Women, Resource Conservation, Sustainable Forestry and Resource Management in Nigerian Traditional Communities: Caveat on Unsung Heroes

Sustainable forestry and natural resource management constitute major environmental and developmental concerns in Sub-Saharan Africa where traditional communities depend heavily on forests for livelihoods, domestic energy, medicine and socio-cultural survival. Despite several forestry policies and conservation programmes in Nigeria, forest degradation and biodiversity loss remain persistent. This persistence is attributable partly to the marginalisation of indigenous ecological knowledge and gendered exclusion in environmental governance. Women, who serve as primary users and custodians of forest resources in traditional communities, remain inadequately recognised within formal conservation frameworks. Thus, women’s roles in indigenous conservation practices and sustainable forestry governance in Nigeria underpin this study. The study is anchored on Ecofeminist Theory and Common-Pool Resource Theory, using a mixed-method research design involving Survey questionnaires, Key Informant Interviews and Focus Group Discussions conducted across selected forest-dependent communities. Findings revealed high women’s involvement in resource conservation (grand mean = 3.32) and strong adherence to indigenous conservation practices (grand mean = 3.44). Inferential analysis further showed significant differences in sustainable forestry outcomes between communities with high and low levels of women’s participation (t = 4.21, df = 238, p < .05). Women were found to possess extensive ecological knowledge, regulate forest use through customary norms and contribute significantly to biodiversity conservation and forest regeneration, while patriarchal land-tenure systems, inadequate institutional support and limited access to policy platforms do constraint their effectiveness. Thus, integrating women-centred indigenous conservation systems into formal forestry governance remains indispensable for sustainable forest management and the attainment of national and global sustainability goals.

Women; Resource Conservation; Sustainable Forestry; Resource Management; Nigerian Traditional Communities

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