Introduction: Natural Resource Justice

This issue of Gender & Development focuses on Natural Resource Justice from a gender justice and women's rights perspective. Natural resources - land, water, forests, air - are essential to life on Earth. The rural poor in developing countries remain the most directly dependent on natural resources for their food and livelihood security (World Bank/FAO/IFAD 2009, 423), while the livelihoods of 2.5 billion people depend wholly or partly on agriculture (FAO 2016, 1). Human stability and security depend on sustainable access to natural resources. The natural environment not only contributes to existing livelihoods, but offers a powerful frame of reference for human life, permeating the realms of spirituality and culture. It also provides a form of insurance against crisis for rural people, contributing to their resilience.¹

Yet the same lands and waters that communities living in poverty depend on can offer the promise of great wealth. Millions of the world's poorest people live in countries with valuable and abundant natural resources like oil, gas, and minerals. Many others live in or around forests that can be cut down for large-scale cultivation of biofuels, or in areas suitable for dam construction and the sale of water downstream. While these offer potential development benefits, the reality is that the benefits are limited, unequally shared, and many of the natural resources are non-renewable. For the people who depend most on the lands, waters and forests for daily survival, and see little or no profit from the sale of natural resources, the outlook is often bleak. Natural resources are lost to them, or become so polluted they are no longer useable. Such changes not only affect local communities, but also the whole of humanity.

The articles in this issue are written by a range of development researchers, practitioners, and feminist activists. Today's feminist natural resource perspectives have their roots in the research and activism of feminist environmentalists, stretching back for many decades. ‘Ecofeminism’ provided a pioneering critique of neo-liberal economic development policies in the 1970s, linking gender equality to sustainable development.² In Latin America, 65 per cent of the 185 human rights defenders murdered in 2015 were working on environmental issues, including the activist Berta Caceres in Honduras, whose activism and murder in 2016 attracted international attention (Guevara-Rosas 2016).

Gender equality and women's rights are core to attaining sustainable, just human development, and hence they are also key to securing natural resource justice. Authors highlight the effect extractive projects can have on women's rights and gender inequality. They discuss the strategies of women's natural resource rights defenders to hold governments, the private (that is, business) sector, and international financial institutions (IFIs) to account on their decisions concerning large-scale development of natural resources.

Women natural resource defenders link women's rights to environmental concerns, calling for just and sustainable human development. Women living in poverty in rural or indigenous communities are even less likely than men to be meaningfully involved in plans for large-scale resource initiatives, even though these have enormous impact on their lives. Resource extraction can have a devastating impact on women's livelihoods and security, fracturing households and damaging communities, and increasing violence. Yet these experiences are rarely fully acknowledged and recognised as legitimate concerns. Political participation and leadership, and business and industry, are all still seen as masculine domains. The same social norms that distance women from power, control and decision-making about natural resource use, also prevent them from gaining decent work in extractive industries.

In the rest of this Introduction, we will explore these concerns in more detail, and introduce the articles you can read in this issue.

The importance of democracy and accountability: examining the ‘resource curse’

Case-studies in this issue show the struggles of poor communities – and, in particular, women within them - to have their perspectives heard in decisions about large-scale resource development, and forge a new relationship with political and business interests to ensure they can say no to decisions that will devastate their communities, and influence decisions which could bring benefits to ensure these are maximised.

Richard Auty (1994) first advanced the idea that natural resource wealth can be a curse, rather than a blessing. Many countries with rich natural resource wealth are fragile contexts,³ with high levels of economic inequality, low levels of economic development, corruption, and weak political and legal institutions encountered within them.

The countries apparently affected by the resource curse have been a focus for the past quarter of a century from researchers keen to understand why rich endowments of natural resources often correlate to poor development outcomes. Clearly, there may be less motivation for political leaders to invest prudently in human development due to the promise of short-term wealth to be earned through the sale of minerals, gas or oil. In contrast, countries like Bangladesh that lack natural resource wealth have, in a sense, been forced to evolve alternatives that invest in people (Hossain 2017).

Natural resource wealth can be a blessing if it is used wisely as an investment in a sustainable, just human development strategy, balancing local, national and global interests. Botswana has often been singled out as an example of a country where diamond wealth is responsible for enhancing national development (Lewin 2011). The argument is that Its diamond wealth has been channeled into a strategy stressing investments in public health and education, overseen by a strong political leadership determined not to allow mineral riches to be captured by private interests, and encouraged by a relatively strong and locally-rooted democratic tradition (ibid).

A recent study by IDEA (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) confirms that resource wealth is more likely to be used wisely and equitably if countries have strong democratic institutions. Its authors explored six country case studies across four continents. These included five from the global South, and one – Norway – from the global North (Ahmadov and Guliyev 2016). It confirmed:

Natural resources seem to be better managed where the parliament has an older and stronger tradition, more institutional powers to balance the executive, and greater autonomy from corporatist and clientelistic interests.

(ibid., 39).

Crucially, however, democracy and accountability need to be genuine and deeply-rooted, running from local level to national level, if natural resource justice is to be achieved. Botswana is not an unqualified success story: inequality remains very high, and the country's human rights record is damaged by its record on indigenous people's rights (Lewin 2011).

To achieve natural resource justice, political and business leaders must be accountable to all. Without land-titles or a voice in high-level decision-making, communities can find their lives devastated by large-scale natural resource development.⁴ The quest for justice can be extremely dangerous in countries where democratic institutions are absent or weak. As we go to press, we note a media report, just published, claiming that 2017 is on course to be the deadliest year yet in terms of the numbers of natural resource defenders killed (Taylor 2017, no page number).

Women, indigenous people and people living in rural areas are often most remote from decision-making, yet often the most affected by large-scale natural resource development. Several articles in this issue provide compelling evidence of the marginalisation of indigenous and remote rural communities from decisions taken by central governments and big business about large-scale natural resource development in their locality.

Authors here offer a gender perspective on this: women in these communities are particularly unlikely to be heard in decision-making, yet the gendered dynamics of livelihoods in these communities mean women and men are affected in markedly different ways. Gender power relations in these communities may be significantly worsened, with violence against women worsening and women's bargaining power in marriage and the family spiraling down.

Elana Nightingale, Karina Czyzewski, Frank Tester, and Nadia Aaruaq, of the Inuit women's organisation Pauktuutit, offer an account of gold-mining and its impact on Inuit communities in Qamani'tuaq, Nunavut Territory, Canada. Kalowatie Deonandan, Rebecca Tatham, and Brennan Field focus on the struggle of Indigenous women activists challenging nickel-mining in El Estor, Guatemala. The South African feminist collective WoMin write about the struggles of the Xolobeni community to consent to plans for mineral extraction on their lands.

Understanding the impact of extractives on rural livelihoods: a gender perspective

To fully understand the impact of natural resource development on livelihoods, wellbeing and rights of communities affected by natural resource projects, it is essential to turn a ‘gender lens’ on women's roles and gender relations within households and the community as a whole. Within communities affected by plans to extract or exploit natural resources on a large scale, women often find their economic contribution to the household and community either ignored altogether or misunderstood, and their concerns about dramatic economic changes brought about by large-scale natural resource development minimised.

Women and men relate to land and other natural resources in gendered ways. In many rural communities, household livelihoods depend wholly or partly on agriculture and direct use of natural resources, for family use and for sale. Families depend on the cultivation or gathering of foods and other valuable commodities from the natural environment, including fields, forests, lakes, and rivers. Natural resources provide heat, food, and water for drinking and washing. They are often central to spiritual life and culture.

The gender division of labour varies from place to place, and between different individuals and households, and economic and social changes are challenging and changing the reality of women's and men's work and its significance to family survival. Western ideas of gender roles have been exported throughout the world, through globalised processes of economic development and cultural influences. While both women and men contribute economically to the household, men are commonly seen as the primary breadwinners while women's primary role is to care for the family. In rural livelihoods, women's unpaid family work includes subsistence farming as well as other domestic tasks, which often involve drudgery in contexts where poverty and lack of technology to lessen this workload result in hours being spent in these tasks. Women earn income as time and opportunity allows.

Yet despite these critical roles in family and community, the significance of women's economic contribution to family life is underestimated and often not recognised or valued as work by policymakers and development planners. Women are not identified as heads of households, and often do not hold official leadership positions within communities. Instead, they are represented by male household heads, community leaders and politicians who may not reflect their concerns.

Women typically lack real power to influence decision-making about how natural resources are used today, and into the future. In patrilineal and patrilocal societies, women marry into a family and move to live on its land. Women do not own or control land and other resources, but can access them vis a vis their marital rights. Natural resources may be communally-held and allocated to families headed by men, or formally ‘owned’ by means of a land title, often held by the male head of household.

Christina Hill, Phan Thi Ngoc Thuy, Jacqueline Storey and Silavanh Vongphosy's article offers an example of how gender determines people's access to, and control over, water. They focus on these gendered patterns in relation to water and the importance of rivers in the lives of rural peoples in Laos and Vietnam. The authors vividly show how despite the critical role of the rivers in care work as well as water-dependent agriculture, women – and an understanding of gender roles and relations – were marginalised from decision-making at all levels, from the household to the state. As they say, ‘water governance and hydropower decision-making were no exception to this rule’ (this issue, 458).

Yet women's marginalisation from natural resource governance and decision-making profoundly harms the ability of development planners and policymakers to assess the impact of resource extraction on communities. In their article on the El Estor mine in Guatemala, Kalowatie Deonandan et al. highlight women's particular focus on the polluting effect of mining on water supplies and the health implications for women and their families, ranging from chronic gastrointestinal problems to birth defects. Women also focused on the airborne pollution, relating this to rainfall, land productivity, and food availability. Women are affected not only personally, but as family carers and providers:

Women's anxieties over the environmental changes stem from their unique knowledge, based on gender roles, of the local ecological context

(Kalowatie Deonandan, Rebecca Tatham and Brennan Field, 408). 

Women's absence from planning and decision-making also means significant stresses on household livelihoods can go unmarked and unaddressed. These affect harmony in households and the wider community, and often increase intra-personal conflict and violence. A number of articles in this issue highlight how gender roles alter, and gender relations are strained, by large-scale development projects that reduce access to land and other natural resources.

Once again, the details play out in context-specific ways. Yet it is possible to say that generally, when the availability of natural resources decreases - or resources become polluted or unusable - communities turn to alternative livelihood strategies with higher dependence on other factors. Levels of education and skills people have, and their degree of mobility and flexibility to take up other economic opportunities available to them become important factors of survival – all of which are largely determined by a person's gender.

Artisanal mining itself may provide a livelihood for people on the margins. Around 20 million people were estimated to be involved in and around mineral resource extraction in 2005, as wage workers and entrepreneurs (CASM 2005, no page number). An extraordinarily wide variation exists within this single statistic, though, including formal employment through to marginal, precarious work, both in and around mines (Siddiqui and Lahri-Dutt 2015).

In their article in this issue, Ivan Mpagi, Flavia Nalubega, Beatrice Ongode, Sally Henderson, and Harriet Gimbo Robinah describe ActionAid-supported research and activism in the context of artisanal gold mining in Mubende District, Uganda. This article offers a fascinating account of life in mines and surrounding camps, marked by risk, pollution and poisoning from mercury used in the panning process, danger in caves and seams, and in the surrounding bars and hotels that spring up to capture some of the earnings of the miners.

Currently, as Ivan Mpagi et al. discuss in their article, artisanal gold mining in Uganda yields significant profits, and the government is seeking to develop the industry and regulate it. But activism from the grassroots up is needed to complement any government action if the miners are to benefit from reforms that could be made to mining policy, laws and regulations, so mining becomes decent work, and safety is increased. Artisanal mines are risky and dangerous places, which should be regulated in the interests of those working in them. But social justice and an understanding of the desperate economic needs that motivate people to go into mining need to shape the regulatory processes.

People whose existing livelihoods are threatened by large-scale natural resource development require alternative options if they are to survive. Both women and men may end up migrating to cities or other rural areas to find alternative employment, including in artisanal mining. Gender shapes the kinds of roles to be found there: in Ivan Mpagi et al's article, the different roles of women and men in and around artisanal mines are explored. Women's and men's options to move to the mines, and the work they do there, are both are shaped by gender, especially family care commitments. A fortunate few make sufficient money to invest in future security; but most eke out a living on the margins.

Companies engaged in mineral, gas or oil extraction may promise compensation to local communities, in the form of cash payments or offer to construct amenities for community use, for example water-points. They may also offer replacement lands or housing. They also sometimes offer alternative livelihood schemes However, these attempts to ensure communities are able to adapt and survive are often insufficient, and/or compensation may be paid to male heads of households (UN Women 2014).

Natural resource development may bring the potential for jobs, yet employment in the formal industrial environments of large-scale enterprises is gendered. Male workforces are sought in the main for mines and oil rigs. Industries which offer employment to men reflect outdated gender stereotypes in which men adopt the role of breadwinner, while women are assumed to be available to care for the family in men's absence, as ‘housewives’. This is a binary way of organising labour, associated with Western models of industrial development (Lahiri-Dutt and Macintyre 2006).

Some large-scale natural resource industries do employ women. Agri-industries – for example, growing cut flowers for export – may seek a female workforce. Women may also be employed in support roles in industries seen as ‘male’, as Asanda Benya's gender analysis of women's employment in the South African mining industry shows in this issue.

New forms of employment can challenge family and community life, with gendered implications. If a mine offers employment to women as well as men, one tension is gone, but others may remain. Elana Nightingale et al's article shows the tensions in family relations created in Canadian Inuit communities by male and female employment in mining, when spouses are separated from each other because the mines use a ‘fly-in-/fly-out’ rotational schedule.

Gender analysis shows us that the significance of a wage to gender power relations can be enormous. If only men can secure paid work, this can make gender inequality in the household worse. If a male wage is essential to household survival, it will be welcomed for that reason but the additional dependency it creates can result in a risky situation for households, especially where there is any tension between marital partners.

For women workers, employment in large-scale industry can be simultaneously exploitative, offering low wages and insecure employment – yet also potentially empowering, provided women can control the income they earn, giving them more power to make choices (Kabeer 1998). Conversely, if industries seek out male workers only, this can be bad for gender relations. Women in Kalowatie Deonandan et al's case study speak of how mining has disempowered them, changing their bargaining power within marriage and the household. They report that while a man working at the mine brings cash into the local economy and income to the household, it also brings social tensions and domestic upheavals. Some men in this case study now feel emboldened to decide how to spend their earnings without consulting women, who fear speaking out ‘as they could become victims of abuse and abandonment’ (this issue, 410).

Clearly, even though studies of the impact of new industries often speak of household income rising, this economic gain can come with a high price tag of household conflict, tension and violence. The benefits from increased household income might be short-lived, if family and community break-downs result. Once again, feminist analysis reminds us of the importance of looking at gender power relations and patterns of consumption, rather than focusing on income at household level and assuming that this will benefit all members of a household equally.

This account shows us how women, men, and gender relations are affected by large-scale natural resource development. As we have recognised, these changes may be positive as well as negative, and will play out differently for individuals in different contexts. But if these complex issues are ignored or misunderstood, there is a real risk that a large-scale development project will harm people, while missing chances to advance gender equality and women's empowerment.

Challenging ‘super-patriarchy’ in extractive industries

As highlighted in the last section, women, men and children are all involved in mining, and the communities that grow up around mining. Throughout history, and in many different global contexts, the cultures that emerge in and around mines - and the gender roles and relationships associated with mining - have been particularly interesting to researchers.

In this issue, Sarah Bradshaw, Brian Linneker and Lisa Overton's article offers an analysis of ‘super-patriarchy’ and mining that draws on, and develops, feminist analyses of patriarchy. They plead for careful contextual analysis, and attention to difference between women, as well as recognition that patriarchy does not benefit all men equally. They explore the extreme masculine and feminine stereotyping that goes on around mining. In the eyes of another researcher, male miners are stereotyped as either ‘reckless drunks’ or ‘disciplined proletarians’ (Burke 2006). Meanwhile, women are seen as ‘wives and whores’.

As Sarah Bradshaw et al. discuss, the reality is more complex and nuanced. While women are actively choosing lives as workers, including sex workers, and wives in mining environments, the significance of these choices is very different for individuals, and across different contexts. Recognising this diversity, and women's agency to negotiate a living in the face of super-patriarchy is, they argue, the first step to ensuring natural resource justice. A natural resource justice agenda needs to help both women and men in poverty to challenge super-patriarchal power, and capture a fairer share of the wealth gained from extractives.

Sarah Bradshaw et al. remind us that norms associating power, control and domination with masculinity imbue politics, business, and industry, and men are still overwhelmingly ‘in charge’ in heavy industries, while the workforce also is overwhelmingly male. Patriarchal power works to further the interests of global political and business elites. In this world, the authors assert, most political and business leaders are still elite men. Women are wives and partners, supporting male bosses and workers. These men command other proletarian men who have their own care and sexual needs met by women also. These gendered power relations ensure the smooth running of a profoundly unequal and exploitative process.

In her article in this issue, Asanda Benya discusses the experience of women miners in South Africa, who are attempting to challenge the notion that mining is a man's world. As mining has ‘modernised’ in countries across the world, women in contexts all over the world have found themselves banned from working below the surface (Lahiri-Dutt and Macintyre 2006). The range of reasons given have included moral outrage, superstition, and practical concerns to do with the welfare of women with babies and small children. Obviously, women caring for babies should not be labouring at a coalface, and a desire to end such practices informed earlier attempts at ‘reform’ in many countries (ibid.). However, in the absence of alternative ways of making a decent living, prohibition is not a solution.

Asanda Benya bases her account of the barriers to full equality at work on a prolonged research period in which she herself trained as a miner. In a context in which governments and private corporations are both considering how to ensure gender equality at work, the women seeking employment in these industries are pioneering a new gender-equal way of thinking about this work. Being a pioneer involves daily sexual harassment and abuse.

In their article in this issue, Kalowatie Deonandan et al. show some of the ways in which gendered social norms – and in particular, gender-based violence - can be used by powerful mining interests to intimidate entire communities. This article focuses on the historic marginalisation and dispossession of the local Q’eqchi Maya people in Guatemala, who have lived on their lands without land titles. Gender norms – including the norm that legitimises gender-based violence – are used to terrify and intimidate women (and, it follows, attack and oppress entire families and communities). This, too, lends itself to an analysis of ‘super-patriarchy’.

Towards a feminist natural resource justice strategy

In this section, we consider some ways in which governments, the private sector, women's and social justice movements can realise a positive vision in which large-scale natural resource extraction and exploitation can play a role in realising sustainable and just human development. Natural resource justice is based on wise use of natural resources for the good of all. This involves supporting women, as well as men, and their movements and organisations, to influence the agendas of governments and the private sector.

Private - public partnerships

Private-public collaboration is critical. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasise the role of the private sector working as a potential partner in development. An emphasis on making markets work for the poor is one factor that has thrust companies into the role of ‘development agents’ – that is, as organisations that should consciously seek to deliver outcomes that contribute to international development goals (Blowfield and Dolan 2014). In contexts where democracy and accountability are partial or absent, the role of the private sector to support these ends is especially important.

Business interests in natural resource initiatives are increasingly embracing goals that work to ensure their activities result in positive outcomes for citizens. A number of extractive industries companies and associations, as well as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) have adopted policies that endorse the right of free prior and informed consent (FPIC) of indigenous peoples, which is the right of indigenous peoples, and in some cases any impacted community, to decide whether oil, gas, and mining projects go forward. There is growing pressure from business interests, IFIs, governments and civil society that projects should be socially and environmentally responsible. The private sector is becoming aware of its responsibility to ensure that projects do not add to poverty, powerlessness and gender inequality; rather, it can play a key role in overcoming them.

Gaining knowledge of current gender roles and relations in a particular location, and ensuring planning of natural resource extraction happens with full understanding of what these are, is a critical first step in ensuring outcomes do not harm gender relations, and actually support the aims of gender equality and women's empowerment.

As we have seen earlier in this Introduction, gender analysis is critical. If a project goes ahead, unforeseen harm can be avoided – and the potential for women's empowerment and gender equality maximised – if a gender impact assessment is carried out to plan for, monitor and evaluate impact. We also know that a change can initially create increased tension and conflict even when women welcome the long-term potential of a project. Working with both women and men in a community to ensure this does not occur is critical. Ultimately, of course, this requires courage on the part of planners, and openness to the possibility that a community will say no to a plan for a large-scale natural resource development project. The right to consent is critical, as the WoMin Collective argues in its article in this issue.

Gender impact assessments are familiar tools in development organisations. Currently, private sector companies are recognising the usefulness of these. In their article in this issue, Christina Hill et al. describe lobbying and advocacy by Oxfam, the Lao Women's Union, and the Center for Social Research and Development in Vietnam to engage the hydropower sector on gender issues and to work with companies and other stakeholders to pilot gender impact assessments of hydropower projects in Laos and Vietnam.

For over twenty years, international development organisations have been developing conceptual tools and analytical frameworks to ensure gender issues are integrated into their own work, and hence we are currently seeing fruitful partnerships and mutual learning arrangements between development institutions, government, civil society and the private sector, to ensure that similar progress is made to ‘mainstream gender’ into extractive industries. In her article in this issue, Alice Powell outlines three interesting case studies of initiatives that have aimed to do this. She focuses on Publish What You Pay (PWYP), the Natural Resource Governance Institute, and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. Alice Powell discusses the importance of transparency and accountability in breaking the ‘resource curse’, observing:

Poor natural resource management is exacerbated – and sometimes enabled – by a lack of openness and transparency, and when governments and extractive companies are not accountable to citizens

(Alice Powell, 490). 

In her article, Alice Powell provides a useful overview of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives (TAIs): collaborative efforts between governments, extractive companies and civil society to promote the disclosure of information about how much extractive companies pay governments for the right to extract and sell natural resources; and how the profits are spent. How this information is disseminated and who can access it is an important part of the story, especially for the accountability piece – the ability of citizens, empowered with information, to hold governments and companies to account for how extractive revenues are spent and invested (or not). As Alice Powell argues, ensuring that TAIs focus on the gender dimensions of these questions is critical.

Alice Powell's article gives detailed analysis of the factors that led to the development of an interesting and potentially very effective toolkit designed by PWYP in collaboration with UN Women and others to integrate gender and women's rights issues into the extractive industries value chain – that is, the various steps and activities undertaken in the planning and implementation of natural resource extraction processes and operations. The toolkit provides guidance for understanding and addressing the gender dimensions of each step in the value chain, from before the decision is made to extract resources, through project implementation and monitoring, to the tracking of revenues and investments. This approach of grafting gender analysis tools and frameworks onto existing models used in industries is a fruitful way forward, making these paradigms more effective, comprehensive, and robust.

Supporting women's natural resource justice defenders

Activism on natural resource justice and women's rights starts from recognising women's actions to challenge the issues they face. A critical strategy suggested by the articles in this issue is for development actors to work in partnership with women's rights organisations and movements.

Women activists see political action as critical to their struggle to put food on the table each day, but also as a key to their long-term security and to sustainable human development. The articles in this issue clearly show the need for development policymakers and practitioners – as well as politicians and business leaders - to recognise women as agents, not victims, and support them in their struggles to achieve natural resource justice. In work looking at women human rights defenders’ activism in Latin America around mines, Katy Jenkins and Glevys Rondón have argued that an approach to development ‘which emphasises uncovering and challenging unequal power relations is crucial’ (Jenkins and Rondón 2015, 406).

At community level, women natural resource defenders are linking feminist struggles for social justice to environmental struggles for sustainable development. They are both women's rights defenders and natural resource defenders, as stated at the start of this Introduction. In their article in this issue, Kalowatie Deonandan, Rebecca Tatham and Brennan Field explore the experiences and perspectives of women involved in the El Estor struggle, where women's activism is based on a sense of common cause, empowering women to mount a collective struggle drawing on Mayan indigenous culture as well as feminism.

A feminist natural resource justice agenda links the individual, household, community and state – as well as focuses on the business institutions involved in natural resource development. The strategies that come out of this agenda intend to change power relations at all of these levels. In this issue, Sulakshana Nandi and Samir Garg recount women's resistance in Chhattisgarh state, India, where nearly half the land is covered with mixed forests, central to the lives and survival of the indigenous peoples living there. Forest products are used by tribal women to feed families. Currently, forests are being cut down, and replaced with teak plantations.

The article focuses on the activism of a women's organisation, Adivasi Adhikar Samiti, to resist the activities of the Forest Development Corporations, profit-making bodies that have been set up in most states of India to undertake forest-based commercial activities. The strategies adopted are discussed, and include mobilising village assemblies; monitoring and resisting tree-felling; street protest; framing the forests as essential to health, and working with health workers; making representations to government and security services; and litigation. Critically, these strategies are aimed not only at community level, but demonstrate the importance of working at all levels to engage influentials and power-holders.

National development strategies designed by the state need to reflect a concern for the wellbeing of all citizens. In an article in this issue authored by the South African WoMin Collective, four of WoMin's members present and analyse a case study of a South African community-based struggle to assert the ‘right of consent’ over proposed mineral extraction. The Amadiba Crisis Committee in rural South Africa is currently fighting for the right of the Xolobeni community to decide on the development of natural resources in its location, focusing on the principle of free, prior and informed consent through communal land rights. The resistance is ‘carving out a space to defend its development agenda, countering the shortcomings of the mineral rights legislative framework and going against the dominant development paradigm (this issue, 433).

An important insight of this article, and one that is well-established in current development discourse, is that the significance of the land goes beyond money. Development is about social and cultural wellbeing, as well as economic security. In the WoMIn article, the protestors emphasise ‘the centrality of land to the Pondo culture’ (ibid.).

People were worried about their grazing land, the amounts of water that would be consumed, the impact on livestock and livelihoods, the destruction of medicinal plants, and the interference with ancestors’ graves’.

Titanium-mining threatened the Xolobeni community in a range of ways that powerfully demonstrate the importance of natural resources to various facets of human life. WoMin is currently working with the community to argue for the principle not only of the Right to Consent, but the principle to veto development proposals that work against communities’ interests: the Right to Say No.

Conclusion

As authors in this issue show, turning a resource curse into a driver of sustainable human development and a means to alleviate poverty needs to involve governments, civil society, and private businesses, working together with women and men in poverty and their movements and organisations. It requires supporting women in communities affected by natural resource extraction, to have their voices heard, valued, and acted on. It also involves valuing and supporting bottom-up, participatory and inclusive decision-making furthering the common good of all citizens, not just political and business elites.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Kate Stanley and Keith Slack for their valuable assistance in the conceptualisation, editing and reviewing of this issue.

Notes on contributors

Caroline Sweetman is Editor of Gender & Development.

Maria Ezpeleta is Gender Advisor, Extractive Industries, Oxfam America. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 A patch of land to cultivate, or the ability to gather ‘famine foods’ from common lands, can enable a family to survive the loss of a cash crop, unemployment, ill-health, or other unforeseen crises. A recent issue of Gender & Development focused on Resilience - a concern that links closely to the theme of Natural Resource Justice addressed here (Vol, 23 No. 3, November 2015).

2 Gender equality and sustainable development have long been linked. The ecofeminist movement was started by the feminist writer and activist Françoise d’Eaubonne (who coined the term ecoféminisme in 1974), who linked feminism to environmentalism. Ecofeminism is related to the practical development approach referred to as Women, Environment and Development (WED), which emphasised the shortcomings of Women In Development (WID) approaches of the 1980s onwards. Its emphasis on the shortcomings of Western models of industrial development went on to inspire the evolving field of Gender and Development in the late 1980s, which stressed the need to challenge Western models of industrial development in favour of resourcing Southern women's own solutions founded in a vision that linked gender equality with sustainable human development and peace (DAWN 1987).

3 One year ago, Gender & Development devoted an issue to the theme of Working On Gender in Fragile Contexts (Vol. 24 No. 3, November 2016).

4 It is worth noting that a second factor identified in Naomi Hossain's (2017) analysis of Bangladesh's relatively successful human development as a country without great natural resource wealth, is its political leaders’ continuing connection with the countryside and traditional ways of life including agriculture.