Rural women put food on the table, manage the land, care for families and build climate resilience for their communities. Despite their central role in local economies – women make up a large share of the agricultural labor force – less than 20% are land holders. These women also suffer from a lack of access to basic infrastructure, energy, credit, healthcare, education and agency and are amongst the poorest people on the planet, as detailed in a recent Climate Investment Funds report on Women Climate Leadership.
Given the urgency of the global climate crisis, it is time to break down the systemic barriers standing in the way of women so that they can play a fuller role in contributing to and benefiting from climate solutions. In order to do so, climate finance must be harnessed to advance rural women's climate leadership. The Climate Investment Funds (CIF) has a long history of partnering with rural women across the developing world. They have been empowered by CIF to build sustainable livelihoods in more than 30 countries through the Forest Investment Program and the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience.
Nowhere is support to women more critical than in Africa according to Rosalie Matondo, Minister of Forest Economy of the Republic of Congo. “In African societies, women play a very important role,” she said. “What's important is the impact of funds that must get to women who are in action, meaning climate action. We need finance to get to this social group of our societies.” CIF has embedded gender in nature and resilience programs and supported women from Indigenous and Local Communities with direct funding through the Dedicated Grant Mechanism (DGM), implemented by the World Bank.
For example, in Ghana, all community members were engaged by DGM in leadership, decision-making, capacity building, design and implementation in sustainable forest management. The project designed training to support women’s meaningful participation and strengthen their skills. This resulted in women representing 47% of grant beneficiaries. One of the 156 grant recipients was Sarah Ewudzi, a cocoa farmer from Asantekrom in the Western North region. She received financial and technical support to engage in climate-smart cocoa production. “Two years ago, I destroyed all the trees on my cocoa farm. But after participating in a DGM training and learning that shade cocoa has longer productive years than full sun cocoa, I have been planting more trees. Now, I have 30 mahogany and frake trees on my cocoa farm,” she explains.
If we are to achieve our global climate goals, a focus on gender mainstreaming in projects can no longer be viewed as sufficient. More women must be steering climate action through leadership and entrepreneurship. By 2030, the green economy should create 24 million jobs worldwide. We cannot afford to exclude women from these opportunities, including in rural areas. Studies cited in the Women Climate Leadership report have shown that companies and organizations with women in leadership are more likely to support pro-environmental corporate actions, achieve better financial performance, and generate higher returns on investments than those with fewer women. This is true in large companies, NGOs and for local action in small communities. When women lead, we see better results.
This is what happened in Burkina Faso when the women of Sapouy, in the Center-West region, received DGM funding to invest in Allah Wallou, a dairy processing cooperative. The decision-making process requires that women meet on the 25th day of each month and discuss issues and options for resolving them until they reach a consensus among all members. The head of the group, Diallo Kadidja, explains: “Women faced many problems due to the lack of income-generating activities. Now, every woman works three times a week. Every evening they get money to purchase something for their families. Before the project got funded, we were poor. We are now delighted because it gave us a lot of opportunities. It raised women’s awareness of the need to protect the forest. The forest you now see, couldn’t have survived without a change of attitude. No woman is going to cut a tree now because we all know the importance of trees.”
In Côte d’Ivoire, the Forest Investment Program partnered through the World Bank with Delphine Ahoussi, a female entrepreneur in the charcoal sector. Delphine leads a women’s group, Malebi Association, that implements a traditional agroforestry system called Taungya. Malebi trained and supported 3,000 people in looking after the land with the Taungya system, notably in the Ahua degraded classified forest, with a strong focus on youth and women.
All around the rural world, women climate leaders inspire and empower others, challenge traditional gender roles, and drive transformative change toward a more sustainable and just future. “Women climate leadership is crucial because in general we see that women and girls are the ones who rise to the challenge most effectively when disaster strikes.” concludes Aicha Diallo, an observer for the Climate Investment Funds governance body who represents Burkina Faso’s Tin Hinan association, a group supporting pastoral women. “In my view, climate finance can promote women climate leadership in two main ways: First, by specifically investing in women. And second, to engage them as equal partners, from the onset, from decision making. Women must be part of these decisions.”