A changing climate in gender equality

Environmental group highlights women-led projects to address global climate change

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What do gender equality and the environmental crisis have in common?

“Everything,” according to Terry Odendahl, executive director of Global Greengrants Fund, a Boulder-based environmental fund that supports grassroots action on a global scale.

On March 8, International Women’s Day, Odendahl was recognized for her leadership in advancing the rights of women working toward environmental justice — both locally and internationally — at a luncheon hosted by WorldDenver.

Odendahl has been at the helm of Global Greengrants Fund for the past six years. She previously served as the executive director of two women’s funds and has a diverse background in anthropology, philanthropy and gender studies.

Because of traditional gender roles in developing nations, women’s lives cannot be separated from nature, making them unduly affected by environmental degradation. In times of drought, they must walk further to collect water and are forced to work harder when crops are destroyed in the event of natural disasters.

“Research clearly shows that women throughout the world are particularly vulnerable to the threats posed by climate change,” she says. “In some disasters, women and children have been 14 times more likely to die [than men].”

Organizations around the world are taking notice of these trends. During the Geneva Climate Change Conference in February, many nations acknowledged the importance of ensuring gender equality and human rights in a new global climate agreement.

“All Parties shall be guided by gender equality and ensure the full and equal participation of women in all climate actions and decision making processes,” wrote the European Union in their proposal.

Likewise, Global Greengrants operates on the premise that women have effective solutions to the climate crisis that are being overlooked. In 2009, about 23 percent of the projects supported by the fund were led by or focused on women.

“I didn’t think that was a good statistic,” Odendahl said during her acceptance speech on March 8. “Now I can report that 37 percent of all our grants go to women-led and women-focused projects. And my pledge to you is that half or more than half of our funding will go toward those projects in the future.”

While almost 300 billion dollars are allocated annually to curb climate change worldwide, the majority of the funding goes toward governments and large corporations with very little trickling down to the level of the communities that are affected.

“We believe positive social change comes from the ground up,” Odendahl says. “It is more likely to be lasting when called for by community leaders.”

One of the community leaders Odendahl is referring to is Aleta Baun — or “Mama Aleta” as she’s known, an indigenous Mollo woman from Indonesia and recipient of the 2013 Goldman Environmental Award, the largest award in the world for grassroots environmentalists.

Mama Aleta organized a peaceful protest against the encroachment of mining companies in her region. For over a year, more than 100 women blocked access to the mine site by quietly weaving their traditional cloth as part of their Gandhi-style defiance of the miners.

“But when we began our protest, women realized that they could do more — take a stand and be heard,” Baun told the Jakarta Post in 2013. “Women are also the recognized landowners in the Mollo culture, and this reawakened in those women who hadn’t been actively speaking out a desire to protect their land.”

The Mollo women were successful, and by 2010 the companies abandoned their operations and halted mining at all four sites within the Mollo territories.

“We have found hundreds of other projects like this that are very effective and that need to be funded,” Odendahl says.

That’s the value of a group such as the Global Greengrants Fund, Odendahl adds, because they have trusted advisers around the world who are able find these grassroots activists.

“There’s almost no way that the average citizen — who isn’t traveling and visiting these groups — could do that on their own,” she says. “That’s a service that we offer to our donors.”

Global Greengrants also released Climate Justice and Women’s Rights, a guide on how to direct more resources to grassroots women activists. The guide features practical lessons and case studies from the Summit on Women and Climate, held in August 2014 in Bali, Indonesia where leaders and activists from 37 countries aimed to increase collaborations between environmental and women’s rights movements.

“The guide is to try to influence other funders that are bigger than us to do the same, to see the interconnections,” Odendahl says.

Having more women involved in the decision-making process can help protect, restore and transform the planet, Odendahl says, but they can’t do it alone.

“I honestly believe that women are going to save the planet, but we’re only going to be able to do it in conjunction with men,” she says. “So everyone is going to have to come together to make this happen, and I look forward to being part of the solution.”

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