By Lydia Wanjiku and Lucile Stengel
In the green hills of Nyamagabe, Southern Rwanda, lies the home of Martha Mukarwego and her husband Kanyandekwe Mukarwego, both home farmers who support their large family and grandchild through farming. For many years, Martha and her husband grew food — mostly sweet potatoes and cassavas — for home consumption, and sold their surplus to generate income. But recent changes in climate have been affecting the growth of their food.
‘Martha noticed changes in the agricultural seasons, and says it has become increasingly hard to predict the weather as she has been used to. She and her husband prepare their fields and sow seeds, but the rain does not fall as predicted and when it rains, it comes heavily and destroys their efforts.’
Martha’s story was produced by Vestine Muhawenimana, one of the Rwandan women photographers who emerged from our Envisioning Resilience Training — an initiative launched in 2021 in partnership with the National Adaptation Plan Global Network aiming to bring the perspectives of women affected by climate change into adaptation planning using photography.
Across the globe, women in rural and coastal communities have been bearing the brunt of climate change. In Jamaica (Small Island State — SIDS), Kenya (Africa Group of Negotiators (AGN), Ghana (Africa Group of Negotiators — AGN), and Rwanda (Least Developed Countries — LDCs) the photographers emerging from our training programmes have shown time and again through their visual stories that women, whose livelihoods depend on their immediate environments, are disproportionately bearing the impacts of erratic and extreme weather.
Across the globe, women in rural and coastal communities have been bearing the brunt of climate change.
In Esiteti, Amboseli, Kenya, indigenous photographer Grace Ntesio’s story showed the burden of Ma women in protecting and having to build back their homes after wind storms, who traditionally are the ones building homes in Ma villages.
‘In the past year alone, no less that seven homes have been carried away by strong winds’ she reports. ‘Strong winds are very burdensome for us women. ‘Culturally, it is our role to build homes, including finding materials that can withstand harsh climate conditions.. It is our duty to rebuild homes as well, something, which we spend a lot more time doing lately.’
On the other side of the world in Jamaica, a small island state affected by drought and coastal erosion, photographer Khalia Malcolm from the quiet hills of Hanover, St Andrew, told the story of her lush community of Cacoon, where women are now spending double the time walking to and back from the dwindling nearby river to wash clothes.
‘Back in the day, as a young boy, my father would swim in the river, jumping into the water from the bridge. Today the river only brushes to Troy’s ankles, my younger brother, and Troy is only 4’7 feet.’
‘This section of the river provides an alternative source of water for washing and bathing. But carrying bath pans with wet clothes after washing them here is very strenuous for the women who use the river to carry out their domestic chores. Simple tasks have become burdensome and time consuming since rainfall levels have changed’
While they disproportionately feel the effects of climate change, we also see women looking for ways to manage these impacts on their lives and livelihoods.
During an extended drought in 2021, as documented by Indigenous photographer Catherine Pilale on the burden of drought on women in Esiteti, Amboseli, Kenya, the livelihoods of the Maasai community who dominate this area, deeply tied to livestock health and loss, were severely affected.
Lemomo Sitei would gather soda ash minerals found locally and transport them to farmers in bordering Tanzania, where she exchanged them for income or essential supplies like potatoes, sugar, onions, and beans. The journey to Tanzania is long and arduous, sometimes requiring her to return home before selling all her stock to deliver food to her children.
Back in Nyamagabe, Southern Rwanda, Martha Mukarwego is now growing coffee. She heard from other farmers that coffee is easy to take care of and started with a few coffee saplings. She has continued to grow them over the years, and now has two hundred trees of coffee.
‘So far, Martha has been able to harvest a hundredfold, which she sells for income. Her only complaint is that she can only harvest once a year.’
These actions, while demonstrating leadership, are often driven by necessity: women are adjusting their practices to ensure their families’ survival in response to unpredictable weather patterns, rather than seeking formal positions of power or recognition. Yet in doing so, they sustain not only their families but also their communities and local economies. This informal burden deepens gender disparities and traps women in cycles of poverty, as climate impacts intensify.
COP29 — Our call for women to be empowered as more than just survivors of climate change.
As COP29 commences, one of the agenda items many are watching for with anticipation is the review and advancement of the Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWPG) and its Gender Action Plan (GAP).
Many countries have made notable strides in integrating gender considerations into national climate policies, including Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), where gender-responsive approaches are now increasingly recognised as essential for effective climate action. The review of the Gender Action Plan (GAP) is an opportunity for Parties to connect these strides in policy with the real-world challenges that women in climate-vulnerable communities continue to face daily. This is especially essential as this year’s agenda — focusing on advancement of the LWPG — means that negotiations need to move from long talks to establishing how the GAP gets implemented in practice — a discussion, which has not progressed in previous years.
But the reality is that although women are actively working to manage the impacts of climate change on their lives and communities, their adaptive capacity is severely constrained by entrenched inequalities, such as limited economic opportunities, restricted access to land, and limited representation in decision-making — including within family structures.
Key to relieving these constraints is finance — targeted and accessible climate finance and dismantling the structural barriers that continue to exclude women from benefiting from climate finance — and thus ensuring that the discussions taking place on advancement of the Lima Work Programme on Gender and its action plan do not dismiss the language of finance. This is something, which developed country parties have rejected in the past, arguing that finance should be discussed separately as part of climate finance negotiations.
Francine, who experienced degradation on her land, as told by Rwandan photographer Rosalie Dusabimana received temporary farming space from the Rwandan government in January of this year. Every local authority in Rwanda knows people working in the sector, and individuals who are not formally employed, do not generate much income, or have small plots of land are eligible to receive land.
Also central to this year’s agenda and up for conclusive discussion is indeed the question of climate finance. Following what many termed the failure of the $100 billion annual climate finance target set under the Copenhagen Accord (2009), which was not honoured by developed countries, parties have agreed to set a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) by 2025, which would take into account the climate finance needs of developing countries . This is what is up for discussion this COP29, and negotiators have already been gathering for months to talk on the issue.
While each negotiator group of countries may want to advocate for differentiation based on their special circumstances, it will be essential for the Africa Group of Negotiators (AGN), Least Developed Countries (LDCs), and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to present a unified front in NCQG negotiations to advance shared climate finance objectives that benefit them all. They will be asking for a clear definition of what climate finance means — specifically distinguishing between foreign development aid and other foreign support not dedicated to climate, and actual climate funding — a quantifiable target (which so far has proven difficult to set), mechanisms of accountability, and longevity of commitments — all issues inadequately defined in the 2009 Copenhagen Accord.
But perhaps most important for developing countries parties will be ensuring the NCQG prioritises funding climate adaptation — rather than sole mitigation — and recognises it as the most urgent need for communities most affected by climate change. The stories shared in this article speak to how necessary adaptation finance is. And they cannot stress enough how essential putting special emphasis on women as key beneficiaries of adaptation finance is to just climate action.
In Rwamagana, Rwanda’s Eastern province, Celine Nyirabugingo is a crop farmer who dreams to scale up her farm. Although Celine’s milk production gives her a steady income, much of it is currently spent buying pesticides, and reinvesting into tendering to her crops, affected by climate change.
Celine is not giving up on her dreams. Her wish is to expand to a point where she can buy a vehicle to transport her vegetables. She also wishes to send her children to a boarding school and to build a house for her mom.
