Around the world, women-led initiatives are demonstrating how to protect and restore one of our most vital resources: water.
These transformative initiatives need massive support and resources, while false climate solutions, privatization of water resources, pollution from extractive industries and human rights violations must stop immediately.
Narrated by women from affected communities , the “Women Are Water” campaign presents a series of videos on the real climate solutions (for water and with gender justice) that women and their communities are making around the world, against the false climate solutions that destroy their territories.
The indigenous Magar community of Nepal is facing threats to their land and resources due to a hydroelectric project financed by the Asian Development Bank , the European Investment Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency . For centuries, the community has maintained a symbiotic relationship with nature, passing down traditional ecological knowledge such as planting broom to prevent soil erosion and landslides for generations.
The Qom indigenous community of Santa Rosa, in Paraguay , faces the environmental devastation caused by an NGO that promotes the plantation of eucalyptus trees that destroys the ecosystem and without their consent. The community is filing complaints, organizing demonstrations and raising awareness about their situation, despite facing physical violence and threats. The gender-just climate solution that consists of guaranteeing indigenous territorial sovereignty is one of the most cost-effective, sustainable and equitable strategies to protect and restore water and vital ecosystem functions.
The Yaataah community, in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, has suffered from the extraction of fossil fuels by companies such as Shell and Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation . Community women, with the help of an organization, trained 250 women and girls in mangrove restoration and biodiversity management. Their goal is to restore 500,000 mangroves a year and 5 million in the next decade.
Women from the Chor’ti Mayan community in Guatemala face eviction and loss of access to water due to the expansion of pinyon monocultures for biodiesel production. They are using their ancestral knowledge to conserve and protect water resources, taking legal action to secure land rights, and holding companies accountable for environmental damage. They have built dams, diversified crops and planted native species to adapt to droughts caused by climate change.
Did you know that only 0.01% of grants worldwide go to projects that address both climate and women’s rights ? We must start today to allocate more and better resources to climate and water solutions with gender justice.
What is a gender-just water and climate solution?
Gender-just water and climate solutions* encompass a range of activities that aim to address the water crisis and climate change mitigation and adaptation, while supporting systemic redistribution of power, acknowledging water as a human right and providing opportunities and access to women, girls, trans, intersex and non-binary people. In particular, by ensuring that activities do not reinforce harmful gender norms. Communities around the world are applying gender-just water and climate solutions, and they deserve to be fully recognized, funded, replicated and scaled up !
*Since 2015, the Women and Gender Group (WGC) of the Gender Just Climate Solutions Awards Program has identified many examples of gender just climate solutions (see directory here ) . GAGGA, through national and regional environmental justice and women’s rights funds and NGOs, supports various gender-just water and climate solutions around the world.
The Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action calls for the commitment of governments, banks and international development funds to defend the human right to water and invest in women’s leadership in solutions for climate and water with gender justice, already!
Help spread the word. Share these videos on social networks.
Contact Noemi Grutter at n.grutter@fondocentroamericano.org to find out how to get involved.
Twitter: @GAGGA_Alliance #LasMujeresSomosAgua
You can also find this campaign statement in Spanish , French and Portuguese .
Check out the Social Media Toolkit , available in English , French and Portuguese .
Click here to access the media kit
You can follow the campaign on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter through #WeWomenAreWater #NosMulheresSomosAgua #NousFemmesSommeslEau and #LasMujeresSomosAgua.