Fuelwood strongScarcitystrong, Poverty and Women Some perspectives.pdfVIP

IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) Volume 19, Issue 8, Ver. II (Aug. 2014), PP 21-33 e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845. Fuelwood Scarcity, Poverty and Women: Some perspectives Varinder Singh Waris1 and Dr. Prakash C. Antahal2 1 , (Research Scholar,Department of Economics University of Jammu,JK, India) 2 ( Professor in Department of Economics, University of Jammu, JK, India) Abstract: Wood has been used since prehistorical times for cooking and heating and remains the primary energy source for billions of people throughout the world. It is an alarming fact that today in the 21st century there are still billions of peopl e who totally depend on wood for cooking food. Currently about 2.7 billion people in developing countries who rely for cooking primarily on wood and out of 2.7 billion people 82% live in rural areas. No doubt, other alternatives to the fuelwood are also available in some parts of the developing countries but people mostly prefer fuelwood as their major cooking fuel due to perhaps rising liquid fuel cost ( LPGs and Kerosene ), poverty, unemployment, and population pressure etc. with that, the demand for fue lwood is increasing continuously, while with the passage of time supply of fuelwood is declining, with the expansion of cultivated area, land under forests shrunk as a result of diversion of forests land to agriculture. This continuously widening gap between demand for and supply of fuelwood resulted in fuelwood scarcity problem. This paper shows the impact of fuelwood scarcity on women as it exists today, in order to plan for future. Fuelwood scarcity has vitally affected