What is a forest?
This answer may vary depending on the person answering:
- For the forestry industry it is wood
− For climate change negotiations, this is about tons of stored carbon
− For the mercantilists of nature, it is the place where air, water, biodiversity, and ancestral knowledge are produced, which can then be negotiated and sold on the international market.
- For the people who live and depend on the forests, these are the place on earth and the infinite where life is recreated, they are the land, the water, the air, the space where plants and animals interact to create more life, from there comes food, materials for housing, medicine and it is the home where ancestors and spirits live. It is also that which is expropriated, which disappears, which can be lost. For women, it is no longer the place of medicinal herbs that cure fright, malaria, that make milk be produced, the space to care for pregnancy, to give birth, to find fresh water for children; and it is being transformed into a desert occupied by strangers who despise women's knowledge and who seek to turn them into dependent workers of
miserable wages for their plantations, under the tutelage of men who seek their bodies as merchandise.
They are vital to maintaining a healthy global environment.
These tasks take time and must be done on a regular, even daily basis. These activities keep them in close contact with the forest and allow them to have an experiential knowledge of its diversity.
In forest areas women play a central and essential role. They are intimately familiar with the forest as if it were every corner of their home. In many societies, women have for centuries been the collectors of firewood and minor forest products, and also the providers of water. They are the herbalists and ritualists.
These tasks take time and must be done on a regular, even daily basis. These activities keep them in close contact with the forest and allow them to have an experiential knowledge of its diversity.
LET US RESPECT AND CARE FOR THE FORESTS.
Taken from the book, Deforestation and women of Ecological Action
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