All in all females could be the savior of the planet, more particularly if they’re offered monetary benefits for it, researchers at Colorado University in Boulder, proposed a gender consenting plan of action to make sure the equilibrium between the sexes in government and environmental planning and policy making position exists. Professor Kristen Andersson mentioned that saving the planet is a priority and that gender does not even come up as a concern or question in their heads, however this new study shows that they should in fact be taking into account this very finding.

The study originally started to gain more proof and impetus for a previous research finding- ‘Women are more sensitive towards the planet and social justice in comparison to the males’. The population for the current study comprised of 440 forest dwellers largely from the regions of Tanzania, Peru and Indonesia. Sadly, according to a lot of government reports and findings the women are rather underrepresented in most of these areas.

Andersson’s team invented a game asking players to decide the number of trees to be harvested from a ‘community forest’. There were randomly made groups where some had a minimum of 50% women criteria while the rest 50% had no restrictions. Contenders made a random choice on how many trees are to be axed. For each cut tree there were 5 tokens and for not cutting any tree there were 160. Nathan Cook the prime author and fellow researcher claimed that groups with gender quota lessened harvesting rate much more with the introduction of incentives and payments were allocated more judiciously and equally.

Financial aspect played a key role in their research and without it there seemed to be less of a difference between both types of group. Programs like these, called- Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are rising in countries like Ecuador, Costa Rica and Brazil which have a dense forest cover. Forest officers here are mainly women and they are paid to not sell natural resources.

Apart from this a global level experimentation on gender quota in zones like Argentina, Rawanda and India are also being tested by reserving 30% seats of such posts for the females. The bottom line here is that existence of women matter more than we think, especially for preserving the planet, Cook said.

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