Read the passage below and do the activities that follow

The Importance of Women in Development

In recent years, there has been an increasing recognition of the contribution of women to economic development around the world. On the one hand, it is evident that calculations of national productivity fail to include the existing contribution of women to a country's welfare. On the other, there is a growing awareness that improved conditions for women are fundamental to improvement in overall living standards.

The unregistered contribution to economies of work performed by women is enormous. All over the world, women may provide as many unpaid health services as the formal health sectors in their countries. In Africa, they are largely responsible for food growing (accounting for at least 70 per cent of staple food production in the Sub-Saharan part of the continent), as well as participating in other activities in the agricultural sector (such as raising livestock, marketing and food processing). As pointed out in a UN report (1985), women represent half the world's population, work two-thirds of the world's working hours but earn only one tenth of what men earn. Furthermore, they own as little as one hundredth of the property owned by men.

Education is the key to improving conditions for women. It leads to wider employment opportunities and better information on how to improve the welfare of families. Both developments contribute to a reduction in fertility. The cost of caring for children is inclined to rise, which tends to encourage smaller families with healthier children rather than large ones. Greater awareness of the need for family planning and for better infant nutrition also tends to reduce fertility. Statistics suggest strohgly that increases in the literacy of women have led to declining fertility rates in almost every country in the world. In the period 1965-85, the only area in the world which did not witness a falling birth rate while experiencing impraved literacy for its female population was Sub-Saharan Africa, where there was an increase of 1.5 per cent in the fertility rate.

Many governments have aceepted the importance of investing in improved education for women in order to bring about changes in health, population growth and economic performance. However, even in those places where equal opportunity is actively pursued, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Women continue to be unpaid or underpaid for the work they do, to be constrained in the kind of work they can do and to reach lower levels of attainment educationally than men. In countries where women constitute a large part of the agricultural labour force and are involved in managing production, they may have less access to information, technology and credit than men. These problems are largely due to the persistence of traditional constraints. The result is that resources are inefficiently used, production is sub-optimal and the overall welfare of a society continues to be depressed.

(Source of statistics: 'State of the world's women', 1985; compiled for the UN by New Internationalist Publications, Oxford, UK)

(a) Give a brief oral summary of what you consider to be the most important information.

(b) Take notes on the important information.

(c) Use your notes to write a summary of the text.

TASK 8

Read the passage below and then do the following:

(a) Produce a set of notes on:

(i) Criticisms levelled at the TFAP

(ii) Possible responses to the criticisms

(b) Reconstitute your notes in the form of two short paragraphs. Remember to use your own words. Do not refer to the original text but only your notes when writing the paragraphs.

The billion dollar question marks

The much-maligned Tropical Forestry Action Plan (TFAP) of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation meets in Rome next week to discuss the findings of an independent review. How it responds to the criticisms levelled at it could determine the future of the tropical forests.

Launched earlier this vear, the review – commissioned at the request of the FAO – has been assessing the performance of the TFAP over the past five years and considering criticism from a wide variety of sources.

The team of three external consultants will present a number of possible options ranging from scrapping the TFAP altogether, to doing nothing. Any changes made will be crucial because the TFAP is now facing a barrage of opposition, not only from green groups but from major funding sources.

Linda Chalker, British Minister for Overseas Development Aid, has recently stated that the Plan 'needs reform', and that she would 'not let up on the pressure to change it'.

The TFAP was dreamed up in 1984 when a group of top foresters realised that the past decade of forestry aid had done little to tackle deforestation in the Tropics, and that drastic action was required. A year later the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Resources Institute and the FAO joined forces to set it up. The TFAP, they decided, would be a multi billion dollar 'global tropical forest conservation and development programme to stimulate financial commitment from developing and industrialised countries, development assistance agencies and the private sector'.

The idea was that it would not be a rigid plan so much as a strategy, an attempt to identify priorities and create a framework for action. Initially, government would request assistance from the FAO, following which a national forestry plan would be drawn up for that country. Bilateral aid agencies, like Britain's Overseas Develoment Administration, and multilateral agencies like the Asian Development Bank, would then select specific projects from within these national plans to fund.

In one sense, the TFAP has been very successful; since its launch 76 countries – whose territories include most of the remaining tropical forests – have signed up or are showing interest. In the past five years, 40 major national and international aid agencies have channelled funding through the TFAP, and helped boost forestry aid to more than $1 billion a year – double its figure in 1985.

Yet those opposed to the TFAP point out that this increased TFAP related activity may actually be causing accelerated deforestation in the tropics. Critics from the 'forestry camp' include John Blower, who has spent 20 years managing various FAO forest conservation projects. He concludes that 'while TFAP documents may have environmental conservation lip-service written in, the general thrust is commercial, aimed at the immediate improvement of the recipient country's economy'.

The most outspoken critics of the TFAP are now the World Rainforest Movement and Friends of the Earth, who stated in a report published earlier this year that 'deforestation seems likely to increase under the TFAP... with logging substantially increased in primary forest areas'. Looking more closely at individual national plans they pointed out that 'the Peruvian plan will dramatically accelerate the rate of deforestation... the Guyanese will accelerate forest degradation through a massive increase in logging and the Cameroon plan will cause major deforestation'.

However, after this series of apparently disastrous national plans, two have now emerged (Papua New Guinea and Tanzania) which have so far received guarded approval. The Papua New Guinea plan has been hailed by Linda Chalker as prroof that 'the TFAP can be efffective'. For the past decade in Papua New Guinea, Japanese logging companies have been decimating the forests, but the TFAP has now called for a moratorium on all new logging licences and a review of present logging activities. The government is now appealing to the international community for compensation for lost timber revenues, and funding for a national system of pro-tected forest areas.

It remains to be seen if these more radical plans will receive adequate funding. Meanwhile, most of the nine national plans now completed are still meeting severe criticism. Simon Counsell of Friends of the Earth argues that 'all UK and international funding should be halted, until a thorough and independent review of the TFAP has taken piace', and adds that 'it is time the Food and Agriculture Organisation went back to the drawing board'.

The key question is whether next week's review will address the major problems. If the TFAP is to survive, the Rome meeting will have to come up with the solutions that its many critics are looking for. This will involve improving the conservation element of the plan, respecting the needs of indigenous communities, promoting plantations of native tree species in degraded forests as opposed to logging fresh areas, developing sustainable non-wood forest products (such as nuts, fruits and oils), and increasing the involvemont of the environmental and indigenous groups in the whole process.

One of the review team's most promising proposals is that the TFAP should be brought under a new world environmental forestry body, to be known as the 'Global Forestry Organisation', which would be a conservation and environmental group-driven agency for the TFAP. If this option were adopted, then it might draw organisations like Friends of the Earth and other green groups into the TFAP.

With only 0.2 per cent of tropical timber production coming from sustainable sources, and tropical deforestation now running at almost double the rate of 1979, an effective solution to the destruction has never been more needed than at present. As the only Organisation of its kind, the TFAP possesses enormous potential, both for the destruction of the tropical forest biome, or its future conservation. It now stands at a crossroads where it may either choose to adopt the deeper shade of green that our new age seems to be calling for, or entrench itself in past mistakes and failures.

(The Guardian, 8.6.90.)

TASK 9

(a) Divide into groups. Each group will be given one section of a text. Discuss the content of your section, then summarise in one or two sentences.

(b) Form new groups, each containing one member from each of the original groups. Your new group should now have summaries of all the separate sections necessary to make a complete text. This is called a jigsaw summary. Arrange the information you have into a logical order.

(c) Make any changes necessary to produce a coherent summary. You will need to consider such things as grammar, reference and cohesion.