This volume of Development explores how four key environmental concerns – water, gender and fisheries, climate justice and agriculture – are highly political issues at the core of global social justice. The strong message throughout the volume is that the growing media and policy hype around climate change, water and food scarcity, the oil crisis and spiralling consumer costs cannot be divorced from global tensions marked by unfair trade, skewed development, diminished human rights and widening gender inequalities. The climate crisis, the devastating food crisis and rising oil prices indicate present huge obstacles to survival and improving livelihoods.

This issue on the ‘Future of Agriculture’ brings together the insights of the earlier issues on water for people, gender and fisheries and climate justice and development. The issue is certainly timely as the current global food crisis has forced world attention on the state of agriculture. Agriculture is an issue, as many of the authors here remind us, that policymakers and development banks have been ignoring. But no longer. In April 2008 as Guest Editor Nicola Bullard¹ was contacting authors, an extraordinary UN expert report laid out the future for agriculture. As two of its senior writers, Marcia Ishii-Eiteman and Lim Li Ching point out in this edition of Last Word the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD, http://www.agassessment.org, accessed 8 September 2008). Report on agriculture and development demands a radical change in agricultural policy and practice in order to address hunger and poverty, social inequities and environmental sustainability.

The report’s central message is that the business-as-usual scenario of industrial farming, input and energy intensiveness, damage to the environment and marginalization of small-scale farmers is no longer tenable. What is required is not only a systematic redirection of investment, funding, research and policy focus towards the needs of small-farmers but also a completely different system of economic and industrial management that takes into account diverse voices and perspectives, particularly those who work the land, poor farmers and in particular women, in their role as farmers, community managers, providers of nutrition, keepers of tradition and leaders of protests.

This journal’s articles from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the USA and Europe illustrate well the critical importance of the IAASTD’s call to a completely different world system of trade, development and gender relations. The authors – distinguished professors, well-known writers, researchers and leaders of civil society and peasant movements – all warn that there is nothing romantic or anti-modern about a call to listen to the farmers, peasants and protesters. Whether writing about agricultural policy in Pakistan, soybean production in Latin America, chicken farming and local markets in the US, pesticides in India, the green revolution in Africa, or the global implications of biofuels and trade and development policy dictated by giant agricultural industries, the authors expose the horrors of globalized capitalist industrial agriculture.

The authors reveal that the victims of global capitalist agriculture are not only the farmers committing suicide by ingesting pesticides, or the millions who die from hunger who are denied their rights to food and dignified livelihoods. As Walden Bello warns, we are all involved in this nightmare marked by financial and environmental crises, social dysfunctions of urban-industrial life, lack of water, energy and growing food insecurity. The angry protests of the farmers’ movements, such as the women and men of La Via Campesina, are speaking not only to their governments and to small land owners but to all of us. We are implicated in the catastrophic consequences of today’s global agricultural production patterns on community and life. The food crisis is part of the deep financial crisis, the unprecedented climate and environmental crisis which are symptoms of the failure of the neo-liberal global capitalist model where all aspects of society (including food production, health and education) are organized around greed and profit making.

But despite the gravity of such a diagnosis, the journal’s message is not one of despair. As Paul Nicholson, a founder of La Via Campesina, states in the interview published here: ‘The blatant failure of the dominant model opens new spaces to challenge it and to propose alternatives, not only in terms of agrarian policies, but also for more global social changes’. He explains how media and modern communication technologies have allowed for greater mobilization and protest forcing governments to question technological solutions such as agrofuels and corporate domination and to push governments to rethink the wisdom of trade and exports as against domestic production. The message that growing social and economic disparities, environmental degradation and global food crisis stem directly from the free-market restructuring of agriculture is out, and more and more people are listening and wanting to take action.

Raj Patel in his lead article and recent bestselling book Stuffed and Starved underlines that taking action to end the food crisis plays out in different ways depending on where you live. For most people in urban environments in the North, it is about finding out just what we are eating, where it comes from and where it is processed. He points out that such ‘choices’ are ‘far stranger and more unnatural than we thought’ because ‘at every step of the way they have been attended by food corporations trying to make money out of our choices’ (Patel, 2008: 290). It is about eating less and eating better. It is about ending commercialization of food, and eating locally, the slow food movement in Italy being one example of what consumers together with local growers can achieve. In the South it is too often about survival, having access to land, food and security. It is about the violent protests that push southern governments to stand up to powerful northern interests and bring, for example, the WTO negotiations to a halt. In either case he suggests that, ‘unless you’re a corporate food executive, the food system isn’t working for you. Around the world, farmers and farm workers are dying … through processed food consumers are engorged and intoxicated’ (Patel, 2008: 293).

Nevertheless, we can reshape the food and agricultural system. Clearly we are not talking about simply better development policy to address technical or economic problems. Sadly, even on its own terms, the current response of the intergovernmental system, the Millennium Development Goals to halve global poverty by 2015, is failing to address today’s social, economic and environmental crises.

To start with, Development readers should take note of the in-depth analysis provided in the articles to learn more about the worrying facts that make us deeply question just what is driving our present global food system: nutrition and life or profit for a few. It is salutary to realize the depth of the crises and just how much we are not in control of our economies, nutrition and health. But it is equally important to learn the other strong message of the journal that there is a shared vision that addresses the abuses of the global industrialized agricultural system.

That message is about all of us claiming food sovereignty, or peoples’ rights to define their agricultural and food policy, including the rights of farmers and peasants, the rights of consumers and the rights of women, who play a major role in agricultural production and food. Food sovereignty requires major changes, from changing our tastes, eating locally and seasonally, supporting locally owned business, along with a profound and comprehensive change in rural policies based on living wages for all, rights and support for a sustainable architecture of the global food system, as well as recognizing and providing restitution for the injustices of the past (Patel, 2008: 302–317).

We can take courage from Nicholson’s belief that people will start developing their own alternatives just because it will become a necessity. He speaks of more and more people in the North spontaneously joining the struggle of Via Campesina, because ‘they feel part of this struggle for life’. He and other proponents of food sovereignty bring strength and confidence that across the world it is possible to build a new society that sustains life and health rather than greed and fear.

So, why is the journal entitled climate justice and development rather than climate change and development? It is after all climate change that the many intergovernmental meetings, articles, in-depth media reporting, books, newspaper articles and blogs are talking about. We have scientific reports, technological solutions and a plethora of economic predictions rolling out the figures. The costs of global warming are dire. Governments, with scientific and expert economic backing, all pronounce that climate change is a threat to humanity and nature. We must take action or else the globe suffers the consequences. Corporations are entreated to change their ways, and emissions are to be controlled and traded. At a minimum, jet setters are asked to pay a bit more towards the cost of their flight to the atmosphere. Citizens are to take public transport and save CO₂ emissions. No one can question it; we are in the grips of climate change.

Indeed we are, but the issue is not about the amount of damage climate change will wreak on future economies and human prosperity. It is how we respond to it. It is clearly a matter for global concern and requires global action. So, is the answer to call a halt to the growing new super economies of China and India? Hold the US and Europe to ransom until they take responsibility for the global environment? Is the answer to put the Kyoto Protocol into action? Do we encourage corporations to go green? Or should we look at how to engineer carbon-eating trees? Or grow corn and convert it into biofuels? Is ethanol the solution? What about low cost solar energy solutions? Can we create a world economy based on biotechnology, where some low cost and environmentally benign technology backstops carbon emissions? These are just some of the economic and scientific proposals on the table. Several of these are addressed in the articles in this journal edition.

But in many ways discussing these proposals, and how to implement them, including those in place such as carbon trading, miss the point. The response is not a technological one, or even an economic one, nor, despite all the pronouncements at high-level intergovernmental meetings, a policy one. The real issue is about what principles and what ethics with which we respond. In short, we are talking about taking political ecology and social justice seriously. We are talking about the injustice of making those people who have contributed the least to climate change to be the ones that pay, again the price of other peoples’ lifestyles.

What is needed is a systemic change. Climate change forces us to see that the dominant development model is not working. It is not enough for individuals in the North to start recycling, to buy ‘eco’ and ‘bio’ products, to pay a little more on the air ticket to ‘off set’ costs, to turn off the taps and lights to ‘save’ water and energy. None of this will be enough. The emphasis on individual behaviour only distracts attention away from corporations and governments, who determine policies on a daily basis that lead to massive scale ecological destruction.

But there is also the danger that the huge and deafening cries about climate change are starting a global panic with the pronouncement that global warming is THE greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. The arguments are bitter and passionate. The need is for urgent solutions, NOW. But the problem is precisely that those shrill cries about global warming are distracting our attention from the serious issues that are far more dangerous to our planet and humanity that are part and parcel of the same factors that produced climate change. The surging food prices, conflicts over natural resources, nuclear weaponry and environmental degradation are intertwined with the deepening social injustice marked by growing hunger, and diseases that are shortening lives for the majority of the world’s people. Food scarcity is related to the use of agricultural land for biofuels. Large numbers of people in the developing world can no longer buy staple foods so that North Americans can discover ways to ensure that they can continue driving SUVs. The point in developing biofuels is not to save the environment; it is to reduce dependence on oil rich states. The carbon trade offs are not saving the environment they are creating wealth for the speculators.

If we are to find solutions to climate change we have to speak about justice. We need to think squarely about a change in ethics, and a change in who takes responsibility for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions. The focus has to be on changing the ethics of the industrialized economies that have relied on cheap energy – in the form of oil, coal and gas – to fuel development based on economic growth.

As the articles in the issue point out, global warming leading to increasingly frequent and devastating climatic events requires radical ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We need to move to renewable and safe energy systems. These changes are not only about new policies, new technologies and weighing the costs and risks. They are about tackling the source of the problem. They are about systemic economic and social transformations that move towards new ways of living together within the limits of the planet, ensuring the individual and collective rights of all people.

The journal issue is based partially on papers from a UN expert level conference that looked at the underlying economic and social development shifts that must happen in both the North and the South.¹ They conclude that corporate-driven globalization and neo-liberal economic policies are promoting unsustainable production, consumption and trade. Although in the UN expert setting it could not be spelt out so plainly, the concern is that unsustainable production is leading to a highly unjust situation where the good of the society and the environment is subordinated to corporate profits, and the privatization of the commons and public goods. We are living in a world economy that is based on inequality and poverty and the neo-liberal economic growth model that is fuelling climate change.

It is no longer possible to continue business as usual. Current corporate sponsored ‘development’ projects such as agrofuels, large-scale hydro-electric dams, monoculture tree plantations, nuclear power, genetically modified seeds and trees are just increasing the vulnerability of people living in poor countries to climate change. Given the present market-led logic that is leading to the privatization of public services, such as water and energy, new technologies are unlikely to the benefit of the majority of the world’s people, whatever the accounting done about ‘offsetting’ the carbon emissions of the very wealthy. Solutions from nanotechnology, carbon capture and storage, carbon trading and offsetting schemes are profoundly questionable from an environmentalist and human rights standpoint, leaving to one side the question of whether they actually work!

Solutions need to come from radically re-aligning North–South relations² in order to reverse resource expropriation, dispossession, exploitation and polluting activities. Industrialized countries must lead the way by committing to binding obligations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. Adaptation to climate change requires a change in the rules of the game that has so far been skewed to benefit the rich countries of the North. International trade and finance rules need to be revised in order to allow financial transfers from North to South for adaptation and mitigation based on ecological debt, redirecting military budgets and imposing innovative and progressive taxes. Transnational corporations have to be regulated to end their economic and political power and to ensure they follow broader just social and ecological objectives.

We need to live within our ecological limits. This means first and foremost to reduce consumption and end the environmentally degrading lifestyles of the northern and southern elites and shortening production chains to reduce transportation and increase energy efficiency. At the same time, it is critical to restore biodiversity and community control of the commons and to support sustainable peasant and family farming and the principles of food sovereignty in order to tackle the growing hunger and poverty in the world. In looking at just solutions we need to be aware of the important role women play in food production and natural resource management. Any mitigation and adaptation activities have to ensure women’s participation and address gender divisions in different cultures and societies.

How do we turn the fears about climate change into action for all of us, instead of letting the powers to invent the technologies, launch the policies and count the costs? Can we walk the talk of climate justice? It is a question of justice and of rights; of saying we all need to change our lifestyles and change the rules of the game. Good stewardship of the earth means that we are all accountable for the rising tides, the fragile soils, the drowning and hungry people and the devastated cultures. We need to learn finally that endless growth and endless expansion are not compatible with the laws of nature. Rather than tremble in fear as we despoil our planet and suffer climate ‘crisis’, we need to put in place a system based on ecological ethics and social justice.

In the ‘lost decade’ of the 1980s, developing countries confronted a severe crisis: persistent deficits in balance of payments and government budgets, accelerating inflation, widening shortages, and downturns in investment. Most conventional analyses viewed this as a classic case of living beyond one’s means, and sought to counteract it by supposedly neutral but in practice highly regressive measures, including currency devaluation, monetary tightening, slashing of government expenditures (disproportionately on social sectors), and increased taxation – measures that John Williamson was retroactively to christen as the Washington Consensus. An alternative approach (Cornia et al., 1987) that appeared radical in its time but has now become widely accepted, ‘adjustment with a human face’, opts for measures that promote economic growth while protecting vulnerable groups.

The climate problem bears a family resemblance to the crisis of the 1980s, in terms of both the diagnosis and the conventional remedies. The development crisis may have been precipitated largely by external factors (including the exogenous rise in oil prices, the sudden spike in global interest rates, and a prolonged global recession that dampened the demand for developing country exports), but the climate crisis is truly a case of living beyond our means. The world has discovered belatedly that there is such a thing as a climate budget, that this budget has been exceeded and overspent, and that it continues to be exceeded and overspent.

With the advent of the industrial revolution, humanity discovered a ‘free’ resource (fossil fuels), which was available widely and cheaply, proved to be a boon to human welfare, but, alas, came with a hidden catch.

The catch lay in the limited capacity of the earth to absorb waste. Between 1750 and 2000, the burning of fossil fuels resulted in the emission of a total of 2,000 giga (or billion) tonnes of greenhouse gases (measured as carbon dioxide equivalent or GtCO₂e). This helped usher in the industrial age with all its fabled benefits as well as drawbacks, but emissions far exceeded what terrestrial organic matter could absorb, and about two-fifths (800 GtCO₂e) accumulated in the atmosphere, increasing carbon concentration from 280 to 380 parts per million (ppm),¹ and a similar share in the oceans.

The analogy with the 1980s provides a familiar way of comprehending the climate challenge. Think of greenhouse gas emissions as expenditures, the earth’s absorptive capacity as the available budget, and carbon concentrations in the atmosphere and the oceans as the accumulated debt. Stated thus, the expenditure has for a long time exceeded the budget, enabled by a generous line of credit from two large creditors, the atmosphere and the oceans, and this in turn has encouraged the development of ingrained habits that require dipping ever more into the credit line. Today, the first of the two creditors has sent a notice threatening sanctions if borrowing continues at this pace. The second creditor might not be too far behind.

Continuing the analogy with the 1980s, the climate challenge also has two dimensions: first, how to bring expenditures into line with the budget; and second, how to ensure that this is done ‘with a human face’, that is, in a manner that promotes growth (in developing countries) while protecting the vulnerable. This, in a nutshell, is the message of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose stated objective is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in a time frame that ‘enables economic development to proceed in a sustainable’.

As was the case in the 1980s, the first challenge remains the focus of much of the policy discussions and analyses, and the second often only receives lip service or is sidelined. Initially, however, most policymakers delayed action in the faint hope that the problem would disappear when the global business cycle (in the 1980s) or the global climate cycle (today) resumed its normal course.

Subsequently, although a policy consensus has begun to emerge, several indications point to it becoming a new version of the Washington Consensus – focused mainly on supporting market-based responses rather than addressing the challenge effectively and equitably. These indications include the headlong rush to create a carbon market, allocating rights to and protecting the interests of the largest polluters, using the price mechanism to ration access to the increasingly scarce climate space (e.g., through a uniform global carbon tax), all of which work by raising the price of energy and putting it beyond the reach of poor countries. All these ideas have emerged in the institutional and conceptual context of rich countries. More worrisome than the trends themselves is the impression that these are the only realistic options in the policy menu.

In this Guest Editorial for the Development issue on ‘Climate Justice and Development’ I approach the climate challenge from the institutional context and experiential viewpoint of developing countries. I ask both how to conceptualize the climate problem and how to approach the menu of appropriate and feasible policies.

I warmly welcomed the proposal from Poh Sze Choo, Barbara S. Nowak, Kyoko Kusakabe and Meryl J. Williams to publish a set of papers on gender and fisheries in this special volume on environment and development. It seemed timely to reengage on gender and environment issues. Indeed, their proposal forced me to consider what has happened to the passionate dialogues and debates on women, environment and development that had first drawn me into development in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In that period women and environment was the subject of the first global women’s meetings to address the newly emerging ‘sustainable development’ paradigm. The ‘World Women’s Congress for a Healthy Planet’ held in Miami, USA in late 1991 and the series of meetings hosted in the Planeta Femea or The Women’s Tent at the ‘Global Forum’, the non-governmental forum of the United National Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, the ‘Earth Summit’), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil mid-1992¹ were examples of holistic forward-thinking research and advocacy that led, among other things, to the formation of the Women and Environment Development Organization, which was, in the early 1990s, a leader in the UN debates on gender, environment and development.

Now, a decade or more later, it seems that the political struggles of gender and development policymakers and women’s organizations have shifted to other terrain. The subjects that are flagged currently include women’s rights, economics and trade, globalization, aid policy, racism, sexual and reproductive health and rights, public health, sexual and gender-based violence, conflict and security, land rights, militarism, and cultural and religious fundamentalisms. It seems that subjects such as agriculture, aquaculture, forestry and fisheries are left within the gender and development domain to technical projects and service provision. Other concerns such as toxins and environmental health and the gendered nature of ‘sustainable development’ have not been taken up with the same zeal as in past years.

With the exception of some outspoken cultural critics such as Vandana Shiva, an internationally known scientist from India who since 1986 has been critical of western science’s ties to ‘biopiracy’, there has been very little written from a global political ecology perspective by feminists in the last decade. There has been acknowledgement that women-centred knowledge sustains local agriculture and community well-being and that women farmers are on the frontline of many changes by global agribusinesses. Wangari Maathai, for her work with rural Kenyan women in the Green Belt Movement, has, after all, been awarded the Nobel Prize. But the conceptual links between ecology and feminism have fallen behind the critical and innovative work on feminism and economics, and feminist advocates’ redefinitions of sexual rights, conflict and security, health systems and poverty.

With the recent rise in awareness about global warming and its devastating health and livelihood effects borne most severely by the poor in all parts of the world, and with talk now of another ‘green revolution’ and the shortage of clean water and food worldwide, it is critical that feminists working in gender and development and women’s rights movements start to take seriously alarms raised about many environmental crises. Feminist analysis needs to take into account how life science companies are appropriating and manipulating genes for food and medical purposes without enough public debate and consensus. The new biotech research has profound implications for farmers (and fisher people and pastoralists) and for food sovereignty worldwide impacting millions of poor women’s livelihoods. Major agribusiness firms, such as Syngenta, BASF, Bayer and Monsanto are reformulating their pesticides at the nano-scale to make them more biologically active and to win new monopoly patents. It is estimated that over the next two decades, the impacts of nano-scale convergence on farmers and food will exceed that of farm mechanization or of the Green Revolution.

Equally, the rising sense of crisis around climate injustice, the growing economic inequities and techno fix solutions proposed for ‘adapting’ to a changing climate make it vital that researchers and activists working on political ecology, diverse economies and global gendered relations build stronger alliances. The dominant patterns of economic development based on neglect of the environment and uneven development implicate all of us. It is important to bring together technical scientific knowledge about women and environment and articulate it within an analysis that can explain the nexus among new technologies and the global economy, environment and women’s rights. This type of analysis and vision is needed in order to critique and propose alternatives to industrial monocultures including agriculture, fisheries and forests; new seed technologies and seed sovereignty; biodiversity and conservation initiatives; agrofuels and energy technologies; carbon trading, carbon sequestration technologies and geo-engineering to solve the crisis of global climate change; genetic technologies and bio-engineering to solve the global environmental health crisis; industrial production systems driven by technological convergence at the nano-scale; and the unexamined allure of ‘sustainability projects’ and ‘sustainable development’.²

Giovanna Di Chiro’s book in progress Uncommon Expertise: Women, Science, and Environmental Politics is one example of how such a new analysis is evolving based on women activists’ encounters with scientific knowledge in grassroots environmental, health and development struggles. She argues that ‘the recent intensification of globalized capitalist production’ has made ‘the accomplishment of social reproduction (including the ability to procure decent food, clean water, shelter, clothing, healthcare) difficult if not impossible for many people around the world’. Her proposal is for a ‘feminist political ecology addressing the intersection of environmental justice and reproductive justice issues can help to make visible the ‘living environmentalisms’ or ‘environmentalisms of everyday life’ that can be seen in many community-based struggles and movements occurring around the world’.³

In this issue of Development we set the grounds for such an analysis to emerge by focusing on the technical knowledge already gathered on gender and fisheries. Such knowledge and experience focused on gender relations in the work of fisheries, and the impact of development on women and men, their environment and culture needs to be firmly embedded in an analysis that makes the links between local and global change. The beginnings are there. We need to take time to deepen our understanding of ‘living environmentalisms’ if we are to find the alternative ecologies and economies that protect the rights of people and the health of the Earth.

The journal Development is committed to ‘the search for alternative paths of social transformation towards a more sustainable and just world’. As you read the articles on gender and fisheries papers, you will find a natural fit with this commitment. Fisheries face daunting ecological sustainability challenges, produce profits from the booming global trade in fish products and yet give livelihoods to millions of poor fishworkers and their communities. The sector is erroneously perceived to be a ‘male only’ domain, apparently offering little opportunity to women. The articles, which consider complete fish supply chains, show that women’s and sometimes youth contributions are substantial but largely invisible and could be greatly enhanced with suitable assistance. ‘Development’ fits in also because developing countries dominate world fish production from natural fish stocks and aquaculture, but women in developing countries are in the labour intensive, poorest paid and least recognized jobs in the fish supply chain, while the better-off people in developed countries benefit from their production. A ‘just world’ is thus relevant in many dimensions, including gender and in the unequal competition between large scale and small-scale enterprises for declining fish stocks and farm spaces.

Gender and fisheries studies are overdue for development attention and yet the road to this special focus in Development has been too short. As a reader of Development, accustomed to rich discussions, abundant data and well-developed frameworks for examining development issues, you may find our papers preliminary and tentative. Nevertheless, this selection of research reports, largely from papers presented at the November 2007 Asian Fisheries Society 2nd Global Symposium on Gender and Fisheries, seeks to create a solid basis for understanding gender and gender differentiated roles and development needs in fisheries and aquaculture, and for providing improved, just and gender sensitive development policy and practice.

Fisheries and aquaculture are usually overlooked in global development statements, often notionally lumped together with agriculture and rural development, with which they have commonalities and significant differences. Yet, despite the lack of visibility and even isolation from other social and economic developments, fisheries have been influenced by post World War II development thinking. Thus, in the 1950s and 1960s, fisheries development concentrated on technology transfer such as boat mechanization, promotion of modern fishing gear and surveys of fishing grounds (Nauen, 1998; Williams, 1998). Anthropologists and historians studied more traditional fishing gear, methods and existing resource management but their knowledge was little accessed by fisheries scientists who were typically biologists, oceanographers and mathematicians. However, the diverse discipline backgrounds of the Special Editors of this issue are one good indication that the gap between spheres of specialist knowledge is breaking down. We comprise a fisheries and aquaculture technical specialist and ecologist (CPS), an anthropologist (BSN), a gender specialist (KK) and a fisheries biologist and statistician (MW).

In the 1970s and 1980s, based on lessons learned and emerging ideas, development concepts and methods encompassed ‘basic needs’ approaches, structural adjustment and private sector promotion. From the mid 1980s, under the influence of such global products as Our Common Future (Bruntland, 1987) and Agenda 21, from the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the environment and development gained attention. Yet, none of these movements penetrated far into fisheries development, although the general trend to community-based and co-management experiments for managing common resources was ignited and caught on in fisheries (Dietz et al., 2003). But even these more participatory management movements paid scant attention to gender, focusing rather on governments and users sharing fisheries management power.

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea granted national sovereignty over fish stocks within 200 nautical miles of the coasts and generated a surge in fisheries exploration and exploitation, unfortunately just when most exploited fish stocks were approaching their limits. Depleting stocks (FAO, 1992), increasing demand for fish as food, clear designation of national responsibilities and general concerns over sustainable development generated inquiry into better ways of managing fisheries and reinforced the trend towards more responsible management approaches, for example, as described in the 1995 FAO Code of Conduct on Responsible Fishing. The demand for fish also stimulated fish farming and motivated a continuing growth in aquaculture production. In 2006, farmed fish and other aquatic products represented nearly half of that eaten by people (FAO, 2006). The end result of this focus on fisheries in the environmental debate was that fish and fishing went from being a relatively minor focus of Chapter 17 (Protection of the Oceans, all kinds of Seas, including Enclosed and Semi-Enclosed Seas, and Coastal Areas and the Protection, Rational Use and Development of their Living Resources) of Agenda 21, to being a major focus of the 2002 Plan of Action of the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The major conservation non-governmental organizations now all support strong fisheries programmes.

In 2000, countries committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals, drawing together human, institutional, economic and environmental goals for development. Principles and approaches such as participation, environmental sustainability and gender equality were gradually embraced and made explicit by the OECD countries through their policy and performance body, the Development Assistance Committee (World Bank, 1998). Sectoral agencies, including fisheries agencies, embraced the Goals because they provided a general, albeit simplified, statement of development objectives (WorldFish Center, 2005).

During the last 20 years, research and action on women and gender in fisheries began in small ways in different places (see references in Window on the World). One of the first consolidated sets of studies was To Work and to Weep: Women in Fishing Economies (Nadel-Klein and Davis, 1988). Other volumes and individual studies followed, including those on gender, poverty and fisheries (Harrison, 2000), and gender in West African fisheries (Bennett, 2005).

Networks began to form. The Secretariat for the Pacific Community undertook gender and community work. The International Collective in Support of Fishworkers instituted extensive analytical and activist work. In Europe, the AKTEA network, composed of members from eleven countries, was formed to improve knowledge and standing of women in European fisheries and to generate better gender-relevant fisheries data.

In Asia, following earlier work in Cambodia and other Mekong countries (Nandeesha and Heng, 1994; Nandeesha and Hanglomong, 1997), the Mekong River Commission initiated gender and fisheries work. The Commission’s Secretariat supports national networks in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam and a coordinating network. Recently, its Network on Gender and Fisheries was given full membership in the policy-based development network, the Technical Advisory Body for the Lower Mekong Basin countries. The Network on Gender and Fisheries now works to (1) improve visibility of women’s contribution in the fisheries sector and make explicit policy, programme to support their work, and (2) improve women’s decision-making power in the household, community, government and policy level (Mekong River Commission, Network on Gender and Fisheries, draft Management Recommendations, 2007, personal communication).

In 1998, the Asian Fisheries Society and the WorldFish Center also began to address the topic through a series of triennial symposia, encouraging contributions from Asia and other geographic areas. The headlines from our last decade of press releases and symposia stories reveal some of the journey. 1998: ‘Women do fish!’ – our response to the disbelief of many fisheries research colleagues who asked why one would bother addressing women in fisheries because ‘women don’t fish’ (Williams et al., 2001).

2001: ‘Where are the women in fisheries?’ As fish stocks decline, researchers turned to examine the underestimated and under-recognized roles of women. We reviewed the global picture of where women fitted into fish supply chains and found a much greater contribution than popularly believed, especially the dominance of women in post harvest work (Williams et al., 2002).

2004: ‘Changing Traditions: first global look at the gender dimensions of fisheries’ – the studies moved beyond the descriptive and become more issues-based, focusing on not only women but on women, men and children including highlighting the high rates of HIV/AIDS in fishing communities (Choo et al., 2006, see Williams, this issue for a description of the positive consequences of publicizing this finding).

2007: ‘Solutions through gender research’ and ‘Women add value to fisheries’ – a deeper analysis of gender and fisheries issues based on original research.

Gender and fisheries research is a potentially rich field because of its relative novelty and the great diversity of issues and situations. For example, the sector has strong gender divisions of labour, hosting much invisible women’s work in fisheries and in fisheries production chains and limiting women’s access to the means of production in fisheries and in aquaculture because of cultural taboos and practices. Frequently, the definition of fisheries excludes women’s small-scale fishing activities for family subsistence. Women often lack decision-making power in community resources management including fisheries management and this deprives women of access to resources in water bodies. Fishing is among the most dangerous of occupations, many male fishworkers are exploited at sea and safety and health risks rebound on families and dependents as well as the men themselves.

Fisheries and aquaculture development assistance and technical training is targeted at men, women being excluded by their lower literacy, lack of daily time and mobility. At the 2007 Symposium, studies reported that enhanced women’s contributions, especially where they create more progressive household and family enterprises, add value to the sector. As fisheries resources become more depleted and as aquaculture develops rapidly as either the main or ancillary activity of development projects, women, men and children will all need to contribute to the household.

Gender and fisheries research, however, is hampered by lack of gender disaggregated data and theoretical research frameworks. In order to develop the field of gender and fisheries research, we believe that fisheries experts need to work much more closely with other researchers, especially those with expertise in gender and development fields. We hope that, through this special issue of Development, we will generate interest in this emerging field of research and development action.

In preparation for this volume I found myself in New York for two days in November just before the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Bali, Indonesia 3–14 December 2007. The occasion was a high-level United Nations Expert Group Meeting on ‘Strengthening international cooperation for development to address the climate change challenge’ organized jointly by the Committee for Development Policy of UN-DESA, the Stockholm Environment Institute and the SID journal Development. It was studded with an impressive number of experts and high-level UN leaders. Tariq Banuri who organized the meeting crafted a series of strategic moments, bringing together thoughtful and impassioned people from Europe, South East and South Asia, USA and The Caribbean. They clearly impressed the array of ambassadors listening to the conclusions at the end of the meeting. The final session was attended by the President of ECOSOC, the Chairman of the Group of 77 and Ambassadors from Algeria, Iceland, Brazil, Japan, Pakistan and Sweden.

It was a colourful group. There was Hunter Lovins, of Natural Capital Solutions in her cowgirl hat giving a fast-talking, wise-cracking performance in favour of business leading the way that was timed to perfection; Robert Ackerman of Tufts University, immaculate in his grey suit, giving a PowerPoint presentation that defied anyone to claim economics was boring. From his take on the Stern Report to his funny but searing comments on the startling near pornographic images of the Diesel clothing company featuring a climate change world as their backdrop, he was entertainment itself. Then there was Adil Najam from the Fletcher School with his sliding narratives conjured out of a 1,000 pictures that summarized core concerns of the meeting in breath taking sophistication. Interspersed were thoughtful comments from civil society intellectuals taking up strong political and ecological critiques. Larry Lohmann from Corner House and Barbara Hariss-White from Oxford University argued brilliantly with their understated anger, unpacking the politics of policy in insightful ways. Renowned civil society player on the UN scene, Martin Khor from Third World Network contributed sporadically, always as if he were juggling a thousand other political encounters from his laptop. His strategic outbursts and tough, measured intervention continually focused the meeting on the inequities of global development from the perspective of the South. And always in the background there was the elegant organizer Tariq Banuri now at the Stockholm Environment Institute bringing the debates together, introducing the right political player at the right time, knowing to give Jomo Sundaram, now Assistant Secretary-General of UN-DESA and well-known political economist in his own right, the space and time to comment.

The strategic aim of the meeting was to bring development issues to the attention of Governments due to attend the Climate Change Conference in Bali. The substantive aim was to bring together climate change experts together with environmental economists and civil society activists to look at how to apply a sustainable development perspective to climate. Sitting in the basement of the UN enjoying the talks, the conversations and the knowledge gathered in the room, even smiling at the usual spats about whether there were enough women participating (there were not), and that gender was mentioned and respected, I had this uneasy feeling that I had been here before. More than that, even if climate change was now headline news nearly every day, what was exactly new in all of this we were discussing? I recall other such meetings leading up to the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro 1992. There Tariq Banuri and no doubt most of us around the table were ‘greening economics’ and producing copious numbers to show scientifically that unfettered economic growth was bad for the environment and for the very poor. Ecologists were speaking about common agendas and different responsibilities then. The South was rallying against the North, in fact Martin Khor was already there, skilful as ever, advising his Government on how to read the documents. I and others were trying from the margins to bring in women’s role and agency into the debate. Governments were being pressed to agreements and technological changes and were promising and not living up to anything. Doom and gloom scenarios abounded alongside neat case studies that on the ground showed what a difference sustainable, community engaged, culturally aware development could make. There were of course far less PowerPoint presentations, much less ability to network instantly via e-mail and send whole documents with a push of a button. And the public was not treated to quite the same show.

I remember returning home from Rio with a huge sense of excitement that I had met the world, and change was going to happen. Not only was there Agenda 21 but there had been all those people thronging together in Flamingo Park in the biggest (at that time) international civil society meeting ever. It seemed that civil society had arrived as the ‘third’ actor in development alongside business and government. But when I spoke about my trip, not many of my friends had even heard of the meeting, let alone understood what UNCED meant or why lots of people meeting in a public park in Rio had any significance at all.

But these days Climate Change is in capital letters, Kyoto Protocol and the preparations for Bali are way up on the agenda. The first promise of the newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was that Australia would sign the Kyoto Protocol and he would go to Bali. My copy of the Independent on Sunday, picked off the plane on my way to New York reporting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon launch of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore screamed out ‘A World Dying. But can we unite to save it?’ What is to be done? asks the editorial comment as countries bound to Kyoto fail to meet their targets. Could Bali which discusses targets and mechanisms really make the difference? Is the battle to avert ecological disaster now beginning in earnest? (Independent on Sunday, 18 November 2007: 8, 9 and 39)

Given the same space on the same page of the editorial of the Independent was an article headed ‘Angelina Jolie – she’s the antidote to despair’. Angelina Jolie who I last saw as the swashbuckling unbelievably sexy killer Mrs Smith on film, is in real life according to journalist Sandra Sands the ‘Amartya Sen of actresses’, writing for The Economist on Darfur, attending the World Economic Forum at Davos. Apparently at Davos she is also accompanied by Sharon Stone who is dazzlingly described as ‘something of a Noam Chomsky in her own right’ (Sands, 2007). Sharon Stone? The face that shines out from all those Lancome ads defying age on bill board and screen?

Reflecting on the power of the media, and apparently the power of these glamorous actresses I felt even more uneasy about the meeting in the UN basement. What were we doing in New York preparing the battleground with marvelous presentations and slides rehearsing our jokes on cue? Our confessions of thwarted civil society activists? Are we all secretly wanting to be politician turned Nobel Peace Prize winner film star Al Gore?

Political Ecology the subject of this volume devoted to environment and development¹ needs to understand not only the figures, the science and technology but also the culture and politics that surrounds development policy and practice. It seems that we are in an era where the best way to get things done is to mix stars and public policy, media and gloss. It seems to go with private and public partnerships. Academic facts and knowledge packaged attractively to reach the public, make them listen, put the pressure on politicians to act. As Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman points out the Irish rock star Bono is now synonymous with African poverty. His hobnobbing with the world’s leaders helped to bring about debt cancellation of US$ 70 billion for African countries and raised money for antimalarial bed-nets and drugs to combat HIV (Rachman, 2007). I share Rachman’s unease about unelected celebrities intimidating politicians while gushing about their corporate partners support to end poverty. Bono writes in a recent edition of Vanity Fair he guest edited that ‘American Express, Apple, Emporio Armani … are heroic’ (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/).

But if they get things done who are we to question the stars’ apparent role in making the world a better place? What is wrong with their glitzy highly publicized campaigns for Africa which for the most part raise a lot of money (let us put to one side the equally publicized fashion to adopt cute third-world children)? Do they not succeed where years of expensive UN negotiations have failed? What is the difference between their take on development and poverty and the environmentalists negotiating with their governments in Bali creating spaces such as ‘Solidarity Village for A Cool Planet’?

The difference is manifold. For the stars the answer is money. Nicole Kidman (no less) just sent me an e-mail (via the listservs in UNIFEM) to ask me to donate money to end violence against women. As someone who has worked to end violence against women since Ms Kidman was ten years old I know the answer is not money. What is critical now is to change economic priorities and the culture of how we understand development. Money for aid and debt relief is important but is only part of the solution. The agenda is much broader. We are talking world governance, change in markets and trade regimes, challenging scientific arrogance and nuclear and military powers.

The difficulties we are facing are essentially political. What I heard at the UN expert meeting is that the knowledge is there, but the politics of how to ensure common agendas with differential responsibilities is not. We have the agendas, what we do not have is the political support of the heavy weight governments, US, Europe, India and China and multinational corporations. The issue is far from cut and dried. We need to have multiple strategies. No doubt entertaining PowerPoints help and money for antimalarial nets are crucial. But it is how and where we make the changes that count. For example, do we engage or not with transnational corporations, how do we change the current governance structures and how can we best engage broad population participation. These are complex political questions to be hammered out in the cabinets, in board rooms, in the UN, in the streets, in dumps and urban slums, valleys and dry river beds, in print, on the screen, on blogs and no doubt on YouTube. We cannot afford to translate complex issues into simple sound bites. There will be no real change if we fail to be rigorously honest about the vastly different contributions to cultures and politic economies made by Amartya Sen and Angelina Jolie, by Bill Gates and Ban Ki-Moon. We are living in a world that rewards Al Gore with the Nobel Peace Prize alongside the IPCC. Most people will remember the prize went to Al Gore. But critical public engagement in the serious and important work of the IPCC is going to make the difference

Abstract

Water is fundamental for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a healthy life in human dignity. It is a pre-requisite to the realization of all other human rights.

Is water the last frontier of conflict and separation, the greatest ‘commons’, or is it an openly accessible resource for the more powerful to draw upon ceaselessly to meet their own interests? Is it a resource for ‘nation-building’ in which central bodies own and take the responsibility of procuring and supplying water, often at a price, or is it a resource that can empower communities and around which ordinary citizens can strengthen their bonds with nature and enhance their commitments to others? The time has come for us to look closely at some widely circulated myths or, at least misconceptions, about water resources. These myths are often centred upon the view of the absolute and physical amount of water that is available for the growing populations, and based on economic premises heralded by international funding agencies. They fail to illuminate important aspects of water such as the history of water management and planning in the region that over the years has tightened the ownership and control over waters by the states in a top-down manner.