Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, provided the keynote address for Women Funding Network’s conference, Leadership for a Changing World, held in San Francisco in September. With a message of urgency about our climate crisis combined with a call for more women’s leadership, Robinson brought the audience to their feet with applause for her words.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – September 12 – Mary Robinson and Melanie Allen attend Women’s Funding Network Conference and VIP Reception with Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson on September 12th 2019 at Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco, CA (Photo – Susana Bates for Drew Altizer Photography)
“Unless women take leadership in dealing with the climate crisis, then all the other issues, and I fully believe in the intersectionality of all the other issues, but all the other issues will actually fade, because we won’t have a livable world for our children and grandchildren,” said Robinson. “It’s as simple as that, and as stark as that, and as real as that, and that’s why it’s so important that women are now taking that leadership.”
Local girls enjoy clean water from a rehabilitated well in Senegal. Photo Credit: CREATE! (@createsenegal)
Where are the effects of climate change felt the strongest?
West Africa shoulders some of the heaviest impacts created by climate change, particularly in communities where families live off the land. Many communities in Sub-Saharan Africa have laid claim to lush, verdant farmlands for hundreds or thousands of years—but today, those families find themselves fighting against the very land they’ve called home for generations.
Between desert encroachment, deforestation, and the effects of a rising global temperature, rural populations in Senegal experience some of the worst effects of climate change. Farming families struggle to cope with a shorter growing season, while communities across the continent suffer from a shortage of clean water, food, and fuel.
Five years later, the battle for clean water still rages in Flint, Michigan. (Photo Credit: Flint Rising)
Superheroes no longer wear capes: they wear gym shoes. And when it comes to water rights, these superheroes put more miles on those shoes than most.
A few days before we spoke on the phone, Gina Luster represented Flint Rising at an activist event in San Francisco. A red-eye flight took her to Grand Rapids, Michigan, then to her home in Flint at 7:30 in the morning. Next, Gina drove to Detroit for a panel appearance at the NAACP’s annual conference. She arrived in the city exhausted and ready for a shower before our interview, only to find out she couldn’t check into her hotel.
In the early 1980s, armed government forces massacred hundred of members of the Maya Achi communities near the Rio Negro highlands of Guatemala. When the Maya Achi resisted eviction from their ancestral homes, the armed forces began a destructive campaign that spanned five massacres and ten communities, killing 441 women, children, and men. Ultimately, around 3,500 people were displaced from their homes, tortured, assaulted, or left without food or livelihood. Recent studies place the number of affected individuals around 11,000.
Monti Aguirre, Latin America Program Coordinator, International Rivers (Photo Credit: International Rivers)
Why? To make room for a hydroelectric dam on the Chixoy River.
Editor’s Note: Fern Shepard is the first participant in our new interview series: “Feminist Giving IRL” (in real life).
“Feminist Giving IRL” features leaders in philanthropy and the nonprofit realm who are outstanding advocates for gender equity. Our first featured leader, Fern Shepard, is President of Rachel’s Network, a non-profit organization named after Rachel Carson that empowers women funders in environmental protection.
Fern Shepard (Image credit: Fern Shepard)
What do you wish you had known when you started out in your profession?
I began my career 30 years ago as an environmental lawyer with Earthjustice, where I quickly learned the importance of strong laws in protecting vulnerable populations. Courts are where powerless people and voiceless wildlife and wildlands can be protected from harm. Yet our environmental problems have only grown in complexity and severity since I started.
International Rivers joined with American Jewish World Service, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Arcadia Fund, and the MacArthur Foundation recently to sponsor the Women and Rivers Congress. (Photo credit: International Rivers)
What would you do if you woke up one morning to find that your home had been cut off from all clean water?
In the United States, the first instinct would be to call your water company, or buy a flat of bottled water — but in societies around the world relying on freshwater rivers for their families’ survival and livelihood, access to clean water is being threatened in new and frightening ways every day.
According to International Rivers, roughly two-thirds of the world’s rivers have been negatively impacted by the 50,000 or so dams that have been built in the last 100 years, funded by supporters of water privatization. Because of this, once-great waterways like the Indus, the Colorado, and the Yellow Rivers no longer reach the sea, and the areas that once thrived on the mix of salt and fresh water can no longer support the diverse communities of life, human and otherwise, that formerly called these deltas home.
Greta Thunberg, teen activist from Sweden, has helped amplify climate change movements with her advocacy. (Photo Credit: Greta Thunberg on Twitter)
Teen girls are becoming movers and shakers across the globe in areas like gun violence, environmental activism, and gender equality, as well as advocacy for inclusiveness and systems change of all kinds.
And rather than simply accepting the hands they’ve been dealt, teen girls and young women are taking the lead to change their lives and the lives of those around them. A Swedish teen activist, Greta Thunberg, has recently made waves and garnered well-deserved media attention for her work around climate change. She has protested outside of the Swedish parliament and has spoken about the need to protect the environment for future generations at Davos and the United Nations. Thunberg has also inspired others her age, mobilizing school-based climate change protests in Sweden and worldwide. She was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and stands to be the youngest recipient since Malala Yousafzai if she wins.
Rachel’s Network Catalyst Award will provide $10,000 to up five women environmental leaders of color.
This week, Rachel’s Network launched the Catalyst Award as a new way to build women’s leadership in environmental work. The awards will recognize as many as five women of color who are making a significant impact on environmental issues in communities across the United States.
Each award winner will receive $10,000 as well as networking and mentorship support throughout the year.
Rachel’s Network works at the intersection of gender equality and environmentalism, providing $1.7 million in collective funding grants since its founding aimed at addressing both climate change and women’s rights. Rachel’s Network received the Bridge Builders Award for Network and Collaborative Giving Leadership from Philanthropy Women in January of 2019 for its exceptional work in growing gender equality movements intersectionally with environmental work.
The Catalyst Award is particularly noteworthy for its integration of both race and gender issues in addressing diversity in environmental work. In addition, the award creators are widening the lens on what it means to make an impact on environmental work by inviting women from the arts, agriculture, law, journalism, education, and faith communities to apply for the awards.
“We want this award to be the connective tissue between the wide landscape of existing fellowships for emerging leaders of color and executive leadership,” said Fern Shepard, President of Rachel’s Network, in a press release announcing the new awards. “We hope our investment catalyzes not only individual women’s career trajectories, but the environmental movement as a whole in becoming more representative and just.”
Author Mark Rowe discusses the gender equality challenges that we face globally in the November 2017 issue of Geographical.
An article in the November 2017 issue of Geographical, a print publication out of the UK, does an exceptional job of summarizing the current research on gender equality globally. Geographical came to my attention after having the opportunity to talk with staff at Oxfam Great Britain (Oxfam GB), in order to learn more about the way Oxfam has approached integrating gender and development for the past two and a half decades.
The article points to research showing that making gains in gender equality could add as much as $12 trillion to the economy, but also quotes some experts who are dubious about using economic arguments for achieving political gains for women. Dr. Torrun Wimpelmann says that it’s unproductive to argue with social conservatives using this economic data. Another expert, Dr. Jeni Klugman, author of a high level UN report called Leave No-One Behind, says there is room for the economic argument, since it comes at the issue pragmatically.
Nikki van der Gaag, Director of Women’s Rights and Gender Justice at Oxfam GB, is interviewed extensively in the article, and talks about ways that gender can be addressed better by both the business and development worlds. “It’s striking how much the business sector is making the arguments around the case for gender equality and diversity.” But the key point for van der Gaag is that the corporate structures still need to change — supply chains need to be more gender equal, and advocating for women can’t be a sidebar of the company, but needs to be part of the core business plan.
That is where the real challenge comes in, particularly in a world where some data suggests that serious backsliding is occurring for women. “The World Economic Forum’s 2016 Gender Gap Report concluded that gender equality has now settled back to 2008 levels,” says the article. So in 2016, according to the Gender Gap Report, we were back to 2008 in terms of gender equality gains. Essentially, we’ve already lost a decade. How much further will Trump and other social conservatives take us back in time?
In order to make real progress, the connections between gender equality and the environment have to become clearer to everyone. The newest issue of Gender & Development is taking a close look at the connections between gender equality and environmental work in today’s world, a world where President Trump has the power to reduce the size of public monuments in Utah by millions of acres, a potentially illegal move that has huge implications for gender justice. Certainly, now is the time for feminist and environmentalists to come together and strategize about how to fight back.
The latest issue of Gender & Development looks closely at connecting up feminism with environmentalism.
In a post introducing the new issue of Gender & Development, Editor Caroline Sweetman reminds us that 2017 has been the deadliest on record for environmental activists. Further, in many countries around the world, women are on the losing end of deals made to extract natural resources from developing nations.
