By Mariola Acosta-Frances writing from Kampala, Uganda 
(A version of this blog is also published on the CCAFS site)

The office of the community development officer (CDO) in Nwoya district (North-West Uganda) starts getting really busy around December, when the main harvest season kicks off. During harvest period, dozens of angry men and women concentrate every week in the district office seeking advice on how to get a fair and peaceful solution to their domestic conflicts arising over who is the rightful owner of the harvest and can decide on its final use.

The positions are clear. On the one side, as heads of the households and owners of the land, men consider that any products produced on their property is rightfully theirs and thus it should be up to them to decide what to do with it and the profit it generates. On the opposite side, women feel that since they contribute most (if not all) of the agricultural labour, their husbands have no right to come and take all the harvest to spend it, they argue, on non-priority-items. The conflict is served.

Many other couples, however, do not go to the district government office and decide to settle the conflict at home, which unfortunately ends, in too many occasions, in cases of gender-based violence. Farmers feel that these gendered conflicts over harvest, are only likely to increase in years with extended drought or that are marked with other climatic shocks that would result in reduced yields. Indeed, over the last few years, the perception in Nwoya district is that gender-based violence has increased generally, with clear spikes during the main harvest season. A quick look at the district offices confirms the seriousness of the matter. Almost all offices have hung up posters specifically designed to assess possible pathways to solve and prosecute gender-based violence issues.

Even as the Land Policy (2013) of Uganda grants women and men equal rights to own (and co-own) land, the reality in Nwoya, as in many other districts in the country, is very different. In Nwoya most of the land is effectively held under customary arrangements, by which most Acholi women do not have the right to own land and are only given access to it through their male counterparts and other male family members. This fact not only translates into conflict over harvests but might have other direct consequences as well, including women being less willing to make long and medium-term investments - such as climate-smart technologies – in a land that they do not own.

This situation raises the question: ‘What impact do gender considerations at the national level really have if at the grassroots level traditional norms and beliefs are still predominant?’ A recent study of the CGIAR research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security is currently seeking to answer this and related questions by analyzing the framing of gender issues in climate change related policies in Uganda and to explore its impacts on climate change adaptation at grassroots.

You can find this blog and more on the CCAFS website. 

By Mariola Acosta Francés writing from Sri Lanka

The tasting room of a tea factory in Central Province, Sri Lanka was adorned with pictures of happy women flashing big toothy smiles, harvesting tea as colorful butterflies  floated idyllically in the fields. Looking at the pictures and reading the panels, visitors cannot help but feel that the plantation is both protective of the environment and socially conscious.

However, one doesn't need to live in Sri Lanka for a long time to learn that, in reality, most tea estates are far from being either environmentally friendly or socially fair. In fact, it is the contrary: most tea fields in Sri Lanka are vast swaths of heavily sprayed, monocropped land and the tea pickers, the majority of whom are women, are amongst the poorest communities in the country and face great financial struggles to feed and sustain their families. To anyone who has spent some time in Sri Lanka, these panels at the tea factory feel very misleading. When asked about this apparent contradiction, this specific factory justified their claims of environmental sustainability by their recent installation of some rubber trees in the otherwise monocropped tea fields. Their understanding of what constitutes “environmentally sustainable” clearly did not match mine. However, given that most of the visitors ended up buying considerable amounts of tea after the factory visit, it appears that their greenwashing strategy was successfully doing its job. This example from Sri Lanka is only one of the many cases that one can find, both in developed and developing countries, of greenwashing, where companies spend more time and money marketing their sustainable initiatives than they do in actually implementing meaningful changes. 

Since the 1980s, and partly as an antidote to greenwashing, an increasing number of certifications schemes have emerged with the aim to regulate products labeled as organic, socially conscious, sustainably produced, etc. These certifications ensure consumers that their products meet certain quality standards and thereby prevent fraudulent or misleading marketing. For example, take the cartoon on my cup coffee this morning which assured me, through a now famous frog, that it was Rainforest Alliance certified. This means that a third party certifying body has ensured that the coffee in my cup was produced following certain standards.

However, how much do we, as consumers, truly know about these certification standards? What are the fundamental differences between, for instance, a Fair Trade certified coffee versus a Rainforest Alliance certified coffee? Certainly there are many more differences and nuances between certification schemes than one would initially expect. With an increasing number of certification schemes, and with standards constantly being modified, it is sometimes difficult as a consumer to choose the product and brand with the certification label that best matches one’s values and needs. Indeed, the amount of information that those labels hide can be truly overwhelming for consumers.

For instance, think about an organic product and how it was produced. You no doubt have a vision of what would constitute organic production. However, does the version of organic production in your mind match the version of organic production that is represented on the label? The answer: maybe not.  Certification requirements for “organic” production systems can indeed differ significantly depending on the product you are producing and the country or region where you want to sell your products. Additionally, third-party certification is complex and expensive, and in many occasions beyond the reach of smallholder farmers interested in producing organically.

What if there was a more flexible type of organic certification that on the one hand allowed consumers to have a close look at the certification process and get to know first-hand the producers and on the other hand gave smallholder farmers access to the organic certification process so that they could get better prices for their products at the local market? A new system of alternative organic certifications seems to have found an answer.

Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) were initially conceived in 2004 as a surrogate for third party organic certification but have only recently emerged as a viable alternative in many countries around the globe (a comprehensive list of all PGS systems can be found at the IFOAM site). PGS is based on a set of standards and certification processes that are constructed in a participatory manner by different stakeholders of a specific community or region, such as organic producers, agronomists and consumers.  This different approach not only keeps certification costs to a minimum but also provides stakeholders with commonly agreed upon understanding of what constitutes “organic” production. 

Clearly, only locally produced products can be certified through a PGS system and most consumers must still rely on third party certification schemes for imported products. However, PGS offers a medium term solution where consumers can take an active role in the certification system and can learn first-hand about the local organic standards by visiting the smallholder producers and, in doing so, promote local smallholder organic cultivation. In practical terms, this means being able to personally judge whether a tea plantation is cultivating in a sustainable way or understanding exactly how the organic carrots I buy every week at the market are produced. PSG means promoting and giving credibility to local organic production and creating trust and a direct relationship with our local organic farmers.