In Khatlon Province, Tajikistan, more female farmers are learning of their land rights and seek to exercise and defend those rights. Through the Feed the Future Tajikistan Land Market Development Activity, tashabbuskors — community activists — and Legal Aid Center (LAC) lawyers support female farmers in the province in 12 target districts.
In Dusti District, Nuri Vakhsh jamoat, Bargigul Allayorova, a 58-year-old female farmer, had worked for years on the lands of the midsized Khatlon dehkan farm. Then, in 2008, management decided to divide up the land between shareholders. The farm legally ceased to exist, and former owners created a new farm, Fayzali. Ms. Allayorova’s land share was absorbed by the new farm against her will. Despite her appeals to various offices, she received no help.
However, Ms. Allayorova never gave up. In October 2019, she met with Aysifat Norbekova, a local tashabbuskor, and informed her of the situation.
The tashabbuskor advised Ms. Allayorova to contact the local LAC office and take the matter to court. Ms. Allayorova was inspired to continue her fight — now with a tashabbuskor and a LAC attorney on her side.
She met her attorney, Abdurahim Kalandarzoda, who helped her collect required documents and file a claim with the province’s Economic Court to separate her land share from the Fayzali dehkan farm.
Ms. Allayorova won — after review, the court divided her land share of 1.46 hectares from Fayzali, overturning the restructuring of the former Khatlon dehkan farm.
With the favorable decision, Ms. Allayorova applied to the chair of Dusti District, Nurmakhmad Faizzoda, to create her own dehkan farm, which she named Farhod. Since its founding in December 2019, Farhod farm has become her family’s main source of income and dramatically improved prospects for all 20 members of her family.
New initiative aims to demonstrate the business case for supporting a gender-inclusive supply chain while increasing sustainable food production
PepsiCo (NASDAQ: PEP) announced a new five-year, $20 million partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Initiative, supporting the global food and beverage leader’s efforts to empower women in agriculture and help build a more sustainable food system. The goal of the project is to drive inclusivity across the food and beverage industry by demonstrating that actively engaging women as critical drivers of PepsiCo’s sustainable sourcing strategy leads to better business results.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, if women farmers had the same access to resources as their male counterparts, their food production would increase by up to 30% and help eliminate hunger for 150 million people. However, the lack of land rights, limited access to information, technology, and financing, and expectations of domestic work based on prevailing gender norms are barriers to achieving this reality.
To help address these challenges, USAID and PepsiCo will each invest an initial $5 million to jumpstart the program, which will support women-owned small- and medium-enterprises and women-led PepsiCo suppliers to improve the resiliency of rural farming communities in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
“At USAID, we believe that investing in women is key to advancing a country along its journey to self-reliance. The full economic inclusion of half the world’s population ultimately will contribute to greater peace and prosperity for all. However, we cannot do this important work without collaborating with the private sector. Through the W-GDP Fund, our partnership with PepsiCo will promote economic opportunities and leadership roles for women farmers,” said USAID Acting Administrator John Barsa.
This partnership builds on the lessons learned from PepsiCo and USAID’s recent project in West Bengal, which helps women lease land, as well as provides trainings on a broad range of topics including record keeping and pest control, the best irrigation and crop rotation techniques for their region, and the role of women in agriculture and the cultural norms that hold them back. Ultimately, it is expected that the training program in West Bengal will reach more than 300,000 women through direct and community engagement.
“We are thrilled to again partner with USAID to further create more opportunities for women to take on leadership roles in their communities,” said Christine Daugherty, VP, Global Sustainable Agriculture & Responsible Sourcing, PepsiCo. “We expect that by engaging women as critical partners, on-farm productivity will increase, compliance with our sustainability standards will improve, supply chain performance will be strengthened, and we will contribute to the long-term resilience of farming communities and PepsiCo’s success. After all, we know that women make up nearly half of the agricultural workforce and by investing in women, we can have a greater impact.”
PepsiCo will integrate findings from this partnership into its Sustainable Farming Program, advancing positive social, environmental and economic outcomes among the farmers from which the company directly sources crops. Both organizations hope this project will demonstrate the business case for a gender-inclusive supply chain and serve as a catalyst for change as other food and beverage companies look for new ways to increase productivity.
About PepsiCo
PepsiCo products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated more than $67 billion in net revenue in 2019, driven by a complementary food and beverage portfolio that includes Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker and Tropicana. PepsiCo’s product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages, including 23 brands that generate more than $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales.
Guiding PepsiCo is our vision to Be the Global Leader in Convenient Foods and Beverages by Winning with Purpose. “Winning with Purpose” reflects our ambition to win sustainably in the marketplace and embed purpose into all aspects of the business. For more information, visit www.pepsico.com.
About the W-GDP Initiative
In February 2019, the White House established the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Initiative, the first whole-of-government approach to women’s economic empowerment. W-GDP seeks to reach 50 million women in the developing world by 2025 by focusing on three pillars – Women Prospering in the Workforce, Women Succeeding as Entrepreneurs and Women Enabled in the Economy. W-GDP leverages a new innovative fund, scaling private-public partnerships which address the three pillars. In its first year alone, W-GDP programs reached 12 million women across the globe.
About USAID
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the world’s premier international development agency and a catalytic actor driving development results. USAID’s work advances U.S. national security and economic prosperity, demonstrates American generosity, and promotes a path to recipient self-reliance and resilience.
PepsiCo Cautionary Statement
Statements in this release regarding PepsiCo that are “forward-looking statements” are based on currently available information, operating plans and projections about future events and trends. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties. For information on certain factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from expectations, please see PepsiCo’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made. PepsiCo undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
By: Mary Hobbs, Director for the Agriculture, Environment, and Business Office, USAID/Mozambique
Mozambican farmer Lucia Maurício farms about 10 hectares (25 acres) of land to feed her five growing children.
Portucel Executive Director Paulo Silva manages more than 13,000 hectares (32,000 acres) of eucalyptus farms in Mozambique to feed a growing multi-million-dollar global supply chain hungry for paper pulp.
They have more in common than you might think.
Both require the same foundation to achieve their goals: clear and documented land rights.
Just as clear and documented land rights allow farmers to invest in their land to improve their harvests and their lives, they allow investors and corporations to more easily identify farmers and communities with surplus land, and to negotiate to access or lease the land they need to keep their company running.
Land rights are an underappreciated precondition across the agriculture spectrum – from the largest agriculture companies to subsistence farmers, their foundation for success is documented and secure land tenure.
This may sound like a simple requirement, but in Mozambique and many other sub-Saharan African countries, that foundation had not yet been laid. According to the World Bank, only 10% of agricultural land in sub-Saharan Africa is documented. In Mozambique, where Lucia farms and Paulo works, the FAO says only about 20% of land is documented. Those figures haven’t changed much in decades – trapping farmers like Lucia in poverty and providing hurdles to investment for investors like Paulo.
Most farmers in Lucia’s village of Enhumua farmed without titles or deeds to the land they rely on. They farmed land passed down to them or bought on a handshake. The contours and boundaries of each parcel were rarely noted on paper.
And when land tenure is unclear or undocumented, both farmers and businesses suffer.
This was the case for Lucia. Previously she could not capitalize on the most fertile section of her land because of conflicting claims. The parcel was by the river, well irrigated, and blessed with rich, productive soil. But her neighbors also claimed the land. And this threat influenced the way she farmed. Instead of trying to maximize profits, she and her husband Calisto tried to minimize their risks. Despite the land’s potential, she planted only corn on the parcel. She feared that if she planted other vegetables, which are much more profitable, her neighbors would take the investment as an irresistible invitation and seize some or all of her crop along with her land.
This type of conflict over land has long been common, and it intensified in 2010, when the government granted approximately 173,000 hectares of land in Zambézia province (which includes Lucia’s village of Enhumua) to Portucel-Mozambique to establish large-scale eucalyptus farms. Zambézia is the second most populous province in Mozambique. So across Zambézia, villages like Enhumua do not have a lot of vacant and unused land.
Portucel staff immediately recognized the challenges of operating a business in such an uncertain environment when they began negotiating with villagers to lease land. In Namalapa village, not far from Enhumua, Joao Ernesto Prego received an unwanted surprise when Portucel claimed rights to 3.5 hectares of his land. Joao’s nephew had signed over rights in exchange for a promise of lifetime employment with Portucel. Portucel had a signed document from the nephew, and Joao found he had little recourse.
As the company’s eucalyptus farms sprouted across the horizon, similar stories – born of a tangled web of unclear and undocumented land tenure – multiplied. Eventually, as with many companies, Portucel ceased all land procurement negotiations and put future investments on hold while they worked out how to responsibly negotiate with and invest in communities where land tenure is undocumented and unclear. Land disputes can very easily escalate, creating tensions in a community that make it unsafe for families and businesses alike.
A bicyclist walks through Portucel’s eucalyptus plantation.
The company’s hopes for the future, along with those of Lucia and other farmers, soared when USAID and DFID-funded programs to document smallholders’ land rights came to the region. The programs trained farmers like Lucia to document land boundaries with GPS technology.
Farmers walk the boundaries of their land, GPS in hand and witnesses in tow, to map their properties. Each farmer is provided with a certificate signed by local leaders that includes a satellite map of the farm, GPS coordinates, the farmers’ names, and the names of community leaders and witnesses.
The certificates provide smallholders like Lucia and Calisto with their first documentation of their land rights. This added security has been transformative for Lucia, her community and Portucel. When farmers like Lucia have secure rights to property, they can negotiate with businesses to loan or lease their land, or arrange an out-grower contract with a company like Portucel and enter the global marketplace.
With clearly documented land boundaries, Portucel can finally identify landowners with surplus land and negotiate to access or lease it. They can also identify vacant parcels and pursue options for leasing that land from the government or communities.
Portucel hopes these changes will enable it to reduce its investment risk and increase the sustainability of its business. As Paulo Silva says, “Now, in a vast area of our holdings, we all know the right locations of the plots of people living there, creating better conditions for dialogue between the company, communities and individuals. This allows us to better plan for the future.”
Martins Gabriel Paiva putting a new roof on his home.
Lucia certainly wasted no time in taking advantage of her newfound confidence in her land rights. She is planting a vegetable garden on her prized parcel and, with the proceeds from that harvest, will gain a measure of self-reliance heretofore unimaginable. She and her husband expect the vegetable plot will quadruple their income. Such a jump in their earnings would finally allow them to put a much-needed zinc roof on their home, support their children’s education, and improve the productivity of their other fields with investments like fertilizer or better-quality seeds.
“We can farm as we please,” says Lucia with a smile. “Life is good now.”
Martins Gabriel Paiva, a village chief often called upon to settle land disputes, has also noted the change brought by better documentation of land rights. “In the past there was constant conflict over land,” he says. “Now there is harmony.”
Martins notes that Lucia’s story is being replicated across the district. “The land thieves now know that every parcel has an owner,” he says. “We are now kinder to each other. We have a community group that has the people’s trust and it is working on building a community fishpond.”
Economically empowered women reinvest in their families and communities, spur economic growth, and ultimately help communities in our partner countries progress on their Journeys to Self-Reliance.
The W-GDP Fund at USAID also brings new resources. Today, USAID Deputy Administrator Bonnie Glick joined Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump in announcing $122 million in W-GDP progress and partnerships aimed at fulfilling the W-GDP’s goal of reaching 50 million women by 2025.
Out of these new activities, I would like to highlight five.
The W-GDP Fund at USAID and PepsiCo are partnering on work in West Bengal, India, where together we are strengthening women’s access to land and technical agronomy training to become PepsiCo farmers. / Jen Peterson, Tetra Tech
Partnership with PepsiCo
The W-GDP Fund at USAID and PepsiCo are investing $5 million each toward the launch of a five-year public-private partnership that will develop the business case for investments in women’s economic empowerment within PepsiCo’s business model and encourage other food and beverage companies to promote similar investments.
The partnership kicked off in June 2019 in West Bengal State, in the Republic of India, where PepsiCo and W-GDP have strengthened women’s access to land and agriculture technical training. This partnership also provides training in personal empowerment and leadership skills and builds the capacity of local PepsiCo staff to include and work with women more directly in the company’s supply-chain.
The preliminary evidence generated from this pilot makes a powerful case for investment in women’s economic empowerment — both in advancing PepsiCo’s business goals and in creating tangible economic opportunities for women within the company. Women supported through this initiative are producing high-quality crops that will yield potatoes for PepsiCo’s Lay’s brand chips, which generates income for women to invest in their families and farms, and to secure their own futures.
W-GDP Grand Challenge: Women Enabled in the Economy
The W-GDP Fund at USAID and PepsiCo are partnering to create tangible economic opportunities for women with PepsiCo, including their ability to produce high-quality crops, which allows women to further invest in their families and farms, and secure their own future. / Jen Peterson, Tetra Tech
Grand Challenges mobilize governments, companies, and foundations to solve development problems and source solutions, test ideas, and scale what works. Through these programs, USAID and public and private partners inspire and incentivize new voices from around the world to solve development problems. The first round of a new, dynamic, W-GDP Grand Challenge. Managed by USAID, will crowdsource innovative solutions that economically empower women and increase women’s access to commercial finance, which barriers in laws, regulations, policies, and practices often restrict.
With an initial investment of $5 million for the first year, the W-GDP Grand Challenge will convene host governments, the private sector, civil-society organizations, and women themselves to create action plans to improve the enabling environment and remove or reduce cultural barriers that preclude women from fully participating in economies. USAID will catalyze the private sector to fuel the W-GDP Grand Challenge to continue to break barriers in policies, laws, regulations, and practices to help women access capital and credit — and ultimately participate in the economy as equal economic actors.
W-GDP’s Invest in Women Portfolio
The W-GDP Fund at USAID forges partnerships with American companies that understand their business interests are best served when women are empowered around the world. In this second year of the W-GDP Fund, USAID and PepsiCo are investing an initial $5 million each to support a five-year partnership. / Jen Peterson, Tetra Tech
Access to better jobs, financial services, and global supply-chains can empower women economically in the developing world and break the cycle of poverty in their local communities.
The W-GDP Fund at USAID is launching a new $23 million Invest in Women Portfolio by working with leading partners such as CARE, Deloitte, and Kiva to overcome obstacles to grow women-owned businesses. The W-GDP Invest in Women Portfolio funds activities that mobilize and encourage private-sector investment in women through innovative, market-based approaches. Through this portfolio, W-GDP’s blended-finance approach provides a risk cushion for other investors and mobilizes significant additional private-sector capital investment.
Other New Programs
The $7.4 million W-GDP Interagency Fund will enable our U.S. Government partners to promote women’s economic empowerment through programs that highlight their unique strengths and expertise. For example, a new partnership with the U.S. Department of State will bring together women’s coalitions from Central Asia to identify, prioritize, and pursue needed reforms to unlock women’s economic opportunity through the Department’s flagship W-GDP Women Empowered — Realizing Inclusive and Sustainable Economies (WE RISE) program, which works with the Center for International Private Enterprise, the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative, and Search for Common Ground.
When women have stronger property rights, they tend to have higher incomes and are more empowered to make decisions in their households and communities. The USAID W-GDP Fund’s $7 million investment in Women’s Land Rights will support reforms to national policies and customary practices through local capacity-building in the Republics of Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana, Zambia, and India.
When USAID joined the White House, the State Department, and other implementing Federal Departments and Agencies in commemorating the first anniversary of W-GDP, the Initiative had already improved the lives of 12 million women.
USAID will continue to build on these successes, launch and scale up innovative programs, and embrace opportunities to advance women’s economic empowerment in 2020 and beyond.
Do you have great photos of climate and development? Do you want to promote your work on Climatelinks? Now is your chance!
Submit your photos so we can share your work or your organization’s work with our global community of climate practitioners.
Our 2020 Photo Contest theme is Healthy Forests for a Healthy Future. We’re looking to capture nature-based solutions such as active reforestation, plantations, agroforestry, and natural regeneration. We would also like photos that tell the story of how individuals and communities interact with the forests they depend on, and how local leaders are conserving, managing, and restoring them.
You may submit up to five images complying with the contest rules and requirements. Entries will be judged on relevance, composition, originality, and technical quality. Winners will be selected overall through an evaluation panel composed of USAID staff and the Climatelinks team.
The contest runs until July 31, 2020. Winning photos will be announced in Fall 2020, subsequently featured in Climatelinks communications, highlighted on the website’s topic pages, and showcased in Climatelinks photo gallery. The winning photos will also be featured in the Office of Global Climate Change’s official 2021 calendar, which will be distributed to contest winners.
By Patricia Malasha (Zambia Gender Advisor, Integrated Land and Resource Governance Program (ILRG)), Jennifer Duncan (Global Gender Advisor, ILRG) and Matt Sommerville (Chief of Party, ILRG)
Zambia is home to some of Africa’s most spectacular landscapes, premier national parks, and Africa’s Big Five game animals: lions, leopards, rhinoceroses, elephants, and Cape buffalos. Every year, nearly one million visitors make wildlife tourism a major contributor to Zambia’s economy and one of the few sources of formal employment for communities in rural areas. Yet one of Zambia’s most important resources is often conspicuously absent from management decisions over and benefits from the wildlife sector: women.
For decades, USAID has been working with partners to protect Zambia’s threatened wildlife and enhance rural livelihoods. Recently, USAID’s Integrated Land and Resource Governance Program assessed the gender dimensions of community-based wildlife interventions in Zambia, particularly focusing on experiences in Eastern and Muchinga Provinces.[1]
Meeting women in the Chifunda fishing camp
On the third morning of our trip to Muchinga Province we came upon a group of locals deep in the bush, fishing on the Luangwa River in a game management area. The party of mostly women and girls had set up a crude camp site on the riverbank where tree branches could not protect them from the previous night’s rains. They had pots of small dried fish, which they caught by wading out into the river with thatched fish traps. Occupational hazards include hippos and crocodiles in the water and hyenas and elephants walking through their camp in the darkness of night.
They told us they come for several days at a time and once they fill their bags with fish to sell at the market, they trek 15 kilometers back to their village. Some of the women are from families that own small tracts of land for farming and come in the off-season; others have no land to farm. For all, the income from fishing ends up being important to their families’ welfare.
Earlier that morning we had seen men fishing from small boats in a wider section of the river, where they can catch much bigger fish using efficient metal fish traps. Cultural norms do not permit the women to go out on the water in boats and fish. Their place, they are told, is on the shore.
The women in the Chifunda fish camp are among the many in Zambia whose lives intersect at multiple points with wildlife resources. The survival of their families depends on these fisheries, and they are partly responsible for the stewardship of this critical resource. In the bush, they face the threats of human-animal wildlife conflict, and hike long distances carrying fishing baskets and pots. Their knowledge of these resources is both unique and valuable. Since they are have been left out of wildlife management, the perspective of women and mothers is largely absent from conservation dialogues.
Why are women are missing from wildlife management?
It is highly probable that none of the Chifunda women will ever have a role in decision-making or employment related to Zambia’s wildlife and fisheries sector on the Community Resource Board. Due to pervasive gender norms and practices that keep women out of these roles, women are left, yet again, watching from the shore.
Zambia has partially decentralized management of its wildlife sector to Community Resource Boards, known as CRBs, as well as to fisheries and forest management groups. CRBs operate across vast chiefdoms where government and customary institutional responsibilities overlap. But there are no guidelines on the role of women in these groups, and only strong customary gender norms that sideline women in resource management and benefits. In fact, CRBs are purposefully working to serve men’s interests, and there is a striking lack of transparency and accountability in resource use.
Women’s representation in some CRBs and Community Forest Management Groups is very low, and completely absent in others. The Chifunda CRB has no women on its 10-member board, and neighboring Chikwa CRB has three women members. Of the 76 CRBs in Zambia, 72 are led by men, and the few women who participate experience challenges in the male-dominated structures.
Hiring practices and biases create barriers to women working in wildlife
Women do not have the same employment opportunities as men in the wildlife sector. The inequitable training criteria for scout selection exclude even well qualified women candidates. New hires are usually arranged through informal channels, based on social connections and not through standard and transparent procedures. Education qualifications—like a grade 12 education—English fluency, and competitive physical trials, such as timed runs with packs end up excluding many women. No policy exists to encourage either the state or the CRBs to employ women in the wildlife sector.
In fact, few women are ever employed: only three out of 38 game scouts working for Chikwa CRB are women. Chifunda CRB, which patrols resources over 200,000 hectares chiefdom, has hired only three women among its 57 scouts. When employed, women scouts are hurt disproportionately by common practices of non-payment (for up to a year). Women employed in poacher sting operations appear to face significant gender-based violence risks.
What can women bring to the table?
Effective wildlife management at the community level entails much more than chasing down poachers—something women are able to do just as well as men. It is largely about improving education and awareness of community members—both men and women—raising awareness about harmful and illegal practices, and encouraging involvement in alternative livelihoods. The USAID-assessment makes clear that both women and men interact with wildlife, depend on it for subsistence and cash income, and bear responsibility for the sustainable use of wildlife resources. It is optimal that teams include women and men to reach every segment of society. Employing women is not only fair, it is smart.
Tackling gender biases in the wildlife sector will require a multi-pronged approach
Based on the assessment findings, USAID’s Integrated Land and Resource Governance Program continues to work with civil society partners on practical ways to improve women’s participation and empowerment within the natural resource management sector. This year, the program is supporting the training of the first cadre of female scouts and rolling out gender sensitive election guidelines and training for CRBs in partnership with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife and Zambia’s National Community Resource Board Association. These are just the first steps of many to give women proper representation in the decisions made over community resources.
With a focus on women’s economic empowerment, USAID is working with community-based natural resources management organizations in Zambia to support women’s leadership within the wildlife sector through participation quotas and leadership support from community level to national policy with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife. Activities focus on creating opportunities for fair employment and constructive dialogue on gender norms within these rural communities. Experiences are being shared across Zambia’s wildlife and forestry sectors creating novel learning and scaling opportunities for women’s empowerment.
Gender-based violence (GBV) is estimated to affect more than one in three women worldwide. GBV takes a variety of forms, including sexual, psychological, community, economic, institutional, and intimate partner violence, and in turn affects nearly every aspect of a person’s life, including health, education, and economic and political opportunities. At the same time, environmental degradation, loss of ecosystem benefits, and unsustainable resource use are creating complex crises worldwide. As billions of people rely on these natural resources and ecosystems to sustain themselves, the potential human impacts are dire, with disproportionate effects on women and girls.
USAID’s Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GenDev) is hosting the RISE Challenge to seek the innovative application of promising or proven interventions to address GBV in environmentalprogramming.
THE RISE CHALLENGE AIMS TO:
Spur greater awareness of the intersection between environmental degradation and GBV
Test new environmental programming approaches that incorporate efforts to prevent and respond to GBV
Widely share evidence of effective interventions and policies
Elevate this issue and attract commitments from other organizations, including implementing partners and donors, for collaboration and co-investment
TIMELINE:
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA:
Prospective competitors must meet the following requirements to participate in the RISE Challenge. All applications will undergo an initial eligibility screening to ensure they comply with the eligibility criteria.
Organization size and type: RISE is open to all organizations regardless of size and type.
Partnership model: Applicants must demonstrate a partnership model and/or teaming intervention that leverages the capacity, expertise, and existing relationships across relevant environmental sector organizations, gender and GBV organizations, relevant experts, and local communities.
Local presence: All applicants must use the funds to implement interventions in geographies where USAID currently operates.
Willingness to capture and share evidence and learning: All applicants need to describe a clear and actionable plan for Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning that articulates how the applicant will test hypotheses, generate evidence, and use learning to adapt programming, which will feed into the evidence base that USAID is creating.
Topical: Applicants should present interventions that address the objectives of the Program Statement in the Request for Applications.
Gender analysis: Applicants must be willing to use grant funding to complete a gender analysis of their proposed intervention before implementation.
Eligible to receive USAID funds: RISE will conduct a responsibility determination prior to award, to ensure the applicant has the organizational and technical capacity to manage a USAID-funded project.
Language: Applicants must submit their entries in English.
Completeness and timeliness: Entries will not be assessed if all required fields have not been completed.
JUDGING CRITERIA:
Intervention rationale: Applicants will be judged on their articulation of the challenge, hypothesis for change, and rationale for how their intervention will prevent or respond to GBV in environmental programming.
Contextual awareness, human-centered approaches, and sensitivity: Applicants should describe and demonstrate an awareness of the local context in which their intervention operates, how they intend to meet their target population where they are at, and the measures in place to protect and collect sensitive information.
Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning: Given the nascency of the evidence base at this nexus, applicants will be judged on how their proposal will advance the international community’s understanding of challenges and potential interventions at the intersection of GBV and environmental programming.
Innovative partnerships and organizational capacity: Applicants will be judged on the degree to which their partnership model demonstrates the ability to leverage the diversity of expertise required to successfully innovate new interventions to challenges at the intersection of GBV and the environment. This includes proposed engagement with GBV organizations, women’s and girls’ organizations, indigenous communities/groups, youth, and other vulnerable groups and local partners. Partnerships with research, academic, or evaluation organizations with the capacity to support evidence collection are also highly encouraged.
Pathway to integration: Applicants should demonstrate a plan for understanding how this intervention can be applied in new contexts beyond the initial application.
Deadlines, details, and application: competitions4dev.org/risechallenge Contact us: rise@usaid.gov. Engage: #USAIDRISE.
By Terah U. DeJong, Technical Deputy, USAID Artisanal Mining and Property Rights project
“Look at how we work,” said Sylvain, an artisanal diamond miner in Sama near Carnot in the Central African Republic (CAR). “If the coronavirus comes to this site then we’re all going to get it.”
Figure 1 Artisanal diamond miners near Carnot, CAR, being interviewed by a local journalist. Photo: Benjamin Ndongo.
That concern is shared by Central African authorities and its partners, including USAID, as the country responds to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. While the disease has been slow to take hold in CAR, cases have gone from less than a dozen to more than 700 in just a few weeks, according to May 2020 figures from the Health Ministry.
Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) communities are particularly vulnerable given close proximity of diggers at work, extreme poverty, lack of access to health care, and limited understanding of the virus. Additionally, ASM communities are suffering financially since they depend on fluid international trade in order to sell their minerals and receive financing.
The USAID Artisanal Mining and Property Rights (AMPR) project supports mining communities and promotes legal, responsible supply chains for minerals including diamonds and gold. With USAID support, local NGO Réseaux des journalistes pour les Droits de l’homme (RJDH) teamed up with Mining Ministry authorities to raise awareness on COVID-19 in major mining areas in southwest CAR. The USAID AMPR program is also expanding women’s soapmaking associations in mining communities to fight the virus and support women’s livelihoods.
From May 6 to 14, RJDH and the Mining Ministry organized a series of radio roundtables with local health and mining officials, passing along key messages on hand washing and social distancing.
“We’re worried that artisanal miners have not yet fully understood the threat of this disease,” said Dr. Patrick Ouango, a regional health official in Berberati. “Local radio is essential to reach them.”
The experts also exhorted miners and traders to play their part in combatting mineral smuggling to neighboring Cameroon, which research funded by USAID AMPR found was the primary transit hub for illegal diamonds and gold.
Figure 2 USAID AMPR supported the organization of radio roundtables with local health officials in order to reach miners in remote areas. Photo: Benjamin Ndongo
The fear is that smuggling could seed infections in Western CAR where health facilities are few and far between. Indeed, with the international airport in the capital Bangui closed since March 27, the land border with Cameroon – a vital economic lifeline to land-locked CAR – has been the main source of new infections.
The economic fallout in mining communities due to COVID-19 is of equal concern. Up to a quarter of CAR’s impoverished population depends on mining, and with the global disruption to the gold and diamond supply chains, local prices have dropped 30% and the legal chain of custody is paralyzed.
Meanwhile food prices have increased 25 to 30% compared to the same period last year. In this context, mining will not only continue, but may increase as newly unemployed people turn to digging in order to survive, despite unfair prices and predatory behavior by smugglers.
Prior to COVID-19, the diamond sector was showing signs of recovery after years of challenges due to smuggling and armed group involvement in the minerals trade and subsequent trade restrictions put in place by the Kimberley Process. The gold sector has also been looking up, with legal exports having increased 350% in the last 4 years.
The government and its partners are worried that the crisis could undo progress and play into the hands of illegal actors and armed groups, which are increasingly active in mining areas. There has also been renewed violence from armed groups in Ndélé, another diamond-rich area.
Figure 3 CAR Minister of Mines and Geology briefing members of the press in Bangui on April 17, 2020. Photo: Hervé Pouno
“There is a risk that fraud and smuggling will increase due to COVID-19,” said the Mining Minister Leopold Mboli Fatran at a April 17 press conference on COVID-19 and the mining sector. “I therefore invite mining sector actors to avoid bringing the disease into our country through illegal transactions in neighboring countries.”
Partners working on the mining sector in CAR – USAID AMPR, the European Union Strengthening Governance in the Gold and Diamond Sector (GODICA) project, and the World Bank Programme de Gouvernance des Ressources Naturelles (PGRN) – have convened bi-weekly calls to exchange information and coordinate.
USAID AMPR and EU GODICA are supporting Kimberley Process national and local committees in charge of monitoring diamond mining zones to begin reporting on the COVID-19 situation at mining sites. The committees have helped the Ministry produce brochures on COVID-19 prevention targeting mining stakeholders.
For Maxie Muwonge, the USAID AMPR Chief of Party coordinating the project’s response, the support to the government and communities is a vital part of the project’s mission.
“We aim at supporting good governance and development in mining communities,” he said from his Bangui office, where they have been without electricity for the past 13 weeks. “COVID-19 is a threat we have to adapt to, but also an opportunity to step up our actions.”
Figure 4 Photo from 2010 showing soap-making training of women’s associations under USAID PRADD project being revitalized for COVID-19 response. Photo: Prospert Yaka Maïde
For example, USAID AMPR reached out to women’s associations trained in soap-making by predecessor USAID project Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (2007-2013). Several were still making and selling soap nearly 7 years since the end of the previous project.
As part of its portfolio of activities supporting women’s livelihoods in mining communities, USAID AMPR is funding one of the ongoing soap-making groups to train new associations. The aim is to increase the local supply of soap to help fight the virus while also enabling women’s groups to seize a new market opportunity during a precarious time.
While it remains to be seen how the crisis will play out in CAR with upcoming presidential elections and risks of instability, the mobilization of mining sector actors gives hope that men and women in the country’s mining communities will once again demonstrate their resilience.
Gender–based violence (GBV) is estimated to affect more than one in three women worldwide. This widespread problem takes a variety of forms and can affect nearly every aspect of a survivors’ life. At the same time, environmental degradation, loss of ecosystem benefits, and unsustainable resource use are creating instability and control imbalances over natural resources. When these environmental threats occur, GBV increases.
In 2019, USAID’s Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GenDev) designed the RISE Challenge to identify and fund the innovative application of promising approaches to address GBV across programs that address the access, use, control, and management of natural resources.
THIS CHALLENGE AIMS TO:
Increase awareness of the intersection between environmental conservation and GBV
Test new environmental programming approaches that incorporate efforts to prevent and respond to GBV
Share evidence of effective interventions and policies widely
Elevate this issue and attract commitments from other organizations, including implementing partners and donors, for collaboration and co-investment
THE CHALLENGE WINNERS:
ACTION TO PROTECT WOMEN AND ABANDONED CHILDREN
Action to Protect Women and Abandoned Children (ASEFA) is partnering with the Harvard Humanitarian Initative (HHI) and two other women-led local organizations to implement the project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC): Resource-ful Empowerment: Elevating Women’s Voices for Human and Environmental Protection in Congolese Small-Scale Mining.
The project will address GBV and environmental degradation associated with artisanal mining in the eastern DRC, where one study found that one in seven women were required to trade sex for access to work in mining. Building upon research conducted by HHI in 2016, ASEFA and HHI will train 360 women and mine miners through a year-long curriculum on human rights, women’s protection, and measures for reducing the environmental impact of artisanal mining in four project sites within each of the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, and Maniema. Two of the four communities will receive additional training that examines the link between people who work in mining towns and how humans are connected to their environment with the main goal of improving both environmental and human outcomes. The project aims to develop an evidence-based, scalable, and replicable curriculum to address human rights, GBV, and environmental protection.
The project introduces GBV prevention and response into an existing MIT D-Lab project that aims to increase socio-economic opportunities for women miners while reducing environmental impacts in the Antioquia region of Colombia. In 2018, ARM completed a study in Antioquia that found that gender inequality and GBV are widespread in the mining communities. With RISE funding, the project will use a proven and innovative movement-building approach to address GBV in mining. Through this approach, ARM will create safe spaces for women to share their GBV experiences and receive guidance on how to identify specific GBV challenges to collectively build solutions. The project will also guide women on best practices in organizing themselves into associations and how to effectively implement a strategy to address GBV in their communities. This project will increase awareness and provide women miners with the skills and spaces to overcome social and economic gender-based violence.
MARSTEL-DAY
Marstel-Day and WI-HER, as well as their counterparts, the University of the South Pacific, the Fiji Environmental Law Association, Live & Learn Environmental Education, and Fiji’s REDD+ Programme, are working together to promote gender equity and transformation by tackling resource-based conflict and GBV in Fiji.
With funding from the World Bank, Marstel-Day staff supported the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) program’s readiness efforts and led to the design and implementation of the Feedback, Grievances, and Redress Mechanism (FGRM), a promising framework for resolving resource-based disputes and conflicts that may arise from REDD+ programming. The FGRM facilitates two-way communication between communities and national government agencies or companies to solve issues arising from REDD+ programming through formalized dialogue. With RISE funding, the consortium will use WI-HER’s proven approach to integrate gender (iDARE) to improve the FGRM so that it better addresses gender-based risk and GBV as a result of payment for ecosystem services programming, like REDD+.
In eastern Uganda, approximately 80% of women report experiencing physical and psychological violence when claiming their land rights, and only 8% of men believe it is wrong to commit violence against women. With RISE funding, the partners will integrate SASA!, a proven methodology that addresses power imbalances between men and women to prevent and respond to GBV, while improving land tenure and property rights in Uganda. They will train faith-based leaders and partner staff to
promote positive social norms that support women’s rights to access and control land and to live free from GBV. The partners will also help women better document their land rights by developing and training traditional leaders to use an alternative dispute resolution mechanism that takes into consideration the rights of women.
In the DRC, women experience high levels of GBV and low levels of land ownership. For the past fifteen years, WfWI has worked to improve the lives of over100,000 women in the Congolese province of South Kivu by addressing the drivers of GBV and gender inequality at the community level. With RISE funding, WfWI and IFDP will adapt their promising GBV interventions and apply them to land rights and access, which is an area where women are particularly at risk. This project will engage men in shifting social norms, train change agents to prevent GBV, and expand women’s land rights, thereby boosting their economic security.
USAID is reviewing the process for developing the land country profiles featured on LandLinks and would like your input. What do you like about the profiles? How have you used them in your work? What is the most useful content? Do you have any suggestions for improving the country profile content? Please share your feedback and ideas with us by emailing landcomms@trg-inc.com.
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