Ask Agnes Namukasa about sustainably managing fisheries in Kachanga, the lakeshore landing site she calls home in Uganda’s Masaka District, and you will soon learn about toilets. From her perspective, community members won’t address conflict between government enforcers and fishers, competition among neighboring villages, or pollution threatening aquatic ecosystems until they can first organize to address their most pressing daily needs.
Teach a woman to farm fish…
Empowering and teaching women in developing countries to farm fish will go a long way to improving family nutrition and income, says Ranjitha Puskur senior policy advisor at WorldFish. Puskur delivered her presentation as part of the AgTalks series hosted by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). AgTalks presents the latest thinking, trends and research on policies and innovations in small-scale farming.
Leveraging change: How gender norms matter for development
In a keynote at the CGIAR Integrated Systems Research Conference earlier this year, I suggested that researchers might look at gender as a leverage point in development. This idea comes from systems thinking, which is—in very simplest terms—a way of approaching an issue that sees the “thing being studied” as part of a larger set of elements that interact in multiple ways to shape outcomes.