Problem overview:

     Awareness and visions: Women have, through the ages, played a central role in environmental management, through good gardening practices, promoting safe water supplies, and maintaining home cleanliness. Today, women are becoming prime movers in environmental reform throughout the world. In this example China outlines womens coordinated contribution for economic and environmental development. There is also a marvelous story of Niu Yuqin, a women who created a forest from desert land.

Background:

      Women's key role in achieving sustainable development

      Chinese women have taken an active part in the adoption of sustainable practices with concrete results. In 1989, a large-scale mobilisation was initiated among the rural women of various nationalities, encouraging them to study science and technology, and compete with each other in their achievements and contributions.

      Training courses on practical technology, part of the illiteracy-elimination programme, have benefited 96 million women trainees and helped 20.03 million women become literate. Moreover, women federations at all levels have been searching for new ways to lift the poverty-stricken out of their plight. The women's federations have adopted a number of methods to alleviate poverty, e.g. the establishment of agricultural poverty-alleviating cooperatives where the majority of members are women and the provision of priority loans to poor women.

      These diversified and flexible methods have won extensive support and have brought about great success in poverty alleviation for women. The women's federations also contributed substantially to protecting the rights and interests and creating job opportunities for women in the urban areas. They have also organised various training courses for re-employment so that female workers temporarily out of work may learn new skills and find new jobs. This increase in women employment and job diversity promotes social stability.

      The Chinese women's organisations have also been working hard to protect the environment and have made substantial contributions. The popularisation of the fuel-conserving stove in the countryside was driven by the women federations, and the method of separate treatment of urban wastes was advocated by the women officials in the neighbourhood committees.

      Another example of women's contribution to the coordinated development of economy and environment is the fact that each year 120 million Chinese women take part in the "March 8th Green Project" - a voluntary reforestation scheme. As a result of this action, more than 60 thousand small orchards, mulberry fields and other green bases were built and are operated by women in the rural areas.

The rural women have also actively participated in

• the construction of water conservation facilities
  
  
• the comprehensive management of small drainage areas
  
  
• the collection of organic fertilizers as substitutes for chemical equivalents
  
  
• the dissemination of new farming technologies.

      In addition, their positive actions in response to the government's family planning policy are gradual easing the country's population burden.

      All of above demonstrate that woman are playing an indispensable role in the realisation of China's sustainable social and economic development.

Niu Yuqin - A Model Peasant of Afforestation and Desert Control.

      Niu Yuqin lives on the fringe of the Mausu Desert on the southern Inner Mongolia Plateau. In 1983, she and her husband signed a contract for 1,333 hectares of barren sand land. At that time, she was not as rich as she is now, but Niu managed to borrow some money to buy saplings. Everyday, she got up before dawn, put the saplings (which weigh more than 50 kilos) on her shoulders and walked 20 kilometres to plant trees. Over the next 14 years, she kept on planting trees and growing grass despite tremendous hardships. Sometimes, the sandstorms would blow down all the trees she had just planted, but she was never dejected and would work all day long to set the trees upright again. Neither did the death of her husband in 1988 dampen her spirit or hamper her effort on afforestation. Through the years, Niu's trees and grasses have covered a land of over 1,466 hectares. Niu Yuqin, now a famous model peasant in China, was granted the "Doctor Rao Award" by the Asia-Pacific Office of UNFAO for her outstanding achievements in desertification control.