While fires rage, sea levels rise, and the earth seems to speak its warnings, a passionate group of people have been hard at work to turn things around. In fact, while the scale of the climate crisis has grown, so has the band of grassroots leaders tackling these problems community by community.
Who are these grassroots leaders? More often than not, women. Women in this country, and around the world, play a pivotal role in organizing resistance to environmental injustice and destruction.
Sierra Club campaign leaders pose with Bernadette Demientieff, a leader in defending her homelands in the Arctic from fossil fuel destruction.
Take Doria Robinson from Richmond, California, who grew up five blocks from the Chevron Richmond Refinery. Doria has been a leading voice in local climate activism. She’s held Chevron accountable when the corporation has violated air-quality compliance standards and continually exacerbated the climate crisis through its burning of fossil fuels. Communities near the site suffer from high rates of cancer, asthma, and other diseases. After the refinery exploded in 2012 and exposed thousands of residents to toxic fumes, Doria joined with the mayor of Richmond to call on leaders from cities around the world to exchange solutions on how to protect their communities. Not only has Doria fought for environmental justice but her organization, Urban Tilth, promotes climate resiliency through permaculture, urban farming, and education. Doria’s story showcases how one community’s solutions can be scaled up -- and how women can help lead the way.
Unfortunately, women leaders like Doria face an uphill battle when it comes to having a seat at the table. Many women don't have a say in the policies that impact their lives, nor access to adequate resources. What’s worse -- in their fight for clean water, food security and breathable air -- they risk everything: freedom, safety, and their lives. They take on people and companies with far more money and power. Women challenging power structures can still be seen as highly controversial and too often leads to them being jailed, beaten, raped, and even disappearing.
And women on the frontlines of climate mitigation efforts are gravely under-resourced. According to a 2017 report in Forbes, a minuscule 0.2% of philanthropic funds are channeled to women-led environmental solutions. This cultural and systemic under-investment in women on the frontlines cripples their efforts to move efficiently and scale their successful solutions.
That is why the Sierra Club and Women’s Earth Alliance have launched an Accelerator program to give women activists working a range of environmental challenges a catalytic boost. For decades, our organizations have worked alongside women leaders fighting to elevate their knowledge and grassroots solutions. We’ve consistently heard the same needs expressed: Women need increased capacity, better paths for knowledge and information sharing, more funding, improved tools for advocacy, and more robust alliances to fight climate change.
We know that women, and those of color in particular, are underrepresented and seldom acknowledged for this work despite being disproportionately affected by climate change and injustice. The truth is that from Alaska to Louisiana to Standing Rock, women are leading on climate adaptation. They’re piloting community clean energy programs, sustainable disaster response efforts and taking the lead to adapt to our rapidly changing world. They are filling the role of community leaders, while managing to feed and shelter their own families in the aftermath of severe storms. Climate change is the globe’s problem, but it’s clear that women are taking the lead to solve it.
A moment of victory for the Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance, photo by Brian Nevins.
Our action-oriented Accelerator will convene a powerful group of women leaders who are out front fiercely protecting our water, air, and land. By investing in women leaders to scale solutions for change, we aim to center women’s leadership so we can protect the environment, our world’s women and children and the future for all. Nominations and applications are open, and leaders are encouraged to apply here.
And for those grassroots women environmental champions out there, you may not be well known yet, but you are making history.