The climatic crisis affects women in an ignorant way: they are more likely to cause a disaster and constitute 80 percent of all climatic refugees.
But a new wave of women’s conservation leaders is leading efforts worldwide for prevention and adapting to the impacts caused by the decomposition of the weather.
Elle magazine dedicated their July number to women in conservation, from indigenous leaders and politicians to scientists and activists. Three of these women, from Conservation International, recently talked about their experiences in the first line of conservation.
Jennifer Morris, President of Conservation International
The South African colonial domain was basically finished. Namibia was cutting ties with African, the language of racial segregation. The works now required English. Jennifer Morris was there in 1992 to teach English to women who would teach their networks.
He lived next to a hospital, saw the complete scope of life and death, birth, disease, malaria contracted several times. He had approached the things that form a public health perspective. Here it expanded.
Morris learned from the women of the ovambo tribe, like Ria Kakelo, that the diseases were falling for hunger and thirst for clean water, and what did not grow on the ground. The disease at the root of the disease was a tropical sky, hot earth, dead crops.
Morris saw what defined lives here: “systemic poverty and environmental decline.” That a family should survive within these parameters was mainly the work of women.
I was linked, life and death, in the relentless need for water and firewood. It was a dry and hot place. The cleaning of wood forests, shelter, grazing cattle made the place drier and more sexy.
Four, five hours a woman’s life of the life of a woman were lost at the meeting. The girls would go alone, party and party, since the resources near home were used and missing. They to remote areas. Sometimes the sausage happened.
What women needed were jobs. “A little income just to take the bus,” Morris explained. Carrying a bus to firewood or the watering hole, meean more time. More time meant more options, more control. I could change everything.
Understanding this changed the path of Jennifer Morris. Today, she serves as President of Conservation International, who confronts the dual and obliged issues of poverty and environmental decline through community conservation projects that generate edifying income.
“Women look disproportionately affected by the climatic crisis and are powerful agents to start it,” said Morris. “We call women to play central roles in all aspects of conservation.”
Morris taught English, attributes to its owner in conservation to what he learned from Kakelo and pointed out: “A critical part of the solution are women who help women.”
Meity Mongdong, program manager, Bird’s Head Sascape
This is an edited version of the prepared comments that Mongdong delivered in the event “Women on a Mission” organized by Conservation International and Elle to celebrate the launch of the July edition.
Indonesian tribes respect the power of nature. She is a mother, Ibu. She gives a lifetime. I think his heart is a place called Peninsula of the head of the bird or western papúa. He is alive with many types of coral, fish, reefs.
When I started my work, I saw: poaching, steiling, fishing destructively. With dynamite. With poison. Without care for Mother Nature. Without care of mothers and families of the island that Mother Nature need to survive.
You will see, it is a way of subsistence life in the islands. Destroying the coral, destroying fish, will destroy its people. Conservation International is working in communities to protect Mother Nature, use her gifts wisely and find ways to improve the quality of life of the tribes that take care of her.
At first, we have meetings with the whole community. Who is interested? All.
In the next step, and then, who stays with him? Can you guess? Women.
Most likely, women are in the kitchen, cleaning, care. Conservation International helped start business, they are self -sufficient and administered by women.
And women who make virgin coconut oil, coconut soap, are powerful in a new way. They build a network. They hire other women. Donate to church. Programs begin to feed their pregnant sisters and school. They feel dignity. They realize, like Mother Nature, they are a force.
Conservation International is with them. When they wanted to work together to stop illegal fishing, he helped create the first patrol of women in West Papua.
If you catch a community offender, the fun: it is like being caht for the mothers or wives of their friends, it is dinner and will never do it again!
The serious: women are educating the community about nature. And by showing their husbands, showing their children, while leading business, while leading patrol, they are changing minds about women.
IBU is our mother earth, her heart is in this place. Working there now, I see: a tide that lifts everyone because the thesis women are increasing.
Emily Pidgeon, senior director of the Blue Climate Program
Emily Pidgeon recalled that he was with Jocel Pangilinan of Conservation International (CI Phillipines), on a beach in a small town in Bagonton in the Visayas region of the Philippines, surrounded by women, had had Super Typhoon decimated by Byyan. Eye, Pidgeon said: “You could see that they were really scared by the perspective of the next storm.”
Pidgeon and Pangilinan stopped among their skepticism under the scorching sun answering cunning questions of hour after hour. “Clearly they were not going to open their village to any silly solution,” Pidgeon said. He explained the green gray infrastructure, an idea that combines mangroves and nuts and engineering screws to prepare for when the next storm arrives, the work that would lead the people.
Pidgeon sees worldwide: “Women are the basis of mangrove conservation in almost the entire place where we work.” Because? She thinks that it has to do with time, space and connection: “Women spend time with all generations of a community and, therefore, understand the past, the present and the future of how these coastal ecosystems provide food, shelters and stability for their communities.”
Trisha Calvare is a senior writer in Conservation International.
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