Search Climate Insights Directory

The document highlights how large-scale development projects like dams and mines negatively impact women, who often face displacement to marginal lands, loss of resource access, and exclusion from decision-making. While international legal instruments protect the rights to water, food, and a healthy environment, the briefing notes a failure in implementation, particularly in resource-dependent countries with weak governance. It calls for integrated governmental approaches, gender-sensitive corporate due diligence, and capacity building for women to seek legal redress. Case studies from South Africa, Kenya, and India demonstrate that legal training and empowerment can enable women to successfully challenge mining companies and secure land titles.

The document examines how conservation policies are used to forcibly evict indigenous peoples from ancestral lands, often masking commercial interests. It highlights the disproportionate impact on women and children and provides case studies from India's Panna Tiger Reserve and Kenya's Embobut Forest to illustrate human rights violations and the failure of top-down conservation models.

The adivasi communities in Panna district, Madhya Pradesh, are experiencing systemic displacement and poverty driven by diamond and stone mining and the creation of wildlife reserves like the Panna Tiger Reserve. These activities have destroyed traditional livelihoods, leading to widespread reliance on illegal mining characterized by inhumane conditions, child labour, and occupational diseases such as silicosis. Women and children are disproportionately affected, with women earning half the wages of men and children as young as 5 or 6 working in mines. Conservation efforts have further marginalized these communities through evictions from ancestral lands, often based on false promises of relocation benefits. Civil society organizations, including Prithvi Trust, Keystone Foundation, and Dhaatri Resource Centre, are working to secure land titles under the Forest Rights Act of 2006 and seek compensation for health impacts, though systemic barriers and a 'mining mafia' hinder progress.