relevant ones, providing framework for others, more specific agreements are the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, RoT ratified in 1993), including its Optional Protocol and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BDPfA, adopted in 1995). Both agreements address women’s access and role in natural resource management, especially in terms of land and water. Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BDPfA, 1995) includes (chapter) ‘Women and Environment’ among its 12 ‘critical areas of concerns’.
38 Please refer to Mamadazimov and Kuvatova (2011) for a more comprehensive overview and description of the legal and policy framework 39 Full list of all such international agreements Tajikistan has acceded to is available in the Tajikistan report to CEDAW, at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/reports.htm#t
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As shown in the Chart below taken from The Environment Gender Index 2013 Pilot report Tajikistan is addressing sustainable development issues relatively well in its national reports to the CEDAW Committee.
Figure 4: Inclusion of sustainable development topics in CEDAW reports
Gender-environment related elements of the latest country report to the BDPfA, which basically encompass the respective parts of the country CEDAW reporting, are presented in the Table 5 below.
Table 5: RoT gender – environment nexus reporting to the BDPfA BDPfA strategic objectives under the “Women and Environment” critical area of concern 1. Involve women actively in environmental decision-making at all levels; 2. Integrate gender concerns and perspectives in policies and programmes for sustainable development. 3. Strengthen or establish mechanisms at the national, regional, and international levels to assess the impact of development and environmental policies on women. Country report on current situation Low awareness of public and professionals on the gender perspectives of the environmental protection; Low level of awareness and knowledge of women's rights; Consideration of gender issues, if any, are often limited to ensuring gender balance in the staff of the organization or individual project, which is not sufficient; Unequal access to land and clean water and sanitation affecting women, e.g. water related diseases; Not sufficient representation of women in management of WUAs and other water management organs (only 1% of female managers); Low women’s decision-making power in agriculture; Women particularly sensitive to natural disasters’ impacts;
Proposed actions Introduce management methods and technical solutions in the field of environmental protection that consider different roles of men and women, rich and poor, etc.; Ensure women participation in decision-making over land and water management; Increase both the overall level of gender awareness and expertise for the proper gender analysis, the integration of gender perspectives in decision-making at all levels, in research and in implementation of individual projects in the environmental field; Ensure equal access for men and women and to sanitation; Build capacity of rural women in legal matters and in matters of conduct agricultural production, interaction with various services, etc.; Introduce gender-sensitive emergency situation and disaster prevention and management measures. In addition the report highlights that the President of the RoT, by the United Nations, declared the International Year of Freshwater (2003). Source: Committee for Women and Family Affairs under the Government of RT (2010)
The ‘Second Shadow Report on the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women by the Public Organizations of Tajikistan’ (2013) recommends several additional measures to expand rural women’s access to land, such as amending the related legislation, introducing indicators to measure success in gender mainstreaming to agriculture, and mandatory inclusion
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Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives of women in the regional commissions on farm restructuring and land distribution, the working groups on programming, including regional strategies and action plans, etc.
Tajikistan has also adopted a considerable number of gender equality supporting national laws, decrees, programmes and strategies. Review of the ten legal and regulatory documents (see the full list in the Annex 3) revealed that only two of them refer to the environment, natural resources or climate change. The ‘National Strategy on Enhancing Role of Women in Tajikistan for the period of 2011/20years’ refers to the climate change. In particular, it includes among its measures awareness raising and training on climate change for women, jointly implemented by the Committee for Women and Family Affairs, the Committee of the Emergency Situation & Civil Defense and local regional bodies. On 8 August 2001, the Resolution of the Government of the RoT №391 adopted the state programme “Main directions of state policy to ensure equal rights and opportunities for men and women in RT for the period 2001/10 years”. It was amended in 2004, bringing in the paragraph on “Access of Rural Women to Land”.40
In the period from 2001 up to 2008, the legislation on family, land, labor and other legislation was analyzed from gender perspective with the support of UNIFEM, UNICEF, OSCE and other international organizations.41
Gender responsiveness of the national and sub-national strategic development planning documents
Four key documents setting the country long and mid-term development priorities, measures and targets were reviewed in terms of their consideration of the gender-environment mainstreaming nexus: National Development Strategy to 2015 (NDS), Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) 2007-2009 and 2010-2012 and the Living Standards Improvement Strategy 2013-2015 (LSIS).
Gender – environment mainstreaming depends on the extent to which gender as such is reflected in the development planning. All the reviewed documents devote a separate chapter to gender inequality. It proves that gender issue gains increased recognition in the country development agenda. Gender specific chapters focus on increasing number of women working in government and self-government bodies at national and sub-national levels, on expanding proportion of economically active women and increasing women’s access to financial resources. These goals, in case met, would naturally contribute to increasing women access to land and water and ensure food security. Positively, formulation of such goals indicates that women, besides being targeted as ‘vulnerable’ group of population are also considered as ‘agents for change’.
As for the mainstreaming in the other sectors, gender resonates especially in the areas of education, employment, social welfare and health care. But even for these sectors, measures are rather vaguely defined and not reflected in the ‘action matrixes’; there are hardly any gender-disaggregated data in the narratives, no gender-disaggregated indicators (except for education) and very few quantitative targets42. Budget for addressing gender is either not specified or is rather small.
40 JICA (2007) 41 Kuvatova, A. (2014) 42 For instance PRS 2007-2010 targets: • to boost the percentage of women employed in government bodies by 11% (in 2009) compared to 2005; • to expand the number of women as a proportion of the economically active population from 19% (in 2005) to 25% (in 2009); • to increase women’s access to financial resources from 19% (in 2005) to 35%;
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Reference to gender aspect in the ECNR sectors is limited to women access to land and in some of the documents to dietary situation of women. The extent to which all reviewed documents address gender – environment nexus is shown in the Table 6.
Table 6: Gender – environment issues mainstreamed in selected development planning documents
Planning document Gender – environment considerations
NDS for the period Agriculture sector by 2015 (from 2007) - Situation analysis refers to “considerably less women owning and managing land and farms due to different type of reasons (lower capacity and less knowledge, less time due to time-consuming domestic work, family relations, etc.).” - Priority to improve conditions for entrepreneurship of land rights granting is however no gender sensitive.
Health sector - One of the priorities is to improve the dietary status of women; no related measures
Gender equality - One of the priority is to ensure equal access for men and women to land and other resources; no related measures in the action matrix and no related indicators
PRS 2007-2009 Food security and agriculture sector - Priority “ensure equal rights and opportunities for men and women with regard to access to land” via the measures: public information, educational and promotional measures to inform the population of their equal rights to resources; training in land- use practices; development of a network of microcredit institutions. - There will be continued monitoring of the observance of equal rights to land and related guarantees. - Action matrix indicators: number of peasant farms broken down by gender of the head of the farm; average size of owner-operated farms, broken down by gender of the head of the farm; production output of peasant (owner operated) farms as a whole and by administrative territories (thous. somoni) with a breakdown by the gender of the farm manager - Output level indicator: number of dekhan farms by gender of head of farm
Health sector - Measure in the action matrix: Provide for universal iodization of salt; related target: reduction in the incidence of goiter among children to 50.5% and among women to 40.8% - Measure in the action matrix: ensure access for women and children to fortified and enriched food products and products with added micronutrients; related indicator: % of women using fortified and enriched food products
Gender equality - Problem of unequal access, management and supervision over the resources
PRS 2010-2012 Agriculture - Tasks: establish effective mechanisms to expand women’s access to resources; related measures: carrying out information campaigns and setting of quotas for young women and men from remote regions. - Task: provide guarantees and secure land use rights; guaranty proper nutrition; - Task: development of a single mechanism of land use rights registration; no gender sensitive
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Unlike in PRS 2007-2009, there are no related indicators and targets.
LSIS 2013-2015 Food security Action matrix measure: implement guarantees and rights for land use; no gender sensitive
Gender equality - One of the priorities: support development of rural women and labour migrant families; Expected results: rural women’s access to land is expanded and their entrepreneurship activities are developed; women’s competitiveness is strengthened in the labour market, including that of business women and managers of dekhan farms; - Action matrix target: existence of foundations for women’s access to financial services, particularly vulnerable groups and women’s exclusion is identified, and the number of women’s access to loans generally reached 35% by 2015, through measure such as “allocate presidential grants for entrepreneurship development among disabled women and dekhan farms’ leaders - The above is not reflected in the main indicators’ table, which also does not include any gender disaggregated indicators.
In summary, gender – environment nexus has been best reflected in the PRS 2009-2007. However, no document addressed gender aspect of access to other resources such as water and energy or gender aspect of natural disasters’ impact and responsiveness.43
Gender responsiveness of the ECNR sector international commitments, policy and legal documents
Rio Conventions In its work on setting the Environment and Gender Index (EGI) for 72 countries (see the Chapter II), the IUCN GGO has also looked whether and how those countries address gender in their reporting to the 3 Rio Conventions: Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the Convention to Combat Desertification in Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa.
As shown in the chart below, subtracted from The Environment and Gender Index (EGI) 2013 Pilot report, Tajikistan slightly addresses gender only in the CBD reports.44
Figure 5: Inclusion of gender in CBD reports
43 Unlike gender, environmental sustainability is mainstreamed rather well throughout the LSIS. This may be attributed to the PEI, which has supported the process of environmental mainstreaming during the LSIS elaboration. 44 Go to the EGI 2013 Pilot report itself for those additional charts.
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In the 5th country report to CBD, from 2014 (not covered by the 2013 IUCN EGI survey), there is only one, rather insignificant, gender related reference. It mentions ‘women’s organizations’ who, among the other groups were invited to the national workshop on the assessment of the root causes of deforestation.45
ENR sectoral policies and laws Nine latest legal documents addressing the issues of land, forest, air, water, energy, and disaster management have been reviewed in terms of their gender responsiveness. (See the list of those documents in the Annex 3). Review shows that, it is only the Land Code (2012) that is gender sensitive. All the other documents are gender neutral, i.e. they do not discriminate women but at the same time they do not include any provisions strengthening the status and role of women in society.
The previous Land Code applied the principle of non-discrimination and equal rights but it lacked mechanisms to promote and to ensure realization of specifically women’s’ access to and management of land. According to the article 304 of the Civil Code, the property acquired by the spouses during the marriage is their joint property, unless the law or contract outlines otherwise. However, in land relations there was no link between land use right and marriage. If official land user received land use rights during marriage, his/her spouse had no rights to the land, despite the contribution to its improvement. At the disposal of land use rights, in particular at collateral, the spouse (in practice wife) didn’t have any influence, and if her spouse died, she was deprived of the actual rights.
The existing Land Code already addresses that issue, thanks to the former UNIFEM, now UN WOMEN Tajikistan who came with concrete suggestions and lead broad consultation with the government and other relevant stakeholders. These are a few gender equality promoting provisions in the current Land Code: - One of the main principles is “ensuring equality of participants in land relations, protect their legitimate rights and interests”; - The Article 7 on the competence of the local executive authorities of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, regions, cities and districts says that those entities shall, besides the other obligations, “ensure equal access for women and men to land”.
Recent ‘Women and Farming’ report46 mentions the gender is also reflected in the ‘Rules on Reorganization and Reforming of Agricultural Enterprises’, approved by Presidential Decree on June 30, 2006 #1775. The paragraph 23 states that female breadwinners and single mothers have the right to the property and land plot at reorganization of the agricultural enterprises. Local women say there a problem though with
45 The workshop was conducted with financial and technical assistance of the Global Forest Coalition (GFC). 46 Kuvatova A. (2014)
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Gender-Environment Mainstreaming in Tajikistan
Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives applying this provision in practice because, although people commonly use terms ‘breadwinners and single mothers’ they are not clearly defined in the Tajik legislation.
For the purpose of preparing this baseline analysis, four state ECNR sectoral strategies and two ECNR related strategies elaborated with the support of donors were reviewed for their gender responsiveness. Results are presented in the Table 7 and Table 8 below.
Table 7: Gender responsiveness of the ECNR related policy documents
ECNR Policy Document Gender – environment considerations
National Environmental The only reference is gender disaggregated data on life expectancy decline, related Action Plan (NEAP) 2006 to the environmental pollution, in the human health section Agriculture Reform Recognizes gender aspect of high male migration and low agriculture productivity: Programme of the RoT for “large number of women working in the sector while not having the same rights and 2012-2020 capacity for land ownerships and management”; Refers to the female-headed households as one of the groups to be the most affected by climate change impacts;
Highlights that “the success of the agriculture reform will depend to a large extent on how the potential of women is realized and their rights are exercised in all the proposed actions as part of the reform”;
Aims for: treating gender as a cross-cutting issue; promoting, equal benefits and rights both for men and women, through “…improving the institutional basis for gender policy… and creating of effective mechanisms to promote equal access to resources”;
Suggests measures: support women with rights to the long-term land tenure; eradicate gender inequality in the Dehkan Farm Reform and Reorganization (included in the Action Matrix);
Though not correctly formulated, it includes an indicator enhanced role of women in management of agriculture, and the target equal rights in dehkan farm management;
Water Sector Reform Includes “full-scale public participation, including participation of women, youth, Strategy of the RoT47 indigenous population and local communities in policy formulation and problem and conflict resolution and decision making at the lowest appropriate level” as one of the key principles of the IWRM
Concept for Development No reference to gender of Fuel and Energy Complex Development for the Years of 2003-2015 Programme for No reference to gender Development of Emergency and Civil Defense of the RoT for the period 2009-2014
Despite the fact that gender aspect is almost no present in the reviewed draft Water Sector Reform Strategy, ‘gender – water’ nexus is gaining higher attention at the national policy agenda. Need and ways of
47 Latest existing draft from March 2014
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Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives strengthening women role in water management have been discussed at several events of the Tajikistan Water Supply and Sanitation (TajWSS) Network48 (see more information in the following sections on the institutional base for gender mainstreaming). Question remains whether and how well will be the issue reflected in the final water strategy and in water management related programmes and plans applied at sub-national levels.
Table 8: Gender responsiveness of the donor driven ECNR related analysis
ENR Policy Gender – environment considerations Document
NATIONAL - Refers to ‘women’ as one of the most vulnerable groups that shall benefit from greening the REVIEW economy, in terms of jobs, economic growth and sustainable development; TOWARDS A - Recognizes the fact that shortage of hydroelectric power “affects health and living standards «GREEN» of the population, particularly its vulnerable groups such as old people, women and ECONOMY children”; IN TAJIKISTAN49 - Stresses that for efficient use of natural resources in the country it’s important that women representatives of entrepreneurs and civil society play an important role in partnerships and mechanisms under water, energy, food security, forest and financing initiatives;
MDG 10+ Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empowerment of women Progress Report - Links lack in gender-sensitive sanitation facilities with the decline in girls’ school enrollment - Low access to land, water and energy presents risks for achieving the goal and contributes to labour and time costs of women’s domestic work what leaves little time for their training, skills development and self-education; - Women’s access to financial and natural resources is limited by lack of access to micro-credit services, inadequate awareness of their rights, and low knowledge of the rules to obtain land, property and other assets. - Increasing share of women working in agriculture is a concern, since this sector has one of the lowest earnings levels. Only 12.3% of farms are managed by women. - Recommends adopting programmes to ensure equal access for rural women to economic resources. Goal 4: Reduce child mortality - Over 15% of maternity hospitals are not provided with clean water, and 18% of them have no source of constant power supply and heating. - It refers to high incidence of helminth diseases, especially among children but DOES NOT explain that people are affected through the soil or water pollution caused by improper sanitation;50
48 National multi-stakeholder platform facilitated by OXFAM’s GB project “Tajikistan water supply and sanitation”, funded by Swiss Development Agency (SDC) and implemented in partnership with the Government of Tajikistan and UNDP. 49 Elaborated in preparation for the UN International Conference on Sustainable Development (RIO+20)
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Goal 5: Improve maternal health - Relates the state of medical institutions and the quality of obstetric care, and increased morbidity with the electricity cuts and a sharp rise in prices of energy; - Food crises inevitably worsens the nutritional situation of women Goal 7: Environmental sustainability Includes gender disaggregated data for the population (female and men-headed households) using improved drinking water sources and improved sanitation facilities (if pit latrines can be classified as improved) NHDR 2014: - Addresses gender gaps in agriculture and takes into account gender when referring to food Tajikistan: security; Highlights the prevalence of protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) among women of access to fertile age; resources - Stresses benefits of women’s access to natural resources for entire households because for human women target income more towards fulfilling social needs and they contribute to positive development environmental development; It talks about women unawareness about their rights to land use of natural resources and access to credits; - Stresses the role of women in water management and links women access to water with well-being of whole communities; Emphasizes a need to consider women access to water and sanitation in the conflict situations;
V.2 Institutional and procedural framework for gender – environment mainstreaming
State institutions with gender equality promotion mandate
Committee for Women and Family Affaires under the GoT (CWFA) is the key national institution that develops and supports implementation of the state gender policies aiming to improve women’s status in all spheres of public life. It was established by the GoT in 1991. It is the entity that is responsible for implementing and reporting on the implementation of the CEDAW convention. The CWFA is led by a board which is usually chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister. Ministerial representatives and key NGO representatives are permanent members on the Board.
CWFA has good representation also at the sub-national levels: District Department for Women and Family Affairs and gender focal points in Jamoats. However, this state structure seems to be disconnected from the grassroots. Discussions with women in communities indicate that there are few, if any, links between women’s activism at community level and the related district departments. Many women in communities are not even aware of the respective state structure thus they have never approached them. This is also due to the fact that most District Departments for Women and Family Affairs have only one or two staff members, lack financial resources and access to information (e.g. limited or no access to the Internet). They interface with different sectoral departments and structures at the district level but do not have a clear mandate for effecting their policies and activities for achieving gender equality.51 This presents one of the barriers for mainstreaming gender aspect to the other development areas, including those addressing use and management of natural resources and ecosystems.
CWFA does not have a special unit addressing the issues of sustainable development but according to the recent survey conducted by IUCN and UN Women, the current Head of its Gender Development and International Relations Unit is apparently the focal point for “environment, sustainable development, and/or climate change-related issues”. According to the response to the survey, CWFA conducts cross-
50 Soil-transmitted helminth infections are among the most common infections worldwide and affect the poorest and most deprived communities. They are transmitted by eggs present in human faeces which in turn contaminate soil in areas where sanitation is poor. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs366/en/ 51 JICA(2007)
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Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives ministerial work with the Committee for Environmental Protection under the GoT. As an example it refers to the meeting of such inter-ministerial Working Group (May 2015), which proposed to include gender aspects to the climate change programme.52 In addition CWFA is being increasingly involved in promoting women’s rights and positioning in the water management and land management. CWFA will be chairing the national working group on Gender and Water, establishment of which has been decided at the special event of the TajWSS53 Network: “Women in Water Sector in Tajikistan”, on May 13th, 2015. Both gender and environment issues are also observed by the Committee on the Issues of Family, Health Protection, Social Security and the Environment in the Lower Chamber of the Tajik Parliament.
In past, women related issues are overseen by the deputy Prime Minister, who served as a Chairperson of the currently not functional Coordinating Council on Prevention of Violence against Women, established in 2006, endorsed by the Prime Minister of the RoT. Ministries and agencies addressing health, labor and social security are represented in that council but none of the ECNR related state agencies.
ECNR related state institutions
At the time of the baseline study preparation there was no data available on the number of senior official posts at the ECNR ministries and agencies held by women, or on the existence of any gender addressing structures (units, focal points) at those ministries. CWFA is currently running the survey to collect exactly such information however the results were not yet available. PEI has been discouraged to run the same survey itself in order to avoid the confusion among the surveyed ministries and agencies. Therefore only secondary and rather limited and fragmented information is included in this section.
IUCN Environment and Gender Index 2013 Pilot study includes Tajikistan among the countries that have “no female minister of either the environment ministry or other environment-related ministry54” (see the Figure 6 below).
Figure 6: Women Ministers of Environment and Environment-related Ministries among 72 EGI Countries
52 IUCN and UN Women SURVEY: Gender Considerations in Ministries and Policies, Research for New Environment and Gender Index (EGI) Dataset, May 2015 53 Tajikistan Water Supply and Sanitation Network; see footnote 48 for more information 54 natural resources, agriculture, energy, climate change, water, forestry, food, land, fisheries, and livestock.
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Female minister of both the Denmark, Gambia, Greece, Netherlands, Romania, South Africa, Sweden, environment ministry and other Uganda, USA environment-related ministry Female minister of environment Benin, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Georgia, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Portugal, Switzerland, Tanzania Female minister of other Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Liberia, Norway environment-related ministry No female minister of either the Armenia, Australia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, China, Dem Rep Congo, environment ministry or other Congo, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Ghana, environment-related ministry Iceland, Indonesia, Italy, Jamaica, Jordan, Kyrgyz Republic, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Syrian Arab Rep., Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen Source: IUCN (2013)
In April- May 2008 the Agreement was signed between the Committee for Women and Family Affairs, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Water Resources, TAJSTAT, the Agency on Land, Geodesy and Cartography, AgroInvest Bank, the National Association of Dekhkan Farms, the Civil Servants’ Training Institute, the regional UNIFEM office and later by the NGOs Coalition “From de-Jure to de-Facto Equality”. The ministries and other bodies agreed to form the Gender Groups within their organization with a mandate to promote better gender responsiveness of their policies and activities.55 This could have been showcased as an excellent example of the government effort to support gender mainstreaming however, it seems that the agreement has never been put in practice. According to the recent56 CWFA response to the IUCN and UN Women questionnaire for the RGI database57, only the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade has the gender focal point. According to the representative of UN Women Tajikistan, the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Labor have gender groups but they do not seem to be ineffective in terms of influencing sector policies in favor of gender equality.
55 Coalition of POs "From de-jure Equality Towards de-facto Equality” (2013) 56 May 2015 57 The exact question used in the survey: “To the extent of your knowledge, which, if any, Ministries (Forest, Water, Energy, Agriculture, Environment, Fisheries and Other) have a formal gender policy, or include gender considerations within their national-level policies and/or programmes?”
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Recently established National Working Group on Gender and Water Development is an example of a multi- sectoral group, typically initiated and established by the international organizations as part of their project implementation. This particular working group, chaired by the CWFA, will be functioning within the multi- stakeholder Tajikistan Water Supply and Sanitation (TajWSS) network created by the ‘TajWSS Project’. The project is implemented by Oxfam in partnership with UNDP and funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).58 Working group aims to (i) review the current status of addressing gender gap in water sector in terms of water resources management, i.e. leadership role of women and their participation; and (ii) develop the Working Group Action Plan with strategic directions and measures. It considers an elaboration of the ‘gender and water’ strategy.
Another example was the Coordination Council under the GoT headed by the Deputy Prime-Minister to support implementation of the (former) UNIFEM “Land rights and economic security of women in Tajikistan” project. It served as the national level instrument to facilitate integration of gender into the land reform.59
Local civil society organizations
Women have increasingly found an alternative voice in the political life of Tajikistan through their activity in nongovernment organizations (NGOs). In 2000, women constituted 35 percent of the heads of all NGOs, compared with only 3 percent of Parliamentarians.60 (More actual information was not available and it was not possible to say how many of those NGOs focus on gender and/or environmental issues.)
There is a large number of NGOs and public associations working in the area of environment or gender.61 Identifying the extent to which they treat gender and environment as a cross-cutting issue would require a comprehensive stocktaking exercise. This was beyond the scope and objective of this baseline study. Table 9 presents examples of just a few NGOs that address gender – environment nexus.
Table 9: Examples of Tajik NGOs with ‘gender – environment’ nexus addressing activities Tajik NGOs / CSOs Gender – environment nexus focus / activities “Zan va Zamin” (Women and Land) These 5 NGOs focusing on gender issues were included in the working “Gender and Development” group on land reform and involved in the elaboration of “The Second “Zanhoi Dehot’ (Women of Villages) Shadow Report on the Realization of the CEDAW Convention by Public ‘Dilafruz” Organizations of Tajikistan” (2013) “Bonuvoni Khatlon’ (Women of Khatlon) Sociological Research Center Conducted research and elaborated the “Gender Assessment of “Zerkalo” Humanitarian Situations” in 2014, describing different responsiveness of women and men to the natural disasters, with the support from UN Women Youth Ecological Center Supported the international NGO ‘Women in Europe for a Common Future’ in conducting the research and elaboration of the “Gender Livelihood and Socio Economic Study” (2014), looking at the gender aspects of access to land, energy, water and sanitation in the selected villages of the Hissor district
58 http://www.tajwss.tj/new/index.php/en/tajikistan-news/281-special-event-of-the-tajwss-network-women-in-water-sector-in-tajikistan-may- 13th-2015 59 Mirzoeva, V. (2009), Gender Issues and Land Reform in Tajikistan, UNIFEM, Tajikistan 60 Falkingham J. (2000), A Profile of Poverty in Tajikistan, 61 Directory of Women’s Organizations in Tajikistan from 1999 lists 37 NGOs and associations in the country. Web site of the Youth Ecological Center lists 46 environmental NGOs and public organizations.
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International organizations based in Tajikistan
Just as in the case of NGOs and CSOs, due to a large number of country present international organizations (UN agencies, multi-lateral and bi-lateral donors and international NGOs) assessing the level of their gender-environment responsiveness would require a separate stocktaking exercise. Therefore, the level of gender – environment mainstreaming in the development assistance agenda is demonstrated by the examples of projects and activities of the selected UN agencies (see the Table 10 below).
Table 10: Gender – environment nexus reflection in the selected UN agencies’ structures and activities
Institution Gender – environment responsiveness
UN Women - Women’s role in management of natural resources and ecosystems is not specifically (Former UNIFEM), identified as one of the focus areas but it is believed the three of work areas – Central Asia ‘engendering the national disaster risk reduction policy and actions’, ‘increasing women’s multi-country economic empowerment’ and ‘making gender equality central to national development office represented planning and budgeting’ provide platform for addressing gender – environment issues. in Tajikistan - Success in promoting better reflection of women rights and role in the land reform, including the Land Code adopted in 2012, as already described above; - UN Women led the pre-conference event (8 June 2015) “Women Water Forum”62 as a part of the global High-level Water Conference organized in June in Dushanbe, in the occasion of the International Decade for Action “Water for Life”, 2005-2015. The forum discussed and marshalled women’s key role and empowerment in water management. The adopted “Outcome document” stresses a crucial need to link gender equality and sustainable water management in the Post-2015 Agenda. Food and G-E nexus addressed directly or indirectly in the initiatives: Agriculture - Gender and Land Rights database - contains country level information on social, economic, Organization political and cultural issues related to the gender inequalities embedded in those rights (FAO) (seemed to be dysfunctional at the time of this study preparation); One person - Women’s Dietary Diversity Score: Tajikistan embraces a new way to fight child country malnutrition63; representation - Capacity development of staff at The TAJSTAT to collect nutrition data of women in the Sughd region64 World Health - Country team includes experts on: disaster preparedness and response; nutrition, food Organization safety and food security; and environment and health, which in theory provides favorable (WHO) conditions for addressing G-E nexus; - Committee of Environmental Protection under the RoT is not included among the agencies’ national focal points / partners though; - Projects example: ‘Water safety plan: a field guide to improving drinking-water safety in small communities’ - emphasizes a need to involve women representatives of communities in water management and conservation; - Standardized country health profiles do not include causes of observed diseases, so there is no information on where environmental pollution and degradation could be the cause of certain health problems (one of the reasons could be lack of monitoring data) World Food - In almost all their activities, including those addressing malnutrition, reference to both Programme men and women / boys and girls is made; (WFP) - In their ‘Food for work’ activity: “Women and men receive a WFP food ration in return for working on building a community asset such as an irrigation canal or water supply facility.” - Their annual country food security monitoring65 does not apply gender-disaggregated data comprehensively. Only very few data refer specifically to the status or situation of women.
62 Publication “Women as agents of change in water: Reflections on experiences from the field” was launched at the side event chaired by UN Women and the ‘Women for Water Partnership’. It provides a guidance to national governments and the water community for implementing their commitments to include women as equal development partners and as ‘Agents of Change’. 63 http://www.fao.org/gender/gender-home/gender-projects/gender-projectsdet/en/c/284523/ 64 http://www.stat.tj/en/news/280/
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For instance the 2014 monitoring report refers to the prevalence of anemia among women of reproductive age; It also looks at the impact of natural shocks, e.g. reduced availability of agricultural water on food security World Bank ‘Country Partnership Strategy FY15-18’ includes Gender, Governance and Climate Change as cross-cutting areas; Examples of how it addresses G-E nexus are: - Private sector-led growth pillar aims to provide women with access to land rights and to finance leading to higher productivity especially in the low-paid agriculture sector; One of the related outcomes and indicators: ‘farmers’ access to land improved, measured by increase in new land-use certificates issued (disaggregated by gender)’; - Within its support to regional learning networks and climate change adaption practices, it will provide for girls and women greater access to information so they can build resilience and reduce migration as a coping strategy; One of the related outcomes is ‘the number of households supported to adopt sustainable, climate resilient, water and land management practices, of which 40 percent women’; - Gender pillar aims to provide women with more employment opportunities and crop production through improved irrigation and rural water supply infrastructure. - Examples of projects’ gender equality responsiveness: 1. ‘Agriculture Commercialization Project’: an estimated 12,500 people will benefit, including male and female heads of small-scale farms, from the support provided in the form of training and advisory services; 2. Study ‘Assessment of household energy deprivation in Tajikistan : policy options for socially responsible reform in the energy sector’ identifies gender differences in perception of energy deprivation and coping strategies that households apply. UNDP - As the ‘Environment and Sustainable Development (ESD)’ is one of the five thematic areas, the office has the ESD unit. Gender is treated as the cross-cutting issue. Gender agenda is being addressed by the office environmental focal point; though such structure was not set up to pursue G-E agenda (but rather to save financial and human resources) it seems to contribute to better recognition and reflection of G-E nexus in UNDP projects. - Information on UNDP Tajikistan ‘UNDP gender marker’ application was not available. 66 - In the ‘Country Programme Document for Tajikistan FY 2016-2020’, gender is integrated in all thematic priorities, including the one focusing on the ‘Disaster Risk Reduction, Resilience and Environmental Sustainability’; Examples of related indicators: number of people and households (including female-headed) with improved access to renewable energy in winter, as a result of UNDP interventions; number of new full time equivalent jobs created for men and women, through solutions for management of natural resources, ecosystem services, chemicals and waste; number of men and women benefitting from disaster response and recovery as a result of UNDP interventions; - Examples of projects’ gender equality responsiveness: 1. ‘Climate Risk Management Project’ conducted evaluation and proposed measures for gender mainstreaming in its three focus areas: policy work surrounding the new Forestry Code, activities related to the provision of eco-agriculture microloans and trainings. 2. Within its Crises Prevention and Recovery projects UNDP supported local governments and communities in the Shaartuz and Vanj districts to identify needed recovery interventions. 45 small-scale community- level recovery projects were completed, benefiting app. 212,000 people (51% women).
Certain level of gender – environment mainstreaming can be observed also in the recently formulated Tajikistan United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF)67. When formulating UNDAF, participating UN agencies (UN Country Team) are obliged to treat environmental sustainability and gender equality as the cross-cutting principles. In addition to just typically devoting one outcome to the
65 WFP (2015) 66 In 2009, UNDP launched the Gender Marker, which requires each project manager to rate projects against a four-point scale indicating its contribution toward the achievement of gender equality. Gender Marker is now in use in 133 country offices and the UN Secretary General is now calling on other agencies to follow UNDP’s example. 67 UNDAF is the programme document agreed between a government and the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) that describes the collective actions and strategies of the United Nations to the achievement of national development. For UN agencies included in the Tajikistan UNCT go to http://www.untj.org.
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Baseline Analysis for Policy Makers, Administration Officials, Consultants and NGO Representatives environment and natural resources management and one to the women, youth and other vulnerable groups, the new Tajikistan UNDAF 2016 – 2020 relatively well integrates gender as a cross-cutting issue in the other thematic areas. Besides identifying gender-disaggregated indicators for poverty rate, employment rate, education, etc., it also links gender with environment to a certain extent. For instance, the indicator ‘number of new jobs and livelihoods created through management of natural resources, ecosystems services, chemicals and waste’ is disaggregated by sex’. Unfortunately it is not the case for the indicators such as ‘number of casualties from natural and man-made disasters per year’ or ‘proportion of rural households that are food insecure households as measured by the Food Consumption Score’.
Again according to the study on setting the Environment Gender Index (EGI), in Tajikistan 50% of the projects supported by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF)68 is gender responsive (see the Figure 7 below). GEF supported projects in 54 developing countries, approved between January 2006 and September 2013, were assessed for their gender responsiveness. Relatively high % of gender-responsive projects in the evaluated countries is believed to appear thanks to the application of the “GEF Policies on Environmental and Social Safeguards and Gender Mainstreaming”, adopted by the GEF Secretarial in 2011.
Figure 7: Percent of Gender-Responsive GEF Projects by country
Source: IUCN (2013)
V.3 Data and knowledge base for gender mainstreaming
Major source of the national gender statistical data is the publicly accessible Gender Database developed and maintained by the State Committee of Statistics of Tajikistan (TAJSTAT). It contains more than 100 gender indicators divided into seven thematic areas: Status of women in the social and political life Acceleration of women employment and their role in labor market Women entrepreneurship development support Problem of increasing women's educational level Women and Healthcare Directions of prevention of violence against women Family strengthening factors
68 The GEF is the financial mechanism for implementation of the Rio conventions on biodiversity, climate change, and desertification. The GEF implementing agencies in Tajikistan are: ADB, EBRD, UNDP, UNEP, UNIDO and World Bank.
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Currently, for most of the indicators it contains the annual data from the year 2008 up to 2013 or 2014. Database and additional related documents in both Russian and English languages are available at http://www.stat.tj/en/Gender6/Genderbaz/.
Only the following of the respective set of indicators describe indirect relation of men and women to environment and natural resources: Listed quantity of workers in agriculture (men/women); indirectly linked to the availability and quality of agricultural land; Number of peasant farms including headed by men/women; as above The incidence of endemic goiter (men/women); as already mentioned, it occurs widely in population groups in geographic areas in which limited amounts of iodine are present in soil, water, and food, and grow during the winter months when people do not eat enough of iodine-containing fresh vegetables; Morbidity of active tuberculosis (men/women); weakened immune system also due to malnutrition (indirect link to the lower agricultural production and land degradation) and lack of medical care are among the risk factors of the disease
Gender statistics are being bi-annually collated and distributed in the form of publication “Women and Men in the Republic of Tajikistan"69. Its 2012 edition covers areas as demographics, health, education, employment, social protection, participation in decision-making, poverty and crime. Section on Dekhan Farms Management includes gender disaggregated indicators on the ownership of dekhan farms, on the amount of land managed by dekhan farms and on the production and yield of different agricultural products. Section on MDG7 has no gender-disaggregated indicators.
Availability of the gender-disaggregated data within the ECNR sectors is also rather limited. TAJSTAT does not seem to have a separate database devoted to environmental protection and natural resources (only to ‘the emissions by harmful substances’, while not specifying which substances). Its ‘real sector’ analysis provides data on agricultural production, allocation of agricultural land, and energy consumption but none of them refer to men and women or male and female headed households.
Difficulty to collect data on environmental impact on health and well-being of men and women and on their access to natural resources is also predetermined by the fact that the current environmental monitoring system does not provide sufficient and reliable data on background ambient air and water pollution, and there is no biodiversity and forest monitoring system.70 There is no single reliable source of information pertaining to the state of water supply and sewerage systems71, no public authority in Tajikistan regularly collects data on soil quality and land degradation72, and the system of national energy statistics is not adequate73.
“Agricultural Census Questionnaires for Households and Farms”74 present example of a good tool for collection of ‘gender-environment’ data. It requires to specify the sex of a farm / household manager and then each farm / household has to include data on the type of applied irrigation, used machinery and equipment, use of pesticides and organic and mineral fertilizers, type of land degradation and the area affected, area of water reservoirs, lakes and basins for fish breeding, amount of received loans, etc. If filled in and reported properly it can very well support the process of setting the baseline and providing concrete recommendations for the support of female farmers.
69 TAJSTAT, 2012, http://stat.tj/en/img/302f722abc59d6035cf09c07caf0f703_1354183539.pdf 70 UNECE (2012) 71 UNDP (2010) 72 Wolfgramm, B. et al (2011) 73 Bukarica V. et al (2011) 74 http://www.stat.tj/en/AgriCensusdoc/Agridoc2/
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Currently, the best source of data on the gender – environment nexus are surveys and projects supported by donor agencies and NGOs. For instance the semi-regular World Bank supported household based “Living Standards Measurement Surveys” collect information on source, consumption and costs of heating and drinking water for men and women headed households. It asks respondents which household member fetches the water and how much time it takes. Considering the technical and financial complexity of national level surveys and analysis, many projects that collect and present gender – environment related data and information are site (village, jamoat, district or oblast) specific.
Unfortunately, very few of the collected data are being applied in the country development planning. Review of the current NDS, PRS 2007-2009, PRS 2010-2012 and LSIS 2013-2015 has shown that “there are almost no gender-disaggregated data in the narratives, no gender-disaggregated indicators (except for education) and very few quantitative targets”. Exception, in positive terms, is the PRS 2007-2009 that includes couple of gender-disaggregated indicators related to land ownership and management, agricultural production, health and food security (see the Table 6 in the Chapter V.2).
Currently there are a few initiatives aiming to improve the state statistics system. To name a few: ADB funded ‘Program of Developing Gender Statistics in the RoT for 2014-2015’ for the TAJSTAT capacity development in producing, maintaining and applying gender statistics; FAO TAJSTAT staff capacity development for collecting nutrition data of women at the Sughd Region; and the UNDP – UNEP PEI support to TAJSTAT in elaborating the Agricultural Census (mentioned above), which would be sensitive to both gender and environmental sustainability.
V.4 Awareness and capacity development for gender mainstreaming
Awareness Consultations with male and female representatives of the local government, NGOs and women associations from the three selected districts show there is certain level of awareness of environmental and natural resources related problems and their impact on women and men. At the national level, actions such as the national dialogue on women land rights and their subsequent reflection in the current Land Code, or the recent establishment of the National Working Group on Gender and Water Developments indicate that government awareness and interest to address the gender – environment nexus is increasing. Further research is needed to assess the awareness of wider range of stakeholders.
Education
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Each Tajik university has a course related to environment and / or natural resources, and according to the NHDR 2014 special courses on gender issues have been introduced in the curriculum of higher educational establishments (see the Box 6 below). UNICEF has supported the Centre for Gender Pedagogies under the Academy of Education in conducting gender audit of nine new text books and associated teaching aid materials to ensure that the forthcoming 12-year education system will be adequately gender-sensitive.75 Many local NGOs, supported by the international organizations, run workshops and trainings to raise awareness and overcome negative gender stereotypes.
There is no information available on whether the existing, higher education ENR related courses are gender responsive or whether the gender-specific courses pay any attention to the ‘gender – environment’ links. TAJSTAT Gender Database76 includes an indicator “number of gender sensitive training programmes and courses” but currently no related data are available.
Box 6: Examples of gender courses at the higher education institutions in Tajikistan
Tajik State National University (TSNU) and The Russian – Tajik Slavonic University include in their curriculum courses on ‘gender and literature’ and ‘gender and journalism’. TSNU has devoted some of its research to gender equality.
Institute of Public Management under the President of the Republic of Tajikistan delivers course “Basics of Gender Rights in Tajikistan’ with the modules on international and national legislation, gender concept as such, role of women in society with taking account the Islamic traditions, and on women and politics. Supported by the Committee of Family Affairs and Women and development assistance agencies, it had conducted several training progremmes and seminars promoting gender equality in state institutions’ employment and on improving managerial skills of female employees of different state agencies. In 2012, the institute conducted 3-day course on Environmental Management with the participation of 3 women and 21 men.77
Media In general, the Tajik mass media are rather passive as it comes to gender equality and if devoting time to women, they tend to glorify women as mothers only, rarely referring to women politicians, leaders, and anyhow active players in the society. According to the consulted UN Women Tajikistan representative, mass media also produce a lot of stories on women as victims of domestic violence, female criminals, prostitutes, etc., what further reinforces the existing gender stereotypes in the society.
A few national and regional private radio channels and independent newspapers, usually supported by the international organizations, cover gender and environmental issues to certain extent. For instance, Radio Vatan, supported by UN Women Tajikistan, DFID, and Oxfam, ran a series of programs addressing issues such as women legal rights to land and their role in agriculture. Its program “Legal Clinic”, besides the other topics addresses different attitudes and approach of men and women to environmental protection. It has conducted several shows and concerts to raise people’s awareness on environmental problems, usually under the umbrella of the international organizations’ projects.
VI. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
75 UNICEF 2010 Annual Report for Tajikistan 76 http://www.stat.tj/en/Gender6/Genderbaz/ 77 Information from the meeting of the local gender consultant and the ‘institute’ representatives (see the Acknowledgements)
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VI.1 Key challenges for gender – environment mainstreaming Conditions for gender – environment / climate change mainstreaming are understandably given by the level of overall gender inequality understanding, recognitions and address in the country. In Tajikistan, there are two key factors that set the context for the current gender mainstreaming efforts: traditions and gender stereotypes applied to women’s role and status in the family and society; and the large number of female headed households related to the extensive male labour migration and the remaining effect of the civil war in the 90ties.
Despite the fact that a lot has been already done especially at the legal and policy level, to promote women and men’s equality in the areas of education, economic opportunities and to certain extent in the area of access to natural resources (land), effective gender – environment (and gender in general) mainstreaming faces the following interrelated challenges: - Low awareness of the gender – environment links and benefits of addressing them - Lack of political will and recognition of gender – environment links among policy and decision-makers at all levels - Lack of relevant information and data - Low level of knowledge of both women and men on the women rights to access and manage natural resources - Low level of motivation among women to take leadership in the natural resources and ecosystems management - Low capacity and skills of women and men for applying ‘green’ approaches and technologies for sustainable ecosystems and natural resources management - Low representation of women in senior management of public and private institutions responsible for ecosystems and natural resources management - Generally non-existence of an effective legal and institutional system for integrated, multidisciplinary and participative development planning, monitoring, reporting and budgeting that would facilitate treatment of gender, environmental sustainability as well as their linkages as the cross-cutting development issues; - Not satisfactory level of gender – environment responsiveness of the international organizations’ assistance strategies and programmes
VI.2 Recommended actions and indicators for more effective gender – environment mainstreaming
Recommended measures Reflecting upon the baseline study findings, following measures are suggested to be applied in order to improve the process of gender – environment mainstreaming in Tajikistan78:
Raising awareness and understanding of gender – environment nexus of development; meaning raising awareness on: (i) specificities of women (and men) interrelations with environment and climate change and
78 This is the ‘menu’ of measures to be potentially implemented by different national and international institutions, depending on their capacity and comparative advantage. Activities to be addressed by the PEI will be included in the PEI 2016-2017 project document.
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(ii) (unused) potential of women as agents of change in the economic and overall human development. Awareness may be raised through: - Conducting research providing for the evidence-based information on the links between gender and environment and on the economic and social benefits of better involvement of women in political and economic activities - Harness and apply women’s local knowledge, experience and needs to protect, sustain and manage the environment and its resources and to identify gender-specific impacts and protection measures for addressing environmental degradation and climate change related threats and disasters; - Develop and distribute advocacy, knowledge and communication products (brochures, articles, videos / movies, education curricula, etc.) and conduct awareness raising events (e.g. seminars, lectures, campaigns) in cooperation with mass media and relevant NGOs, CSOs and educational institutions - Increase awareness of the national and local level mass media and relevant NGOs, CSOs and educational institutions on gender – environment linkages and on the approaches for gender – environment mainstreaming
Improving the system of mainstreaming ‘gender – environment’ nexus into the development planning, budgeting and implementation: - Promote and facilitate better integration of gender – environment nexus into national and local development planning system (laws, regulations, planning guidelines, and planning process); - Support integration of gender aspect in the ECNR and other relevant (e.g. labor, trade, etc.) sectors’ development planning (legislation, reform strategies, policies, programmes and plans); good example is the reflection of a gender aspect in the existing country Land Code (supported by UN Women Tajikistan) or gender aspect integration in the existing Agriculture Reform Programme of the Republic of Tajikistan for 2012-2020 - Support reflection of women and men interrelations with natural resources and environment in formulation of gender specific laws, regulations, polices, plans and programmes - Identify a set of SMART gender – environment indicators and support their application in the country overall development and sectoral development planning, monitoring, evaluation and reporting (e.g. UNDP recent review of the new Agricultural Census); - Support introduction of gender responsive budgeting in ECNR sectors - Develop and promote application of gender-sensitive public and private financial schemes in ECNR sectors (e.g. taxes, subsidies, tariffs, grants, bank credits and loans, microloans) - Leverage financing for women’s organizations and entrepreneurs working to mitigate and/or adapt to climate change; - Integrate gender aspect into delivery of energy and environmental services such as clean water and mechanized power) - Promote and support creation of gender-responsive public and private institutional structures working in ECNR sectors and areas (e.g. gender units / focal points at relevant ministries, inter- ministerial bodies such as above mentioned National Working Group on Gender and Water Developments) - Improve inter-ministerial and overall multi-stakeholder coordination and cooperation for more effective and integrated development planning, monitoring budgeting and implementation, as a precondition for treating gender and environment as cross-cutting issues in the whole spectrum of development priorities - Improve integration of gender – environment nexus in the international development assistance planning, financing and implementation schemes
Improve capacity and provide opportunities for women to actively participate in the country sustainable socio-economic development - Increase women capacity for (i) better responsiveness to environmental and climate risks and problems (e.g. training on climate risk management, natural disasters early warning, etc.) and (ii)
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active involvement in economic and political life (e.g. training on leadership skills, natural resources management, green practices and technologies in the agriculture, water, energy and other ENR sectors, programme and project management, development planning, monitoring and budgeting; financial services and products providers’ rules and procedures, etc.) - Promote women representation and active involvement in the processes and institutions responsible for addressing climate change, protection and management of ecosystems and natural resources (e.g. through advocacy for more female ECNR sectoral ministers and / or senior managers or through involving women in the structures for land, water, and other resources management – see the example of the IWRM Ferghana Valley project promoting women representation in the WUAs’ management, among the other measures by applying quota system) - Promote women representation in development planning processes (e.g. in the long and mid-term development strategies and sectoral strategies), again potentially by applying quota systems; Promote female representation in ECNR related, government or donor supported projects’ management and implementation (e.g. as national project managers, national technical experts, national trainers)
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Suggested gender – environment indicators This section contains the list of suggested gender – environment indicators that can be applied in national, sub-national and sectoral development planning as well as in the donor assistance programming. Table below contains a ‘menu’ of indicators, application of which will depend of the planning document focus (overall development or sectoral), its status (strategy, policy, action plan, programme / project, level of details, implementation time frame (short, mid, or long-term), and data availability. In addition a few indicators for international or national development assistance agencies’ internal monitoring of gender – environment mainstreaming are listed below the Table 11.
Table 11 does not include general gender indicators (for instance related to domestic violence) and general environmental / climate change indicators (e.g. GHG emissions). It contains only indicators enabling to monitor progress and evaluate the effectiveness of addressing gender – environment issues during implementation of a specific policy, programme or plan.
Many indicators specified in terms of ‘number’ could be also measured as ‘proportion’.
Table 11: Gender – environment indicators
Sector Indicators
Development - Procedures / guidelines for sustainable, inclusive, gender responsive development planning and planning adopted by government budgeting system - Number / proportion of new national, sub-national and ECNR sector development plans addressing environment, climate change and gender as cross-cutting issues - Number / proportion of new ECNR related legal and regulatory documents addressing environment, climate change and gender as cross-cutting issues - Number of ECNR related agencies / ministries having special unit / focal point for addressing gender equality - Number of ECNR related ministries / agencies headed by women and / or having women in senior management positions - Number of ECNR related sub-national government departments headed by women - Existence of gender-sensitive ECNR sectors’ statistics and / or monitoring and evaluation frameworks (databases) - Budget allocated to environmental sustainability and climate change related measures and measures supporting gender equality in government planning and programming - Budget allocated to gender equality supporting measures in ECNR sectoral planning and programming – gender responsive budgeting - Proportion of newly approved (large-scale) investment projects that takes into account environment, climate and social, including gender considerations; - Number of women / female-headed households benefiting from fiscal mechanisms supporting environmentally sustainable and climate resilient entrepreneurship (e.g. subsidies, tax exemptions, loans or (micro)credits for green technology / approach applying enterprises) - Changes in income from improved resource management practices (e.g. fishing, - aquaculture, forest-related products), disaggregated by male-headed and female- headed households or men and women clients/beneficiaries - Number of new jobs and livelihoods created through management of natural resources, ecosystems services, chemicals and waste, disaggregated by sex. Environment and - Number of new gender-sensitive environmental and climate change related strategies, climate change policies, programmes and plans - Number / proportion of new gender-sensitive environmental and climate change related laws and regulations - In environment / climate change related programmes and plans, budget allocated to gender equality supporting measures
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Sector Indicators
- Level of women / women associations’ and other related CSOs’ involvement in environmental impact assessment and public environmental monitoring - Number / proportion of women in state delegations to the environment and climate change related conventions - Number of women / female headed households suffering losses (lives, economic) from extreme weather conditions and natural disasters - Number of women / female headed households with increased capacity to manage shocks and risks related to extreme weather conditions and natural disasters - Number of women actively involved in protected areas management - Number of women trained in application of green approaches and technologies in ECNR related activities - Women / men satisfaction with (national, local) environmental policy / protection Agriculture - Number of female headed dekhan farms / households with access to (irrigated) agricultural land / with land certificates - Number of female headed dekhan farms / households applying sustainable land and water management practices - Number of female headed dekhan farms / households practicing organic farming, gardening and other agricultural activities - Proportion of female headed (rural) households that are food insecure as measured by the Food Consumption Score For additional possible indicators see the Agricultural Census questionnaires for households and farms at http://www.stat.tj/en/AgriCensusdoc/Agridoc2/. They distinguish female / male headed farm / household so if the collected data will be properly analysed and interpreted they will provide gender disaggregated data on the issues such as type of agricultural land used, agricultural output, labor (employed people), use of mineral and organic fertilizers, land degradation, environmental protection and forestry land, area of water reservoirs, lakes for fishery, received loans, used pastures, and other. Energy - Number of (rural) female headed households with the adequate79 access to energy - Number of female headed households using the solid fuels such as wood, dung, crop waste, coal and charcoal - Number of female entrepreneurs with the adequate access to energy Water and - Number of female headed households with easy access to clean water sanitation - Number of female headed households with an access to adequate sanitation - Number of (rural) schools with the adequate sanitation facilities - Number of women actively involved in Water User Associations and other water management structures Health - Proportion of women suffering from endemic goiter / protein-energy malnutrition - Proportion of women suffering from diseases related to outdoor and indoor air pollution / poor water and sanitation conditions / land contamination / (hazardous or toxic) waste exposure - Number of health – environment information and / or prevention programmes and campaigns Education and - Number of (university) female students of the subjects related to sustainable natural science resources management, ecosystem protection and management, climate change - Number of female researchers in areas of sustainable natural resources management, ecosystem protection and management, climate change
79 Knowing the fact that in some rural areas households get max 6 hours access to energy a day it shall be defined what to consider as an ‘adequate’ access before applying this indicator.
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Gender – environment indicators for international and national development assistance organizations - Proportion of projects addressing gender aspect of environmental protection, climate change and natural resource and ecosystem management - Proportion of indicators enabling to measure progress in addressing gender-environment nexus - Existing institutional structure / capacity to address gender-environment nexus - Programme / project budget allocated to address gender-environment nexus - Number of female beneficiaries of the programme / project implementation (in terms of capacity development, income generation, employment, public participation, etc.) - Proportion of women actively involved in the management of ECNR related projects (e.g. national project managers, national technical experts, national trainers, etc.)
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REFERENCES80
Abdulloev M. (2013), Gender Aspects of Agriculture, Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of the RoT, Dushanbe
Abdullaev, I., Yakubov, M. Assessing the Gender Performance of the Water Users Associations of Central Asia: Case study from IWRM Fergana Project
Agency on Statistics under the President of the RoT (2012), Women and Men Statistics; http://stat.tj/en/
Ahmad, N. et al. (2010), 2010 Environmental Strategy: Gender and Environment, Issue Paper, The World Bank Group
Bertelsmann Stiftung (2014), BTI 2014 — Tajikistan Country Report, Bertelsmann Stiftung, Gütersloh
Bukarica V. et al (2011), Energy Efficiency Master Plan for Tajikistan, UNDP
Coalition of POs "From de-jure Equality Towards de-facto Equality” (2013), The Second Shadow Report on the Realization of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women by Public Organizations of Tajikistan, Dushanbe
National Committee for Women and Family Affairs under the Government of RT (2010), Review of the Republic of Tajikistan to implement Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in the context of the twentieth anniversary of the quadruple World Conference on Women and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 2015; Dushanbe
Falkingham, J. (2000), A Profile of Poverty in Tajikistan, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion of London School of Economics, London
IUCN (2013), The Environment and Gender Index (EGI) 2013 Pilot, Washington, D.C., IUCN
IUCN, UN Women Survey: Gender Considerations in Ministries and Policies, Research for New Environment and Gender Index (EGI) Dataset, May 2015
JICA (2008), Tajikistan Country Gender Profile, JICA Tajikistan Office, Dushanbe
Kayumov, A (2008), Glacier’s Resources of Tajikistan in Condition of the Climate Change, State Agency for Hydrometeorology of Committee for Environmental Protection under the GoT, Dushanbe
Krylova, L., Safarova, N. (2013), Gender Assessment: SDC Rural Drinking Water Program in Tajikistan, SDC, Dushanbe
Kuvatova, A. (2014), Women and Farming: Gender analysis in agriculture of RoT, International Organization «Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF), Youth Ecological Centre Republic of Tajikistan
Luque, V. (2013), Guidance Note on Mainstreaming Gender Equality in UNDP-UNEP PEI Work, PEI, Nairobi
Martonakova, H. (2015), Poverty – Environment Mainstreaming in Development Planning in the RoT, UNDP – UNEP PEI, Dushanbe
80 To avoid duplication, legal documents listed in the Annex 2 are not listed in the References
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Oxfam International (2009), Reaching Tipping Point? Climate Change and Poverty in Tajikistan, Dushanbe
Shahriari, H. et al. (2009), Agricultural Activities, Water, and Gender in Tajikistan’s Rural Sector: A Social Assessment of Konibodom, Bobojon Ghafurov, and Yovon, World Bank and Government of the RoT
UNDP (2011), Fast Facts: Gender and Environment, UNDP, New York
UNDP (2012), HDR 2011: Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All, UNDP HQ, New York
UNDP (2015), NHDR 2014: Tajikistan: access to resources for human development, GoT, UNDP, ILO, UNFPA, Dushanbe
UNDP (2010), Country Sector Assessment, GoAL WaSH Programme
UNECE (2012), Environmental Performance Review: Tajikistan; Second Review Synopsis; UN New York and Geneva
UNICEF (2011), 2010 Annual Report for Tajikistan, UNICEF
UN Women (2011), UN Women Annual report 2010-2011,
USAID (2013), Assessing the Role of women in rural Areas of Tajikistan, USAID Family Farming Program
WFP (2015), Tajikistan Food Security Monitoring, WFP Dushanbe
Wolfgramm, B. et al. (2011), Tajikistan: Pilot Program for Climate Resilience. Component A5: Phase 1 Agriculture and Sustainable Land Management, the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) of the University of Bern
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ANNEX 1: ENVIRONMENT GENDER INDEX: METHODOLOGY AND CRITERIA81
The Environment and Gender Index (EGI) assesses the conditions for gender equality and women's empowerment in the environmental arena using 27 indicators divided into 6 categories for 72 countries. The goal of the EGI is to measure progress, improve information, enhance policy and program development, and ultimately empower countries to take steps forward for gender equality and for the environment.
The overall EGI score for each country is based on the weighted averages of the six categories and scaled from 0 -100, where 100 = the most favorable conditions for gender equality and women’s empowerment in the environmental arena. The categories and indicators are as follows:
Category 1: Livelihood This category provides a base line indication of a country's abilities to meet the fundamental needs of its population. Little sex-disaggregated data is available for this issue but we were able to include a longitudinal assessment8 of women's health as proxied by the percentage of women without anemia. The six indicators included in this category are: 1. Less poverty 2. Food adequacy 3. Fewer women with anemia 4. Less solid fuel use 5. Improved water 6. Improved sanitation
Category 2: Ecosystem This category focuses on presenting the specific factors related to environmental preservation, sustainability and resource use. No sex-disaggregated data was available for this category but we were able to include three indicators that provide insights into a country's commitment to environmental sustainability and conservation: 1. Biodiversity preservation 2. Critical habitat protection 3. Higher quality forests
Category 3: Gender-based Rights and Participation This category specifically addresses a country's commitment to gender equality as well as the ability of women to engage in leadership and decision-making roles: 1. Equal legal rights 2. CEDAW ratification 3. Women in COP delegations 4. Women managers, legislators and senior officials 5. Women in policy-making positions
Category 4: Governance This category assesses the effectiveness of a country's fundamental institutional capacities as well as the ability of its citizens to participate freely in the political process. It contains the following three indicators: 1. Civil liberties 2. Political stability
81 For more information, including more detailed indicator descriptions, removed indicators, and other variables of interest, see the IUCN (2013), The Environment and Gender Index (EGI) 2013 Pilot at http://genderandenvironment.org/egi/.
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3. Property rights
Category 5: Gender-based Education and Assets This category focuses on equal access for women to basic education and resources. Access to these fundamental resources provides women with the tools, skills and preparation to effectively engage in environmental decision-making and resource use and access. It includes the following six indicators: 1. Access to agricultural land 2. Access to property 3. Access to credit 4. Women with bank accounts 5. Female post primary education 6. Female literacy
Category 6: Country-Reported Activities This category includes four indicators created by the EGI team that assess a country's inclusion of gender in Conference of Parties (COPs) reports as well as a country's inclusion of environmental sustainability in CEDAW reports. It includes the following 4 indicators: 1. Inclusion of gender in UNFCCC reports 2. Inclusion of gender in UNCCD reports 3. Inclusion of gender in CBD reports 4. Inclusion of sustainable development topics in CEDAW reports
Six categories were weighted as follows: Livelihood 20% Ecosystem 10% Gendered Rights and Participation 20% Governance 20% Gendered Education and Assets 20% Country-Reported Activities 10% ------Total 100%
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ANNEX 2: LIST OF THE REVIEWED NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL COMMITMENTS, POLICY AND LEGAL DOCUMENTS
Gender specific national legal and regulatory documents: - The Law of the Republic of Tajikistan “On the State guaranties of men and women equality and equal opportunities of their implementation”, adopted on March 1 2005, #89 - Family code of the Republic of Tajikistan”, adopted first on 13 November 1998 and was updated 4 times, latest update December 26, 2011 # 791 - Decree of the President of the Republic of Tajikistan “About measures on increasing of status of women in society”, from December 3, 1999, #5 - Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan about State Program of the Republic of Tajikistan «on Streamlining of family and right” - The State Program "The main directions of the state policy to ensure equal rights and opportunities for women and men in the Republic of Tajikistan for 2001-2010", adopted on August 6, 2001, #391 / - The State Program "Bringing up, selection and appointment of leading cadres of the Republic of Tajikistan from among of capable women and girls for 2007-2016", adopted by the Government on November 1, 2006, #496 - National Strategy for enhancing of the role of women in the Republic of Tajikistan for 2011-2020" from May 29, 2010, #269 - The Decree of the Government about the Rules of admission of students to higher education institutions with Presidential Quota of the Republic of Tajikistan, adopted first in1997 and then updated on April 3, 2006 #137 - National Strategy on Activation of Women’s Role in Tajikistan for 2011-2020 - State program “On training specialists among women and support their employment for 2012-2015” (2012)
Selected international agreements directly and indirectly supporting gender equality - Convention on Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (1993); - Convention on the Rights of the Child (1993); - International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1998); - International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1998) - Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) - The UN Declaration on the Millennium Development Goals (2000) - The UN Security Council Resolution 1325, 1820, 1888, 1889
ECNR related legislation - The Land Code of the Republic of Tajikistan (adopted first on December 13, 1996 and lastly updated on August 1, 2012, #891 - The Forest Code of the Republic of Tajikistan, adopted opn August 2, 2011, #761 - The Air Code (in this context looks at the aviation, civil aviation, aviation security policies only), probably should be removed from the list - The Water Code of the Republic of Tajikistan , adopted on November 29, 2000, #34 - The Law of the Republic of Tajikistan on Environment Protection, adopted on August 2, 2011, #760 - Disaster Risk Management National Strategy of the Republic of Tajikistan for 2010-2015, adopted on March 30, 2010, #164 - Program on Forest Development of the Republic of Tajikistan, adopted on October 31, 2005, #396 - Program on effective use of hydro-energetic resources and energy saving for 2012- 2016, adopted on November 2, 2011 #551 - The long-term program on building of Small electric stations for the period 2009 -2020, adopted on February 2, 2009, #73
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For notes
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UNDP, 39 Ayni Street, Dushanbe Tajikistan, 734024 Tel: (992 44) 600-55-97 Fax: (992 44) 600-55-96 [email protected] www.tj.undp.org
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