We’re excited to share the stories of some amazing feminist organisations that are making a real difference in advancing climate justice. Over the next months, we’ll be posting blogs about our grantee-partners, shared with us by those who participated in the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference. As we look forward to COP30, these stories show us how communities most impacted by climate change are also the ones implementing and leading the solutions with lasting impact.
By Jailan Zayan
The struggle for climate justice is rooted in a fundamental need we all have: to protect what we love. In Zambia’s villages, the answers to global crises aren’t born in laboratories or boardrooms but in the hands of rural women cultivating millet, sorghum, and other indigenous vegetables. Their work, grounded in agroecology, pushes back against the patriarchal and extractivist systems that have long marginalised them.
“Agroecology is health… it’s food security,” said Susan Chilala of Women Environs Zambia in an interview at the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference. She underscored how sustainable practices do more than feed families – they rebuild the social and ecological fabric frayed by industrial agriculture and climate change. These practices, led by women, challenge the harmful narrative that technological fixes alone can solve the climate crisis.
Yet despite offering community-rooted solutions, groups like these are still structurally underfunded in climate finance, undermining sustainable progress.
Climate change effects
This funding gap is especially urgent in Zambia, where the effects of climate change are already devastating. Droughts, deforestation, and food insecurity disproportionately affect rural women. “When food security is at stake at household level, you find that [gender-based violence] among the children is high,” Chilala explains. Many children are forced to leave school to work or sell goods to support their families, while girls are often married off at a young age so their families can receive dowries.
Government subsidies that promote hybrid seeds and synthetic fertilisers often make things worse. When farmers plant hybrid maize and get poor yields, they’re left with no viable alternatives. Many are forced to cut down trees and produce charcoal for energy just to earn a living. This harmful cycle shows why sustainable agricultural practices are urgently needed.
Agroecology: a sustainable solution
Women Environs Zambia promotes agroecology as a sustainable alternative to industrial farming. They blend ecological principles, traditional knowledge, and social equity to restore ecosystems and improve food security. In six districts, they use demonstration plots to teach how to make bio-fertiliser, natural pesticides, and grow and store indigenous seeds. The plots also serve as spaces for learning and building community.
These techniques help make the soil fertile again and grow strong, resilient crops.
“We plant indigenous vegetables, bio-green manures,” Chilala explains, “so that those who are still doubting, can learn from the demo plot.” Once harvested, seeds are redistributed through a seed bank system. Participants grow new crops and return seeds, keeping the cycle going and ensuring a steady supply for the whole community.
At the heart of the group’s work is feminist organising. They rely on strong governance and support women in leading and sustaining initiatives independently. Leadership is decentralised, with governance structures in place at every level, from local groups to district and national bodies. This ensures that women take full ownership of their programs. By entrusting women with decision-making and implementation, the collective creates change that is both lasting and transformative.
Flexible funding for bigger changes
Their approach is made possible in part by the flexible funding Women Environs Zambia receives.
“Mama Cash gives us flexibility to use the funds as we best see fit,” says Chilala.
It has allowed them to grow its agroecology programs, expand seed multiplication, and invest in critical tools like hammer mills and oil-pressing machines. These not only sustain their work but also provide extra income for women in the community.
Mama Cash funding enabled Women Environs Zambia to undertake its agroecology programmes and influence policy change at all levels. It has also strengthened the group’s push for broader changes, including requirements for budget allocations to be gender sensitive and for twenty percent of community development funds to be directed toward agroecology. These funds, subsidised by the state, are aimed at allocating resources to local communities for development-related projects.
A collective voice
Despite their success, Women Environs Zambia now works in only 6 of the country’s 116 districts. They hope to reach more remote areas where climate risks are highest and misinformation spreads easily. “We need to go to far-flung rural areas,” Chilala says. “They don’t really understand that this synthetic fertiliser… is contributing to their food insecurity.”
Expansion requires resources – for training, mobilising communities, and setting up new demonstration plots. And a collective voice: “The smaller you are, the less impact your voice has,” says Chilala. “The more you are, the larger the voice.”
At the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference, Chilala made their voices impossible to ignore. She emphasised that rural women-led movements like Women Environs Zambia offer some of the most effective and sustainable solutions to climate challenges.
Their work shows that community-driven, feminist practices can change not only local realities but also global strategies for climate justice. “We are scaling up,” Chilala said, and stressed the importance of understanding that “these issues also exist at regional and global levels,” not only in Zambia.
Fighting for a better tomorrow
Love for their land and communities drives Women Environs Zambia to fight for a better tomorrow, and their courage deserves our support. They’re leading powerful climate solutions, but like many groups led by women, girls, trans, or intersex people in the Global South, they don’t get the funding they need.
This is why Mama Cash calls on governments and philanthropic funders to ensure more climate finance is directed to the local feminist movements and organisations on the frontlines of the climate crisis. You can read more about our partner’s work at the intersection of gender and climate justice and our recommendations to funders here.
Your donation can help strengthen the collective voice of these feminist organisations and advance climate justice. Join us in supporting Women Environs Zambia and donate today.
This is the second instalment in our blog series about Mama Cash partners working on climate justice, ahead of COP30. You can also read our previous post about Indonesia’s women’s organisation SERUNI here.