• Gender impacts

Gender impacts of trade liberalisation

For nearly three decades, petroleum production and consumption has probably brought out both the best and worst of modern civilization in Nigeria. So what have been the socio-economic, ecological and environmental consequences on oil communities been?

This report presents the findings of a study of the impact of international trade and multinational corporations activities on the environment and sustainable livelihoods of rural women in some Ibeno communities and Ikot Ataku community both in Akwa, Ibom State of Southern Nigeria.

Conclusions include:

• increased vulnerability and rural poverty has resulted from declining livelihoods from environmental degradation due to the activities of oil companies in the study area
• the gap between the rich and the poor in the rural communities is further widened by the dependence of the resource-poor upon the better-off to secure the produce they formerly could obtain individually, the increased money in the local economy restricted primarily to oil workers, has caused inflation with greater hardship for the poor
• Social cohesion and harmony has deteriorated and potential for conflict has increased, there has also been a decline in social values as the quest for money has encouraged prostitution and other social vices
• in general the activities of the oil companies have had a negative impact upon local livelihoods, seriously threatening their sustainability
• as the livelihoods are gender-specific and household responsibilities are divided by gender, the threat is both directly and indirectly felt by women

Recommendations include:

• there is need to carry out further studies on the impacts of trade liberalisation processes to inform the design of appropriate strategies to respond to the new and emerging issues and to equip the country to able to take advantage of the opportunities while minimising the adverse impacts
• there should be no "open door" policy on FDI, developing countries need to be very careful as to what FDI is accepted, they must try to unpackage and unbundle FDI and negotiate with the supplier of FDI what they want out of it and what they would rather depend on their own resources
• it is imperative to embark in earnest on a search for an African development paradigm that is not imitative of the dominant growth economics of the industrialised market economies with its principal concern on increasing the growth of the nation rather than the development of the people
• the problems of lack of capacity of African countries to participate meaningfully in international negotiations is addressed, in order to ensure that matters of special concern to them are taken into consideration in arriving at decisions and also in the process of the implementation of the agreements
• links between poverty and the environment are addressed so that the country improves its policy and institutional frameworks, and puts in place more supportive and coherent policies for trade, investment, and poverty reduction
• existing methods and tools must be employed to ensure that poverty reduction strategies reflect a more gender-disaggregated understanding of poverty and environmental concerns

Summary originally provided by GDNet, an Eldis content partner

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