Pramila Pradhan, 51, embraced thengapalli, a form of forest stewardship, because of her mother-in-law, who took her along on forest patrols. Thenga means stick, and palli means turn or rotation.…
Ely Marlina’s 2-year-old child began to cough as the wildfires enveloped Indonesia’s Ketapang district in the summer of 2019. The little one soon fell ill with an acute respiratory tract…
“Our voice is a political voice,” says Samela Sateré Mawé, communicator of the National Articulation of Indigenous Women Warriors of Ancestry (ANMIGA) and Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB).…
JAKARTA — Every morning, sisters Janah and Jaroh rise early on the diminishing coastline of Indonesia’s capital city and pray for calm weather and good fortune. At around 9 a.m.,…
HARAR, Ethiopia — In the hilly terrain of Babile Elephant Sanctuary in Ethiopia, Fetiya Ousman, a female wildlife ranger, is leading her team on a patrol. Dressed in a jungle-green…
JAKARTA — In June, Dormaida Sihotang and dozens of other women from Dairi district in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province arrived in Jakarta to plead with authorities to stop a zinc…
In 2017, a camera installed on the fringes of Corbett Tiger Reserve in northern India photographed an unsuspecting woman. The local forest staff had set up the device discreetly to…
In June, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced Monica P. Medina as its new President and CEO. Medina is the first woman to take the helm at WCS and brings…
As we head into the mid-year climate talks in Bonn, Germany, the corporate co-opting of the climate agenda has never been starker. Public pressure must be brought to bear on…
A new study shows that both conservation and agricultural production can improve when women farmers more widely participate in group decisions about sustainable practices. The report, published in February in…
On May 8, the first forum of Indigenous women and local communities from Central Africa and the Congo Basin opened in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo. This…
For Indigenous women in the Amazon, the wetland of Lake Tarapoto is a living classroom. The women consider it not just a home for the fish they rely on to…
Farah Obaidullah’s life has pivoted around the ocean. Growing up in Gabon and the Netherlands, she spent as much time as possible in or near the water, snorkeling, rescuing marine…
Our planet is in crisis. Human activity is driving accelerating climate change and biodiversity loss across the globe. The devastating impacts of both processes are disproportionately felt by women and…
The European Union is considering a regulation on deforestation-free products that is one of the most promising environmental legislative initiatives of this decade. It would force traders in commodities that…
On July 12, oceanographer and geographer Dawn Wright was sealed inside a submersible, traveling to Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. Wright and…
The increasing difficulty of accessing clean water is forcing young women in coastal areas of Bangladesh to try to halt their menstrual cycles by misusing contraceptive pills, putting their long-term…
KAVRE, Nepal – Srijana Karki still remembers her childhood when she visited her grandfather's farm. "The green fields were dotted with various fruit trees and we would get to eat…
CHELEM, Mexico — In Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, a few words describe the most common occupations: fisher, merchant, mother. Over the past decade, the port town of Chelem has seen the…
RAJA AMPAT, Indonesia — Esterlita Jabu says she still remembers the gut-wrenching horror of hearing explosions from blast fishers near the beach where she played as a child with her…
Women-led philanthropy garnered renewed attention after MacKenzie Scott, former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced in March that she had given away $3.9 billion in grants to 465 organizations…
Traditional fishers scattered in isolated communities along Madagascar’s 4,800-kilometer (3,000-mile) coastline are grappling with falling fish stocks and competition from industrial trawlers, mostly owned by foreigners. As a young woman,…
HARARE, Zimbabwe – Women, children and the elderly are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change in rural Zimbabwe, taking up a large share of the agricultural labor force…
TANAKEKE ISLANDS, Indonesia — Wading through a mangrove swamp in the coastal waters of Indonesia’s Tanakeke Islands, Hayati wiped the sweat from her brow and tried her best to keep…
Josefina Tunki is a mother, even though she doesn’t have any biological children. In 2019, she became the first president of the Shuar Arutam People (Pueblo Shuar Arutam, PSHA, in…
This story was written in partnership with Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto. Leaving the headquarters of the Wayuú Women’s Force, Mülo’u took the first taxi she saw. It was…
Years before the obsession with wild-borne pathogens latching onto humans gripped the world, Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka was already dealing with disease spillovers. Except, she worried about humans infecting gorillas in her…
Today, being an environmental defender in the Peruvian rainforest means challenging death. It means facing narcotrafficking, land encroachment, deforestation, and illegal logging and mining. It implies traveling hundreds of kilometers,…
Liliana Dávalos had only been studying geology for a few days at the National University of Colombia in 1991 when the program director told the whole class that women were…
For at least the past 20 years, there has been regular talk about the need to break down silos in conservation. The argument is straightforward: to be successful, the field…
