Can women save the planet?

Women spend up to three hours a day just fetching water

Many of Africa's women are trapped in a vicious circle of poverty and environmental destruction.

Poverty forces people to take what they can from the land and environmental destruction results in yet more poverty.

In Africa, trees are being chopped down at an alarming rate. Every year, forests roughly the size of Togo are cleared, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

Many of these trees are being cut down for firewood, which is generally collected by women.

Drought, over-cultivation and overgrazing are other reasons why close to half of the continent's land is now affected by desertification.

2015 where will we be?

This week, BBC Africa Live heads to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, from where we will be asking:

Why do women damage the environment? And what are women doing to help save the planet? Do women hold the answer to Africa's environmental problems?

Join the debate this Wednesday 6 October at 1630 GMT and 1830 GMT.

Use the form to send us your comments - some of which will be published below.

If you would like to take part in the discussion, email us with your telephone number, which will not be published.

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Your comments:

We should not blame each other, the man or woman but why not set ourselves as an example or a model in saving our mother earth, not just by words but through deeds!
Joey Salinas G., Philippines

Whatever useful skill and knowledge the women acquire about conservation and efficient using the environment for the day to day needs of their home consumption, they can create a tremendous positive impact on the effort to conserve the environment.
Bahru Shikur, Ethiopia

The men cut down the trees and the women gathering the wood are the ones damaging the environment? The women may be able to help by using those sticks they gather to smack these men!
Cherice, USA

The men in Africa have abandoned their responsibilities to their women.
Kaliboi, Nigeria

This is not feminism. You cannot understand Africa from the way you people think in the West. African men are just like European men but the African man is different in the sense that in our poverty and misery we have love that can change the world.
George Onmonya Daniel, Nigeria

The world is a much better place where women have control. Women are our conscience. Women keep us men in check.
George Kearse, UK Yatton.

When all grown men are running away to the US or the UK it is unfair to criticise the woman and girl child who are left to run the country with the barest resources Yvonne Cole, Hungary

The impact on the forests could be alleviated by distributing cheap, solar-powered cooking devices.
Barbara Graham, USA

This is like painting on to brick before plastering a wall!! African women have more urgent concerns than recycling?!
Solomon Owusu Frempong, London

Women do not damage the environment... men do!!! Men have always been in charge. That's why the world is dying.
Sachiko, USA

only men can save the planet. they are the decision makers all over the world. Women are never allocated land and so how can they be expected to save the planet.
Justus Korir, Kenya

The government should research alternative sources of energy.
John, Malaysia

Compare for an American woman driving to the mall to buy plastic toys imported from China in her large, gas consuming vehicle to the African woman who walks 15 miles a day to get enough firewood to cook her family's dinner. If everyone in the world consumed as little as my mother there would be no shortages in the world.
Olowo-n'djo Tchala, Togo/USA

Please blame the institutions who are supposed to supply electricity for the destruction of the environment.
Hector, Australia

If everyone in the world consumed as little as my mother there would be no shortages in the world Olowo-n'djo Tchala, Togo

When all grown men are running away to the US or the UK it is unfair to criticise the woman and girl child who are left to run the country with the barest resources.
Yvonne Cole, Hungary

Women damage the environment for the same reason we all do, regardless of gender: survival.
Breanne England, Canada

Every day women and children in homes of the developing world are exposed to pollution level more than 30 times the recommended air quality standards of the developed world. According to WHO, indoor air pollution from burning solid fuel on primitive stoves in poor households causes 1.6 million deaths worldwide each year. This is more deaths than caused by malaria. Expanding energy choices for women must become a priority.
Alison Doig, Uk

It's only the economic situation of Africa that is responsible, backed up with the countless coup d'etat. Has there ever been a woman rebel leader in Africa or a woman who has plot a coup?
Fatmata Turay, Sierra Leone

Why are women being blame for destroying the planet, when the world is control by men? What happen to men being providers for their family? So HATS OFF!! to all you African Queens taking charge of their business!!
Simplydred, Trinidad and Tobago

Women damage the environment for the same reason we all do... survival Breanne England, Canada

Women are slaves in bondage of the male dominated society, they only act at the whims of the masters. If they do not chop the trees for wood the "boony" husband will kill them for his dinner. The answer to many problems in Africa is looking at women's education and genuine emancipation.
Kiwanuka Lawrence Nsereko, Uganda (USA)

Women hold the key to not only solving the environmental crises in Africa, but the health and educational ones as well. We must realise that these are all connected.
Kit, USA

What do you expect when women all over Africa are being subjected to untold hardship.Men in Africa are becoming more irresponsible.
Bernadette Nwachukwu, nigeria,Abuja

Women are equally as capable of destruction as men, except they don't have a long and dense history to prove this. For example- Women are known to kill their newborns after pregnancy and have abortions frequently. What's the reason for this?
Marc Guvenc, USA

Africa's women can not save the planet or their countries without the men.
Deepti Shinde, USA

If they do not chop the trees for wood the "boony" husband will kill them for his dinner Kiwanuka Lawrence Nsereko, Uganda

Women have to damage it, because they are the source of life. Government are the people that are damaging the environment and not women
Kingsley Baye, Nigeria

Why are we picking on women, because they are saving the continent from outright collapse.
Julius Egbeyemi, Halifax, Canada

I think both sexes should be made to know the importance of the forest.
Christine Meling, Sudan

The amount of damage that women do to the African environment is not even close to the amount of damage that is done by any commercial logging industry, especially here in the U.S.A. If African women had their choice, I am sure they would rather have adequate running water and electricity in their homes.
Demethrasis Blackmon, U.S.A.

I recently visited the University of Edgerton, in Kenya. A professor there had done research about reforestation and had try to enlist the farmers to set aside a piece of land from farming and plant trees. When he worked with the men he was not very successful in getting trees planted. He then brought in the women and educated them. Now his tree planting project is quite successful. So he would say at least in his area women did hold the key to starting reforestation.
Cathy Tugmon, USA

Women are equally as capable of destruction as men, except they don't have the long and dense history to prove this Marc Guvenc, USA

In my home town of Yei/ south Sudan, women are not a danger to the environment, but instead men do the most destruction by cutting both wild trees and non-wild to sell it cheaply to other parts, the resulting damage is great.
Loremo Kamanda, Sudan/ USA.

Let's not blame it all on women when large western companies are still logging the forest. And how does the genetically modified food that North America agrees produces, which Europe opposes, contribute to environmental damage? How do plantations contribute to the destruction of the environment, as well as mining?
Lindy, congo

Men cut down the trees and the women collect it for fire wood. I believe they can play a better role in saving the environment if they are empowered economically. Everything boils down to poverty.
Stephen S. M. Bendah, Liberia/Ghana

The World without Women is like a Desert without an Oasis. Every society on Earth needs women to make meaningful and progressive growth and development. Women seem to add spice to every situation.
Christian Merenini, Lagos Nigeria

Who's to blame, man or woman? Easy for woman to blame man. They are probably right ... but ... every man has/had a mother.
David Bate, Scotland (with a Zimbabwean wife)

It solely remains the responsibility for the governments of the day to impose very heavy fines on all those people who destroy the environment to make violators stop this vice.
Tom Mogaka, Bayonne, New Jersey

Why are we picking on women, because they are saving the continent from outright collapse? Julius Egbeyemi, Canada

If the African woman do not use this resources the western capitalists will cut it and use it for something else anyway. Environmental destruction will not destroy the planet but the game of making Africa poor and denying Africa basic infrastructure will. What will destroy the world is man's indifference to the plight of other men.
George Onmonya Daniel, Nigeria

most women depend on the environment for survival (just as many men do). They do so because they have no options.And until we help them out, our dear mothers will forever be a threat to the environment.
Benjamin Tetteh Piorgah, Ghana

It is not as if these women are choosing not to have alternatives available to them for cooking, cleaning and other conveniences most of us take for granted. Given the choice who would want to cut down trees just to boil water for cleaning and cooking? What should be asked is why the governments, of those countries in question, are not doing enough to educate their people and give them the tools needed to improve their situations.
Y. Rice, USA

Living close to nature entails using what is close to you.They won't use domestic cooking gas because the means are not there. Poor women, you have no alternative but to remember to plant back two trees when you cut down one.
Eugene Che Che, Buea-Cameroon

Women are victims of circumstances because in the African rural setting of today women are the breadwinners of many families.More rural women in Nigeria will rely heavily on firewood for their cooking because the government have recently increased the price of kerosine by 25%. Apart from land reserved for tourism, many African countries do not care about the environment and do not have policies to protect it. Until there is appreciable improvement in the living standard of people in the continent, re-orientation and education of people especially women in the rural areas on the need to conserve our environment, it will still be seen as the last hope of survival by many people.
chinedu ibeabuchi, lagos/nigeria

Let's not blame it all on women when large western companies are still logging the forest Lindy, Congo

Many women have been deprived of education so they are not inventors of less consuming cookers. Women have no right to own land so they have no right to decide how much land should be deforested. Women do not make law so they can not force the community to save the forests nor to protect the water source. First give the women education, build their own economic sources and eradicate cultures which exploit them; then we can start talking of enviroment
Albina Kakuru , Tanzanian (living in Bangladesh)

Women do not damage the environment because they enjoy it, but rather, because the other option is to die of starvation due to lack of food and fuel.
Enoch Manani, Kenya

African women are most extraordinary. That they are able to survive, feed their children and keep them as safe as possible while their men practice war, savagery and brutality instead of using their energy to work productively, is something that never ceases to amaze me. You will find the answer to the damage of the environment in the negative behaviour of men. You can't call women the managers of environment in a Continent where they are little more than slaves to the men.Empowerment of women is the answer - and the changes will come.
Sara, Portugal

I remember as a child, when we went with the other women to collect firewood, we picked the dry branches and broken ones off the ground. We didn't cut anything because we had no axes and no strength to chop trees. So, I believe we were actually being environmentally conservative. I put it to you that it isn't African women who chop down trees! I never saw my mothers or my aunts or my grandmothers do that as they collected firewood. It is someone else.
Susan, Zimbabwe

You will find the answer to the damage of the environment in the negative behaviour of men Sara, Portugal

Women damage the environment because they have no choice. It's either cut down trees or eat food raw, which is unsanitary in many cases. The key to solving the problem is reforestation by planting continuously. This has benefits that go beyond stopping desertification. The money can come from a partnership with the host government and UN sponsored NGOs. Secondly, rural electrification will minimize the need for cutting down trees and has the benefit of inducing economic development.
Joseph Wagner, USA

Men have not done a great job so far so maybe the alternative is not a bad idea to try.
Sahara Z, Arizona, USA

without a doubt, the women of Africa hold the answer for Africa's enviromental problems Ngobei L.Shamata, Tanzania

Life though is forcing them to damage more than they can conserve. But without a doubt, the women of Africa hold the answer for Africa's enviromental problems.They have the ability to teach the younger geneation on environmental care and reforestation.
Ngobei L.Shamata, Arusha,Tanzania

Women do not damage the environment. They're rather subjected to all these strenous jobs by the society and culture but their contribution cannot be quantified.Both sexes, man and woman even nature itself hold the answer to environmental problems.
Uchenna Okorie, Nigeria

African women are the most important people in Africa, and I strongly advise that the female youth of today who are free from this cycle of poverty should be encouraged to live up to the expectation nature and tradition demands of them, for a brighter future.
Okpala Odilichukwu Ralueke, Anambra State, Nigeria

We didn't cut anything because we had no axes and no strength to chop trees. Susan, Zimbabwe

Most of African women have no choice than to chop down trees for their cooking needs. It would be very unfair accusing them of enviromental destruction. Should they keep the trees and starve to death?. What is America doing about the Kyoto Accord?
J.Ikusika, UK