community

This discussion paper conducts cost-effectiveness analyses of interventions that bring a gender lens to community-based advisory services in rural areas. Cost-effectiveness analysis subjects both the cost side and the effects side of agricultural interventions to technical scrutiny and unifies both sides in order to compare the relative cost-effectiveness of different modalities of a program, of efforts to reach different target groups or achieve different outcomes. »

This article argues that participatory land governance and consultation processes need follow-up mechanisms since new actors, claims and strategies emerge after consent has been reached. In the study area Massingir, Mozambique, foreign private and domestic investments in the agribusiness, tourism, and conservation sectors in the district have been on the rise. This resulted in events that scholars and activists have come to describe as land, water, and green grabs. »

In this issue of the Urban Agriculture Magazine the central theme is community involvement in urban food planning. Urban agriculture and food systems are gaining the attention of planners and policy makers across the global south and north. While this emerging planning and policy attention is laudable, it must build on decades of community-led efforts to rebuild urban agriculture and community food systems. Failure to build on these on-the ground practices run the risk of developing policy that is uninformed and disconnected from the lived experiences of people in communities. »

This paper (PDF) from the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and SNV is a background paper to the Nutrition and Gender Sensitive Agriculture (NGSA) Toolkit. The paper refers to the current discussions on linking food and nutrition security at program level. It looks at the discussions from a gender lens, and how this demands for a different way of program planning. It shows the need to plan programs based on knowledge of the current realities of men and women in a particular context and time. To facilitate this kind of program planning, the toolkit promotes an integrated approach to understand under-nutrition through linking different sectors -namely agriculture, nutrition, WASH- using a gender lens. »

This article explores how communities in informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya create and use maps to ensure food safety. While informal settlements tend to play a key role in the economies of cities, they are often not depicted on official maps from the government. However, a map on which food kiosks, street vendors and hazards such as rubbish dumps and open sewers are depicted can help to ensure food safety. »

This article uses a gender-based perspective to assess the conditions that underlie vulnerability and resilience of households and communities that face climate-change. The authors utilized a feminist political ecology framework to analyze how women and men are differently affected by issues of climate change and resource degradation. The authors compared the agricultural and livelihood systems of male and female respondents, as well as their productive resources, organization and access to services, and concluded that women have less access than men to common property resources, as well as to cash to obtain goods or services. »