Nehru Memorial Museum and Library

cordially invites you to a Public Lecture

(in the ‘Science, Society and Nature’ series)

 

at 3.00 pm on Wednesday, 5 February, 2014

in the Seminar Room, First Floor, Library Building

 

on

 

‘Governing South Asia’s Forests:

Does women’s presence make a difference?’

 

by

 

Prof. Bina Agarwal,

University of Manchester, UK

and Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi

 

Abstract:

Forests in South Asia are largely state owned but a fair proportion are community governed. Women’s presence, however, has been sparse in community institutions involved in such governance, and most research on gender and forest governance has focused on women’s absence. This presentation reverses that focus to ask: what if women were present in these institutions? Would that affect the decisions made and conservation outcomes? These questions remain largely unaddressed, despite the substantial work on women’s representation in public bodies and on local environmental governance. Exploring the history of women’s absence, the speaker will then focus on the impact of their presence, using her primary data on communities managing local forests in India and Nepal to provide some answers.

 

Speaker:

Prof. Bina Agarwal is Professor of Development Economics and Environment, University of Manchester. She has been Director of the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, and President of the International Society for Ecological Economics. She is also a member of the Future Earth Science Committee. Her nine books include the award-winning—A Field of One’s Own (Cambridge University Press)—and Gender and Green Governance (Oxford University Press, OUP). A three-volume compendium of her selected papers is also forthcoming from OUP.  She holds honorary doctorates from ISS, The Hague, and the University of Antwerp. In 2008, she received a Padma Shri, and in 2010 the Leontief Prize from Tufts University “for broadening the frontiers of economic thought”. See also www.binaagarwal.com